By Tennie Sumague
EBC New York Bureau
BOSTON (Eagle News) — In the eyes of Boston Celtics fans and to all NBA fans worldwide, Kyrie Irving is the team’s Most Valuable Player, but in Thursday night’s game against the Houston Rockets, that honor belonged to teammates Al Horford and Marcus Smart.
Horford scored the game’s winning basket with 3.7 seconds left as Smart’s defense overwhelmed James Harden in the final seconds to help the Celtics stun the Rockets 99-98 at TD Boston Garden.
The winning basket was the only lead of the night for the Celtics, who overcame a 26-point deficit. Their impressive comeback victory matches the Golden State Warriors for the largest rally in the NBA this season. Boston held the Rockets to just 25% shooting and 36 points within the final two quarters.
Houston opened the game on a 12-0 run and held Boston to 12 first quarter points to build a 20-point lead. They took advantage of the Celtics’ struggles to end the first half with a whopping 62-38 lead.
The Rockets continued to dominate early in the second half but the Celtics crept back into the game with a 21-7 run to cut the deficit to nine. Irving earned 12-point in the third quarter and the score was 78-69.
The final minutes got fans into a frenzy as the Celtics inched closer to tie the game at 92 a piece. The Rockets went up by one but Harden was called for an offensive foul that set up the game winning basket by Horford which followed to another offensive foul from the All-Star guard.
The victory snapped the Celtics three-game home skid and extended the Rockets losing streak to four after winning 14 straight games.
“Our crowd tonight was unbelievable and at least for me what kept driving me was that we have to do this for our fans, we just got to push through it,” said Horford. “I just feel like that really drove us because you’re looking going into halftime and you can make excuses; the back to back [games against Charlotte and Houston], you’re tired. You just think about putting on a good show for the fans and see what we do, ourselves, as a group. I’m just proud that we were able to rally together and it was a good win for us.”
Irving led the Celtics with 26 points, who scored 20+points in 10 consecutive games. Jayson Tatum posted 18 points on 5-of-11 shooting and Terry Rozier III added 13 points off the bench, 11 coming in the second half.
“We just didn’t stop believing. We had a special talk at halftime,” Rozier said about the team’s comeback. “We had a talk right before halftime, Kyrie brought everybody in. We didn’t stop believing and we just felt our fans energy, followed each other’s energy and [Marcus] Smart got us going and we picked it up from there and we didn’t look back.”
The Rockets were held to less than 100 points for only the third time this season and played without their All-Star point guard Chris Paul, who missed his third straight game with a left adductor strain injury.
Harden had another incredible game with 34 points and 10 assists for the Rockets and Eric Gordon, who filled in for Paul in the starting rotation scored 24 points.
“They are a good team,” said Harden said about the Celtics. “They are going to make shots, they’re going to make runs, especially because they are at home. We just didn’t execute when we needed to. There was a lot of no calls that needed to be called because it changed the dynamic of the game.”
(Eagle News Service)
