Marc D'Amico

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The Celtics may have played a basketball game Tuesday night, but they spent most of it throwing – and landing – knockout punches.

Boston led by 11 after one quarter and doubled that lead at halftime. However, the Bulls scored five straight points early on in the third quarter to claw to within 16 while building up their strongest wave of momentum of the night.

That’s when Boston landed its final punch of the night to knock the Bulls out for good.

The Celtics responded with a flurry of nine straight points, and an 18-4 run overall, to blow their lead open to 30 points with 4:44 left in the quarter. Suffice to say, this one was over at that very moment.

The run was due in large part to the services of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. During the four-minute spurt, Tatum scored five of the run’s first seven points, and eight of the 18 overall. Meanwhile, Browns cored six of the 18 points, including the final two on a fast break layup to push the lead to 30 points.

The lead grew to as many as 35 points during the fourth quarter as the Celtics coasted to a 27-point victory. That margin was enough to punch their improbable ticket into the In-Season Tournament’s Quarterfinals. Their point differential secured a win amid a three-way tie situation with Orlando and Brooklyn for the winner of Group C, and as such, they advance to the knockout stage.

Jaylen Brown put forth arguably his best all-around game of the season Tuesday night against Chicago. Not only did he lead the game with 30 points, but he also piled up eight rebounds to go along with six assists and a blocked shot.

That’s a whole lot of impact across the board in 35 minutes of action.

Brown canned 12 of his 23 shots from the field to account for his 30 points. He scored nine points during the first quarter, seven during the second, 10 during the third, and four during the fourth. &nbsp;

“I think we all kinda knew, I mean a little bit, of what we needed to go and do. This probably might be the best one, sure."

– Derrick White on if this was the most exciting 27-point win of his career, given the In-Season Tournament ramifications

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Keys to the Game: Celtics 124, Bulls 97

Boston’s defense took control during crunch time to lead the Celtics to their league-leading 13th win of the season.

Atlanta scored its 101st point of the game with 3:50 to go to pull within nine points. The Hawks didn’t score again until the 1:03 mark, on a driving layup by Dejounte Murray, and those were the only two points they scored over the final 3:49 of the night.

The Celtics didn’t score much, either, but they didn’t need to. They already led by nine following Murray’s layup, and Jayson Tatum’s three points during crunch time took Boston’s point total to 113 for a 10-point win.

All told, Boston limited the Hawks to 1-for-4 shooting during the final 3:49 while also forcing three turnovers. That lockdown defense was all the C’s needed to close out the win.

Derrick White dished out a season-best 11 assists Sunday night while compiling the first double-double of his season. His 15 points accounted for the other half of the double-double during Boston’s 10-point win.

White’s 11 assists were four more than any other player totaled in the game. They were also nearly half of Boston’s team total of 24 helpers. His previous high for assists this season was eight.

White shot 5-for-7 from inside the arc to go along with a 5-for-5 effort from the free-throw line to account for his 15 points. He also led the game in steals with three, while contributing four boards.

No player came anywhere close to White’s incredible plus/minus rating of plus-29. The next-best mark was plus-17 by Al Horford. Clearly, the team was far better with him on the court than it was with him off the court during the victory.

“The margins. So we won the shot margin, we won the free throws, we won the turnovers, we won the offensive rebounds. So those are the things we have to fight to do all the time. It's easier said than done, but that's the recipe for winning."

– Joe Mazzulla on winning by 10 despite shooting only 27.7 percent from long distance

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Keys to the Game: Celtics 113, Hawks 103

Have you heard about Beneath the Banners? If ya haven’t, ya should.

Beneath the Banners, presented by New Balance, is the Boston Celtics’ all-access series that brings fans as close to the team’s daily ongoings as they’ll ever get – unless they somehow make the team, I guess?

Seriously, this is unprecedented access that no other outlet can provide. Not ESPN. Not NBC Sports Boston. No one.

Think offseason workouts with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown in Los Angeles. Think Joe Mazzulla addressing the team in the locker room following big wins and losses. Think car rides to practices and games with members of the team.

Just think about being everywhere with the team, all the time.

This season’s first episode dropped in late-October and featured exclusive War Room access from Draft night, the car ride from the airport with Kristaps Porzingis upon his arrival in Boston, and footage from Tatum’s and Brown’s summer workouts together in Los Angeles, among much, much more. Intrigued? Watch it here.

Now as for the second episode? It just dropped today, and we’re gonna give you the run down of its highlights below. If you feel like skipping the words? Go ahead and watch it here.

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This episode takes us from Media Day through the team’s first game of the season at TD Garden. We’re talking exclusive training camp footage where you can hear Joe Mazzulla coaching the team up, as well as plenty of footage of Paul Pierce supporting the team at camp.

One of the must-watch segments of the episode features new assistant coach Sam Cassell. The content team slapped a mic on Cassell during practice, so you get to listen to his coaching style and delivery to the players. There’s one moment when he’s working with Payton Pritchard and brings up a simple tactic Dwyane Wade used to use to gain an advantage – a move that helped Wade throughout his Hall-of-Fame career and one that could help Pritchard moving forward.

It’s those simple teachings that you’d just never know about without watching Beneath the Banners.

Next up, the episode takes viewers into Opening Night in New York, where the Celtics held off the Knicks during crunch time for a 108-104 win. As the team celebrated in the locker room after the W, a camera caught Mazzulla telling the team, “When we’re the tougher team and we execute, it’s a game-changer. We need games like that in order to grow.”

When was the last time you rode in a car with Brad Stevens? Never? Say no more. We got you.

The next segment is two straight minutes of cutups of Stevens addressing the camera as he drives to the Auerbach Center. He comments on everything from the differences between being the president of basketball operations and being the head coach, to his workload when trying to pull off a trade for the likes of Jrue Holiday, to what he’s paying attention to from a macro perspective.

“You do have times where it’s, sit back and really evaluate at a higher level, to think about the team,” Stevens shared. “Where [the team is] going to be in a few months, where it’s going to be in a few years, where it’s going to be (long term), and where we want to go.”

Stevens has been crushing it in his role of overseeing the team’s basketball operations and building the roster. He put together what is widely considered to be the best top-six rotation in the league, with Derrick White, Holiday, Brown, Tatum, Porzingis and Al Horford combining forces.

That crew has operated at a high level early in the season, and their home opener against Miami was one of the best examples. That matchup is where the episode closes out, showcasing Derrick White’s chase-down block of Jimmy Butler to help the C’s close out a 119-111 win – a partial exorcism of their demons from last season’s Eastern Conference Finals loss to the Heat.

One of the behind-the-scenes cameras caught Brown entering the locker room after the emotional win.

“Way to fight fellas! Way to fight!” he said. “Won’t back down from nobody … We got some dogs in here.”

So what are you waiting for? Do yourself a favor and go watch it now!

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Beneath the Banners Takes Viewers Inside Training Camp and Opening Night

There’s an important characteristic that the Boston Celtics have shown to possess this season. It’s their ability to prevent poor play from one game from snowballing into the next.

The odds are that this characteristic will show up yet again Sunday evening, when Boston plays host to the Atlanta Hawks at 6 p.m. at TD Garden.

The Celtics are in need of a bounce-back performance following Friday afternoon’s 113-96 loss to the Magic. Boston’s second-half performance in Orlando, after leading by eight at the half, was arguably its worst half of the season. The team was out-hustled and out-worked, all while shooting just 27.8 percent from the field and 13.3 percent from beyond the arc. It played with frustrated body language and grabbed just 11 total rebounds during the second half – an alarmingly low number.

But this isn’t the first time the Celtics have had an underwhelming quarter, half or game this season, and it certainly won’t be their last. The team is now 20 percent of the way through the season, and while it has had consecutive poor shooting nights, it has yet to have consecutive games during which it has looked disconnected, uninspired or outmatched.

The Celtics have done a great job of playing with short memories, moving on, and bouncing back from underwhelming stretches of play. Their ability to do so may be the biggest reason why they’ve lost consecutive games only once this season.

That instance occurred back on Nov. 6 and Nov. 8, when Boston first fell to the Timberwolves in overtime in Minnesota, and then fell two nights later to the 76ers in Philadelphia. Those two opposing teams are currently a combined 21-8 on the season, and the Celtics lost those games by a combined eight points. So it’s not as if they played at a low level during each of those contests.

Instead, Boston struggled to put the ball through the basket during those games, shooting a combined 39.3 percent from the field. They also had brief stretches of lost rhythm during those contests. Yet the Celtics still played well enough in other major facets of the game to compete at a high level with two of the top teams in the league. Then, two nights after the loss to Philadelphia, Boston bounced back with a 14-point win over Brooklyn.

The team’s other loss this season, prior to Friday afternoon, came Nov. 20 in Charlotte. The Celtics would be the first to admit that they played down to their opponent on that night. Yet again, Boston acknowledged the reality of its defeat and rinsed itself clean of poor habits before returning to the win column in resounding fashion two nights later against the vaunted Milwaukee Bucks, no less, on national television.

The bottom line here is that the Celtics haven’t put forth consecutive underwhelming performances all season. There’s no reason to expect that to change now.

Friday’s loss was ugly. There’s no sugarcoating it. The Celtics failed to match Orlando’s levels of intensity, physicality, teamwork and execution.

The evidence of 20 percent of this season indicates that fans and Boston’s opponent will see a much different Celtics team – the one that has put the NBA on notice this season – when it returns to the court Sunday night against Atlanta.

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Boston's Tendency To Bounce Back Will Be Put to Test Sunday Night

It’s difficult to win an NBA game when you give up a 17-0 run. The Boston Celtics learned that lesson Friday afternoon in Orlando.

Boston surrendered a 17-0 run by the Magic in the blink of an eye midway through the third quarter. That run completely flipped the outlook of the game, and in a span of just four minutes and 10 seconds.

That’s the amount of time it took for Orlando to turn a 12-point deficit into a five-point lead. It was Paolo Banchero’s 3-pointer at the 5:31 mark of the third that pushed the Magic ahead 67-62, and they controlled the game from there on out.

The most important stretch of Orlando’s run was the very start of it. The Magic scored 11 points in just 92 seconds of play to slice their 12-point deficit down to one. Jalen Suggs canned two 3-pointers during the surge, while Franz Wagner also hit one to go along with a transition layup.

Boston couldn’t stop the bleeding from there, as Gary Harris put home a free throw to tie the game before Goga Bitadze slammed home a wide-open dunk and Banchero hit his 3-pointer to make it a five-point game.

During the run, the Celtics shot 0-for-7 from the field while committing one turnover and one transition take foul.

Orlando led for all but 34 seconds of the remainder of the contest before closing out a 113-96 win.

Luke Kornet answered the call when the undermanned Celtics needed him to provide quality minutes in Orlando. Kornet responded with his best performance of the season, during which he set four new season highs and tied one more.

The first season high was in the scoring column, where the big man tallied 12 points. He needed just six shot attempts to score those points, as he shot 5-for-6 from the field and made both of his free throws. Kornet’s two blocked shots also set a new season high. His two steals tied his Nov. 6 effort against Minnesota for his season-high total in that category.

Boston needed this effort after Kristaps Porzingis went down midway through the third quarter with a left calf strain. Porzingis did not return, which led to Kornet tallying a season-high 25 minutes of action.

“Outside of those two bad stretches, we played good basketball, but it's not enough against a team like this - a good team. So those two stretches cost us."

– Joe Mazzulla on Orlando's 17-0 run during the third quarter, and its 9-0 run during the second quarter

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Keys to the Game: Magic 113, Celtics 96

It's as simple as this for the Boston Celtics: win this afternoon in Orlando, and you're into the quarterfinals of the NBA's inaugural In-Season Tournament as the winner of Group C.

The reason Boston can clinch its berth is because a victory over the Magic would leave three other Group C members - Orlando, Chicago and Toronto - all with at least two losses. The Celtics already own the head-to-head tie-breaker with the only other team that could hypothetically tie the Celtics in this scenario, Brooklyn, thanks to a 14-point win back on Nov. 10.

Now, things get a bit more questionable should the Celtics drop this game. Such a scenario would push Orlando to the top of Group C with a 3-1 record. However, the Magic will be done with their IST Group Play games at that point, while Boston and Brooklyn would have one remaining game to attempt to tie Orlando with a 3-1 record.

This is where point differential would come into play. If all three teams finish with a 3-1 record, point differential would decide the group's winner. So winning by a lot matters!

Now, if the Celtics lose today and only Boston and Orlando finish with a 3-1 record, Orlando would win the group based upon the head-to-head win. If the Celtics lose today and only Brooklyn and Orlando finish with a 3-1 record, Brooklyn would win the group based on its head-to-head win over the Magic.

If there is a 3-1 team that does not win the group, it would need to hope that its point differential is enough to clinch one of the two Wild Card spots in the East.

So, in the end, the Celtics know that if they win, they win Group C. If they lose, they're going to need either a three-way tie with Brooklyn and Orlando and have the best point differential of the three teams, or they'll need to win a Wild Card spot via point differential. That's the long and the short of it.

So buckle up for the most important IST game the Celtics or the Magic have ever played! And in the meantime, here are the current Group C standings:

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In-Season Tournament Standings Ahead of Matchup with Orlando

The most anticipated game of the NBA season thus far turned out not to be much of a game at all.

The Boston Celtics led the Milwaukee Bucks by double-digits for nearly the entirety of the matchup and pulled ahead by 21 points on multiple occasions. There was one brief moment, however, when things could have gone sideways for Boston.

That moment arrived early in the second half, when the Bucks rattled off 6-0 run to open up the third quarter to claw to within eight points. Rather than crumbling under the pressure of potentially blowing a lead, the Celtics responded with back-to-back 3-pointers to regain complete control of the game.

The first triple came off the hands of Jayson Tatum from straight away. He and Kristaps Porzingis ran a pick-and-roll at the top of the arc, and Tatum’s defender, Khris Middleton, inexplicably went under the screen, leaving Tatum wide open for the 3 to push Boston ahead by 11.

The next 3-pointer arrived 32 seconds later from the other Jay – Jaylen Brown – off an inbound pass. Tatum was the assist man as he found Brown open on the right wing as Brown came off another screen by Porzingis. Brown caught the pass and pulled up for a pure jumper from long distance to give the C’s a 73-59 lead with 9:53 left in the third quarter.

Boston controlled the remainder of the night until the Milwaukee made a futile run during the last two minutes. The final tally might say 119-116, but this game was not nearly as competitive as that score suggests. This was a dominant win by the Celtics.

Jaylen Brown responded to the noise and put forth an excellent offensive performance Wednesday night against the Milwaukee Bucks.

Two nights after shooting just 5-for-17 from the field during a loss to Charlotte, Brown bounced back with a team-best 26 points against Milwaukee. He shot 10-for-16 on the night, meaning he made five more shots than he did Monday, while attempting one fewer. That’s a pretty solid flip of the script.

On top of the scoring, Brown also set a new season high in assists with eight. He did so while committing just one turnover for a stellar assist-to-turnover ratio of 8-to-1. Brown added two rebounds and a steal to round out his box score.

“It’s an automatic connection right now."

–&nbsp;Jaylen Brown on his connection with Kristaps Porzingis

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Keys to the Game: Celtics 119, Bucks 116

The Celtics played with fire and got burned Monday night in Charlotte.

They had a chance to ice the game at the free-throw line with 10.7 seconds left in regulation but failed to do so. They had a chance to tie the game at the free-throw line with 5.2 seconds left in overtime but failed to do so.

Give any team, even a 3-9 team like the Hornets, that many chances, and the opponent is bound to capitalize. That’s what Charlotte did by taking home a 121-118 overtime win.

Jrue Holiday went to the line with 10.7 seconds left in regulation as the Celtics led by two. One make would’ve forced Charlotte into a 3-point attempt on its next possession. Two makes would have almost certainly sealed the game.

Unfortunately, Holiday came up empty on both attempts.

Seconds later, following a timeout, LaMelo Ball sent the game to overtime by putting home a driving layup with 7.2 seconds left. Boston failed to score on the final possession to regulation.

Late in the extra session, with Boston trailing by three, Jayson Tatum was fouled on a 3-point attempt with 5.2 seconds left. He needed to make all three attempts to potentially force another overtime. He calmly made the first. Then he made the second. The third, however, rimmed out.

Charlotte grabbed the rebound and then did what Boston couldn’t do – it iced the game at the free-throw line when Gordon Hayward dropped two freebies through the net with 0.8 seconds left to seal a three-point win.

Without the services of both Derrick White and Al Horford, the Celtics needed Payton Pritchard to step up Monday night in Charlotte. Without a strong performance from the reserve guard, Boston would have had a tough time keeping up with the Hornets on the second night of a back-to-back.

Pritchard delivered on his team’s need by scoring a season-high 21 points off the bench on 8-for-14 shooting. He also connected on five of his eight 3-pointers on the night.

On top of the scoring, the speedy and skilled guard also tallied six rebounds, three assists and two steals on the night during 33 minutes of action. Those two steals tied four other players for the game’s top mark.

Boston outscored Charlotte by 18 points while Pritchard was on the floor.

“There's little things that go into keeping leads in this league. There's only so many possessions. You can't take plays off. And I thought we just gave up transition (scoring). We gave up offensive rebounds."