BOSTON – With Patrick Beverley staring him down on a fast break, Boston guard Marcus Smart made an unconventional choice during the third quarter of Boston's 134-112 win over the Timberwolves.
Instead of trying to shoot it or try a bounce pass to a trailing Jaylen Brown, Smart tried another option — throwing the ball off the backboard.
Smart's pass hit Brown mid-jump and Brown threw the alley-oop down without any trouble at all for a 22-point Celtics lead.
Over the past five days, the Wolves ran into the team that has played the best in the NBA over the entire season, Phoenix, and the team that has played the best of late, Boston.
The Wolves have never looked as helpless in games after the All-Star break as they have facing those two teams, with Boston continuing its rapid ascension up the Eastern Conference standings with an easy win Sunday.
Jayson Tatum had 34 points while Brown had 31. The Wolves struggled early against the league's No. 1 defense and by the time anyone outside of Karl-Anthony Towns got it going on that end of the floor, the Celtics were already up by more than 20.
The Celtics put on a show, as Smart and Brown did, but they also did the grunt work, namely rebounding and defending. The Celtics outrebounded Minnesota 45-30 and had 19 second-chance points.
The Wolves never led as Anthony Edwards scored 24 and Karl-Anthony Towns 19. D'Angelo Russell finished 1-for-6 with four points.
Towns kept the Wolves around in the first quarter, accounting for 17 of the Wolves' 30 points with 12 points of his own and five more points created on two assists. With Towns dominating his matchups early, the Wolves stayed within 34-30 by the end of the first quarter.
The second is when the Celtics machine churned the Wolves and spit them out. Naz Reid, who was spelling Towns, picked up three fouls and a technical in less than four minutes.
Boston opened the second on a 17-4 run as Peyton Pritchard caught fire from deep in making his first three three-pointers.
The Wolves could get little going on offense outside of Towns. The Celtics bullied them all over the floor and outrebounded them 29-16 in the first half. That included seven offensive rebounds the Celtics turned into 15 second-chance points. Only Jaylen Nowell was able to score for the Wolves in the second, as he had 11 first-half points. He finished with 13.
Anthony Edwards and D'Angelo had quiet first halves on the offensive end of the floor and were a combined 2-for-9 in the first half.
Boston kept pushing its lead, which grew to as much as 25 before Patrick Beverley ended the half with a hook shot to make it 72-49 Boston at the half.
Edwards caught fire in the third quarter as he hit four threes. But even with that outburst the Wolves never got closer than 17 in the third. Tatum answered Edwards' four threes with three of his own, including a four-point play near the end of the quarter.
The Wolves had no answer.
