CHARLOTTE – Jared Sullinger and Kelly Olynyk started the night together at center court, and they ended it together on center stage after a 102-89 win over the Charlotte Hornets.
Sullinger returned from back spasms that sidelined him Monday and grabbed 10 rebounds, including three straight down the stretch of the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, Olynyk dropped a team-high 20 points and threw down the most emphatic dunk of his career, a putback slam that had his teammates jumping off of the bench and holding each other back from rushing the court in excitement.
For Olynyk, it was just his second start of the season, and his first alongside Sullinger. The new starting frontcourt combination gives the Celtics versatility, with two big men who can threaten a defense from both inside the paint and outside the arc. Olynyk has been making his mark over the last month mostly with red-hot shooting from 3-point land (47 percent in December entering Wednesday night), but his work in the paint stood out against the Hornets.
“We had a lot of threats at the rim,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens said of his team’s effort to attack the basket. “We were rolling hard (off picks), we were running hard off transition. We were playing with a good purpose to get to the rim, and tried to make plays there when possible. It’s been a huge point of emphasis for us the last two nights.”
But when it came to emphasis, Olynyk’s emphatic dunk was the talk of the locker room after the game.
Olynyk, for his part, said that after the dunk he “had to stop and think about what happened,” but on the court, after Air Canada landed from his brief flight over Charlotte airspace, Olynyk was flexing and mean-mugging for his teammates. Fists down, elbows up and shoulders flared, Olynyk was proving a point: he CAN dunk in a game. And he can do so with force, even if his teammates don’t always believe in his hops that rarely show up outside of Waltham.
“As I’ve heard Evan Turner describe, he’s one of our better sneaky dunkers,” Stevens said. “He does have a little bit of lift that he brings out a couple of times a month.”
The dunk was the highlight of a 23-10 Boston run that started the third quarter and helped the Celtics bounce back from a lethargic second quarter in which they did not score a field goal over the last 7:27 of the half. The slam gave the Celtics a 15-point lead that would eventually grow to 20, and while the Hornets closed to within six points late in the fourth, the outcome was never really in doubt.
After the game, spirits were high as the Celtics were ready to head home for the holidays. Side by side, Sullinger and Olynyk did a rare tag-team postgame press conference in the visitor’s locker room before flying back to Boston. Their postgame improv proved to be an early Christmas comedy gift.
“I just flew in from the weak side,” Olynyk said of his dunk, to which Sullinger replied, “Hell of a miss by me.”
“Was that you who missed it?” Olynyk asked.
“Hell of a miss,” Sullinger repeated.
“Yeah, passed it right off the rim,” Olynyk deadpanned.
After chuckles from the media and a “take your hat off, hippie!” that was chirped to Olynyk from the peanut gallery, the 7-footer laughed and said, “I just went up and tried to get it.”
Told about Stevens’ revelation about him being the best sneaky dunker on the team, Olynyk dryly added, “I keep telling these guys, the bounce is real.”
“He’s always dunking in practice, and we always joke about how he never dunks in a game. It was a great dunk, a great highlight,” Avery Bradley said, adding that the play would “probably be No. 3 on ESPN.”
And as for the posing when he landed?
“When you dunk like that, you’ve gotta stop the game,” Sullinger said. “That was a hell of a stop of the game by KO. He dunked it and posed and looked in the crowd. I don’t know who you were staring at – whoever you were staring at was scared – but that was a hell of a pose.”
The dunk, the pose and the victory were the perfect gifts for the Celtics as they head into the holiday.
