Momentum? What momentum?
Tobias Harris swished home a 3-pointer after his Orlando Magic ran the clock down at the end of the third quarter. That bucket brought Orlando to within seven, and it appeared that the Magic were set up to make a run at the start of the fourth quarter.
The problem, at least for the visitors, was that they forgot to run the clock all the way down.
Harris stroked his trey with 5.8 seconds left, giving Boston a chance to get one more shot off. It did just that, as Evan Turner went coast-to-coast.
Turner caught an inbound pass and used his nifty handles to go right around a double-team along the sideline in the backcourt. After he beat that double-team, he and his C’s had numbers.
The versatile forward drove straight to the bucket and took off from just inside the right elbow, tossing up a beautiful floater with his right hand. His shot fell through the net just as the buzzer sounded, pushing Boston back on top by nine and squashing any momentum Harris’ 3 had briefly built.
And then Kelly Olynyk went off.
Olynyk opened the final quarter with a 3-pointer of his own, just 13 seconds into the frame. He would go on to score nine points over the first 3:20 of the quarter. His buckets, combined with a deuce from Avery Bradley, pushed the Celtics ahead by 16 with 8:40 left in the game.
Boston ran away from that point on. It would go on to pull ahead by 27 points, sending the Friday-night Celtics crowd into a frenzy, and would eventually hold on for a 113-94 victory.
Jared Sullinger didn’t play a whole lot Friday night. But when he did, he was fantastic.
Boston’s starting center did what starting centers are supposed to do: log a double-double. He dropped in 11 points and grabbed a game-high 11 rebounds on the night, notching his 14th double-double of the season.
How impressive is that last stat? The next-highest double-double total on Boston’s roster is five, logged by Isaiah Thomas.
What’s most impressive is that Sullinger did a double-double’s worth of work in only 21 minutes of action, and he did so against an opposing center in Nikola Vucevic who is tied for the 10th-highest double-double total (20) in the entire NBA.
That’s quick work and that’s efficient work. Impressive night by No. 7.
Brad Stevens on his second unit, led by the likes of Evan Turner, Marcus Smart, Kelly Olynyk and Jonas Jerebko.
