{"id":496438,"date":"2026-01-06T12:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T12:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/496438\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T12:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T12:11:09","slug":"boston-celtics-overcome-underrated-test-in-win-over-bulls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/496438\/","title":{"rendered":"Boston Celtics overcome underrated test in win over Bulls"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOSTON \u2014 Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla joked that he didn\u2019t exactly love how his team looked in the first half of their win over the Bulls<\/a>. The game was sloppy as made shots were hard to come by for both teams. But the Celtics held a 21-point halftime lead because they played hard with effort.<\/p>\n

The Celtics passed an underrated test Monday coming off their five-game road trip. After beating the Clippers<\/a> on Saturday, the Celtics elected to stay the night in warm Los Angeles. So, they flew home cross-country Sunday<\/a>. That\u2019s been a problem area for the C\u2019s in past seasons: the first home game after a long road trip. From Mazzulla\u2019s perspective, the Celtics didn\u2019t have any issue with the controllable parts of the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was pleased with how they played,\u201d Mazzulla said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t look very good out there, but they played hard. I was not pleased with how they looked, but I was pleased with how they tried and how they played and how they competed, but they looked relatively tired.\u201d<\/p>\n

A big part of why the Celtics beat up on the Bulls was due to their effort. The C\u2019s shot just 35.7% from the field in the first half compared to 31.7% for the Bulls. But Boston had a 14-2 edge in second-chance points, along with a 15-6 advantage in points off turnovers. Plus, the Bulls shot just 17.9% on 3-pointers in the first half as the Celtics built up a big lead.<\/p>\n

The Celtics were far from perfect, but nights like Monday happen over the course of 82 games. It\u2019s impossible to be at perfect condition considering the grind of the schedule. But the C\u2019s still came out and played hard, which Mazzulla praised as he called them a mature team. Most importantly, they got the win to get to 23-12, which is good for second place in the East.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good win, especially coming off a long flight and the long road trip,\u201d Payton Pritchard said. \u201cI didn\u2019t think the last few years we\u2019d been very successful off those, but it\u2019s definitely hard. Very jet-lagged and tired, so just mentally get through it and figure out how to win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON \u2014 Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla joked that he didn\u2019t exactly love how his team looked in the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":496439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[1260,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-496438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115848091115663892","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}