It's been a bit of a silly week for the Celtics.
It's been a bit of a silly week for the Celtics.Amanda Loman/Associated Press
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Welcome back to Court Sense 🍀 A newsletter that is also obsessed with Joe Mazzulla, Kim
How would you describe this stretch of Celtics basketball in one word?
Dominant? Encouraging? Championesque?
I’ve got one for you: goofy. This run of games has been goofy.
Yes, the Celtics have won six in a row and 11 of their last 12, looking much more like their 2023-24 selves despite a number of key absences. But you know how much silly stuff has been happening these last few days?
Here are, in no particular order, the five goofiest things about this past week:
Jayson Tatum getting into the World Cup mood a year early against the Jazz, losing the ball on the break before flicking it back to himself with his heel in a moment that Lionel Messi would’ve been proud of;
Baylor Scheierman (Baylor Scheierman!!!) suddenly becoming a viable rotation player, going 6 of 7 from 3-point range for 20 points against the Nets last week, then hitting three more last night against the Kings because apparently he’s just useful now? And he can throw behind-the-back passes? Sure.
Luke Kornet throwing down a big putback slam against the Blazers and running back down the court while barking. No, I do not mean “barking” as in talking trash, jawing at the opponents; I mean, very literally, barking like a dog, because, I don’t know, reasons;
New Celtics owner Bill Chisholm’s wife Kimberly admitting on live television that she’s obsessed with Joe Mazzulla (same, Kim. You should read the newsletter!)
And lastly, Domantas Sabonis doing his best Zaza Pachulia impression and stepping under Jayson Tatum while the latter was landing after hoisting a 3-pointer, leading Tatum to roll his ankle. This one is not funny, but it was definitely stupid!
The latter is a definite concern for Boston, which had to close out what was still a dominant win over Sacramento after Tatum was forced to leave the game.
It was unfortunate, too, with Tatum playing some excellent basketball. After 30 points, 9 rebounds, and 9 assists against Portland, Tatum already had 25 points on efficient shooting with 8 assists and 7 rebounds (with more than a quarter to play) before injuring his ankle.
The Celtics are closing out the season strong, but their minds will be preoccupied with the status of Tatum, whom Boston of course will need at his best when the games start really counting in just a couple of weeks.
It seems like Tatum may have escaped any serious injury, having left the arena without a boot or crutches Monday.
Jayson Tatum was in visible pain after rolling his ankle on Monday night.
Jayson Tatum was in visible pain after rolling his ankle on Monday night.Sara Nevis/Associated Press
Some more positive things for you: Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis look fully back, which is a scary sight for the rest of the NBA.
Porzingis has averaged 23 points over his last four games while doing his usual bullying of smaller humans at the rim, reminding us all how silly it is that this 7-foot-3 freak of nature with shooting touch is Boston’s third (or sometimes fourth, or maybe fifth if Scheierman keeps this up) option.
Holiday hasn’t brought the same sort of offensive brilliance, but he’s instead doing some incredibly Jrue Holiday-ish things; I think Chad Finn might have this sequence from Holiday against the Jazz projected on his gravestone someday.
Aside from the Tatum injury, this has been, in my opinion, a perfect stretch of basketball. Plenty of wins, plenty of nonsense, the Celtics just trying random things for fun, general assorted silliness — I said last week that this run of games might be a little pointless, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Let’s get into it.
A quick note: Last week we wrote about a private equity firm helping finance the Celtics' sale. The firm boasts assets of $100 billion under its management. We misstated the number in the newsletter. Our apologies!
ICYMI 🗞️
Danny Ainge (right) and Brad Stevens have shaped these Celtics.
Danny Ainge (right) and Brad Stevens have shaped these Celtics.Jessica Rinaldi
He left Boston four years ago, but Danny Ainge’s fingerprints remain on Celtics roster
By Adam Himmelsbach
Former Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge, now in his fourth season as CEO and alternate governor of the Jazz, visited with several members of the Celtics organization when the teams faced each other in Utah on Friday night, a 121-99 Boston win.
Ainge’s fingerprints on Boston’s roster remain. He drafted Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Payton Pritchard, and helped convince Al Horford to sign with the Celtics when Horford’s first stint with the team began in 2016.
“I leaned on Danny a lot once I got here with the Celtics, and him being a former player and his experience and being in positions that we were, he was very helpful for me,” Horford said. “He was always giving me great insight, great perspective on everything, on what to expect.
“One of the things I always appreciated about Danny was he always, with all the pressure that comes with playing as a Celtic, he always kept it very loose for us and it was pretty easy to come in here and do our thing and just try to be the best we can.”
Continue reading
Other top stories we’re watching ...
The Celtics won a sixth straight game on Monday night in Sacramento, with Jayson Tatum appearing to escape any major injury to has ankle. Adam Himmelsbach has the recap.
Joe Mazzulla’s brother, Justin, is making an impression in Utah. Adam Himmelsbach has more from Utah.
Former Boston College star Quinten Post has carved out an unlikely role in the Warriors' rotation. Gary Washburn covers that and more in his Sunday Basketball Notes.
Trivia Tuesday 🧠
Each week, we’ll be asking a piece of Celtics trivia to test your knowledge on the 18-time champions.
Congratulations to Jim Crandall of Waltham, the first person to correctly answer last week’s question. As a refresher, we asked you to name the team the Celtics have faced the most in the playoffs since 2000.
The answer is the Miami Heat, who have been quite the thorn in Boston’s side in the new millennium.
The Celtics and Heat have squared off 42 times across seven different series — that means, on average, each series went to six games — with Miami coming holding a 4-3 edge in those series but the two teams tied with an identical 21-21 record.
Other teams the Celtics have faced quite a bit: the Cavaliers (34 games, six series), 76ers (28 games, five series), Hawks (25 games, four series), and Pacers (25 games, five series).
Anyway, here’s this week’s question: Who holds the Celtics rookie record for 3-pointers in a single season?
Know the answer? Send us an email at courtsense@globe.com, and the first person to write in with the correct answer will get a shoutout when the answer is revealed in next week’s newsletter. Good luck!
This week in basketball 🏀
Big week for touching basketball content.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with Joe Ingles, the gregarious Australian vet best known as a sharpshooter off the bench for the Utah Jazz, I wanted to make sure you all heard about the week he had.
The 37-year-old doesn’t play a ton anymore in what may be his final stop in Minnesota, where Ingles has averaged just six minutes per game and racked up a fair number of “did not play — coach’s decision” designations. That made it all the more surprising when Ingles started on Friday against the Pelicans, his first start since January 2022.
Why? Well, a few days earlier, Ingles’s 8-year-old son, Jacob, had come to see the Timberwolves play the Jazz. Jacob Ingles, who has autism, was able to sit through an entire NBA game — he’d long struggled with the sensory overload of an NBA arena — for the very first time. The problem was that his father didn’t actually get a chance to play in that game.
So on Friday, the last day before Ingles’s wife and children would return to their home in Orlando, Minnesota coach Chris Finch made an announcement: he was inserting Ingles into the starting lineup to make sure Jacob could see his father play in person.
“Sometimes you gotta do the human thing,” Finch said afterward. “We always talk about how all these minutes matter, and (Ingles’s) minutes mattered for another reason.”
Keep in mind: the Timberwolves aren’t just playing out the string on the year. They’re in the thick of a playoff race, trying to climb out of the play-in tournament and into a guaranteed playoff spot as they sit just one game behind the Warriors for sixth in the West. The stakes of every game and every decision are pretty high.
Ingles played six minutes — more than he had over the last 14 games combined — before checking out to a big ovation. The Timberwolves rode the emotion of their coach’s touching call to a 41-point win.
If you’ve got the time (and the subscription), I’d really recommend checking out the Athletic’s story in full on Ingles’s big night. It’s really worth a read.
And big kudos to Chris Finch. It’s always good to have a little faith in humanity restored.
Up next ☘️
The Celtics off Tuesday before continuing their Western Conference road trip against the Suns on Wednesday (10:00 p.m., ESPN/NBC Sports Boston).
See the full Celtics schedule here.
This story first appeared in Court Sense, a biweekly Celtics newsletter from Boston Globe Sports.Click here to join the fun.
Amin Touri can be reached at amin.touri@globe.com.