BOSTON – Jared Sullinger did a little bit of everything during Boston’s 118-98 drubbing of the Washington Wizards Friday night.
The C’s big man keyed a number of runs, he dominated the paint, scored from inside, outside, mid-range. He slung a trio of outlet passes to his teammates, snagged a steal, tallied a couple of blocked shots, all to the boisterous delight of a packed house at TD Garden.
Just when we thought we had seen it all from Sully, he pulled something out of his bag of tricks that sent fans into a frenzy of appreciation.
Cue the “Bear Outlet Pass.”
With the Celtics up 84-64, five minutes into the third quarter, Sullinger dove on the floor in pursuit of a loose rebound under Washington’s basket. He quickly rolled from his right to his left and launched the ball downcourt – from his backside – to Isaiah Thomas, like a grizzly bear tossing a salmon downstream to its cub.
The pass landed perfectly in Thomas’ paws and he took it to the rack uncontested.
“Honestly, as I was rolling over like a bear, I just kinda saw this little guy open around the free throw line,” Sullinger detailed after the game. “Luckily that roll kind of carried the momentum of the ball and it went flying and Isaiah laid it up.”
It was a new play for fans and Sullinger alike. That’s not one the C’s practice during off days at their training facility in Waltham, Mass.
“Me being this big and weighing about as big as a grizzly bear, that was just natural instinct,” he explained.
Sullinger seemed to be in that natural instinct mode all game long in every aspect of his play, as he loaded up the box score in numerous categories.
His shooting was the most impressive we have seen so far in this young season. He shot 9-of-13 from the field and tied a game-high with three 3-pointers on four attempts.
Two of those treys came directly before his inhuman-like outlet pass to Thomas, when he canned consecutive 3s during a span of 25 seconds.
“He’s really shooting the ball well,” observed Stevens. “He’s always been a good face-up shooter; he’s shooting it probably even better right now, at least in the last couple of weeks.”
As we all know, such consistent shooting was difficult to come by for the C’s as a collective unit during their first couple of weeks of the season, especially during early-game situations.
Prior to Friday’s game, they had a first quarter shooting mark of 32.2 percent through four games.
That prompted the Celtics to hone in on why they were having such difficulty making early shots, and they addressed that concern during Thursday’s practice.
Sullinger said during that session, “We didn’t’ really do five-on-five going against one another. We just really focused on our offensive execution, because we knew our defense was there.”
That practice only lasted 30 minutes, but boy did it have an impact. Boston made 65.4 percent of its first quarter shots Friday night and scored 40 points in the frame. During its previous two games, the C’s had averaged just 14.5 first quarter points.
“That just shows the confidence we had coming from practice on Thursday,” said Sullinger, who finished Friday’s game with a team-high 21 points and eight rebounds. “We played really hard and we really moved the ball well. We executed our stuff tremendously.”
And Sullinger’s execution was spot on every second he was on the floor.
The fact that he was throwing himself on the court with his squad up 20 proves his dedication, and that type of effort certainly rubbed off on the rest of the team throughout the game.
It was the first time this season that the Celtics truly played collectively well as an entire team, and they seemed be feeding off the all-around effort of Sully the grizzly.
Turns out the Boston Bruins aren’t the only team with a big bad bear in town.
