This didn’t look like it was going to be much of a game in the first half. He shot 0-for-7 on threes and made one basket in the game.
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Celtic’s coach Brad Stevens has some hard decisions to make now with Bradley assumedly out of the lineup.
The Atlanta Hawks head into the playoffs facing much lower expectations than a year ago. Celtics PG Isaiah Thomas hit a clutch 3-pointer to cut the lead to one with.
“A hamstring is nothing to play with”, Jae Crowder said Saturday night to MassLive. “Everybody’s game’s different. Smart, what makes him great is that he’s a run-through-the-wall type of guy”. According to NBA.com/Stats, the Celtics tallied an offensive rating of 95.9 points per 100 possessions in the contest, a mark well below their season average of 103.9 points per 100 possessions. Smart finished with 15 points and five rebounds on 3-6 shooting from three-point range, which was a pleasant surprise considering he shot 25 percent from distance in the regular season. Kent Bazemore had 23 points and eight rebounds. That includes his rookie season, when the Hawks pushed the No. 1-seeded Celtics to a Game 7 in a first-round series en route to Boston winning the title 2008 National Basketball Association title.
However, they once again rallied and took an 83-81 lead in the fourth quarter before Atlanta was able to regroup and win the game, 102-101. “The work in the first half, getting that lead really gave us some room for error”. Nobody on the team knocked down more catch-and-shoot jumpers, according to * a href=”http://stats.nba.com/tracking/#!/player/catchshoot/?CF=TEAM_ABBREVIATION*E*bos&sort=CATCH_SHOOT_FGA&dir=1″ target=”_blank” *NBA.com’s player tracking data. “They all felt good and didn’t go in; hopefully they go in for Game 2”. He didn’t have the night he wanted to have, but that’s what teammates are for. “And it definitely hurts our team from the standpoint that we lost another guy that brings it every night, and everybody else has to step up now”. Kyle as well. They’re still going to demand the attention they deserve. “So it’s going to have to be a team effort from top to bottom”. The Celtics guard did not return to the game.
Hardaway endured a rocky first season with the Hawks, playing only four of the team’s first 35 games and even doing several stints in the D-League, but he finally earned Budenholzer’s confidence down the stretch.
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The teams meet in the finale of the four-game series on Monday in Boston’s annual Patriots’ Day game, which is scheduled for an 11:05 a.m. EDT start and coincides with the running of the Boston Marathon. “So I would say very unlikely the rest of the series”. Their bigs are very athletic. If they can continue to punish the Celtics with a national audience watching, they will soon get the respect they deserve. “We’re happy with our [shooting guards] and our [small forwards] with how we’ve been rotating, and we’ve been a little bit bigger”. Portland has two former Clippers in small forward Al-Farouq Aminu and backup center Chris Kaman. “We have to better than we were in the second half”.
