– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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BOSTON — With all due respect to the Washington Wizards, almost everyone inside TD Garden on Sunday had no interest in the Boston Celtics’ opponent with one notable exception: the one-time heartbeat of the city’s basketball team that came back once again for a warm welcome back to Beantown.
Unfortunately for Boston Celtics fans, Marcus Smart did not have a playing role in Sunday’s contest. And unfortunately for the rest of the Washington Wizards, they still had to carry on with playing the defending NBA champions, and were on the very short end of a very predictable result — a Boston beatdown.
Luke Kornet and Al Horford each had double-doubles as the Celtics cruised to a 124-90 victory over the Wizards on Sunday evening, the Celtics’ 16th win in their last 18 contests. Twenty-four more three-pointers went down for Boston, as Derrick White made five threes on his way to 19 points. Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser each hit four long balls coming off the bench, and the former led all Celtics players with 20 points to go along with seven assists and six rebounds.
Boston made sure to remove any doubt of tonight’s result early in the game, opening up a 16-point lead after one quarter, a 60-39 lead by at halftime and hit 100 points — and a 32-point advantage — by the end of the third. All of this occurred without the services of Jayson Tatum and Kristaps Porzingis, who both sat out the game for the Celtics.
Despite the dominance of their hometown team, the fans let out their biggest cheers for the return of Smart, now a member of the Wizards, who was ruled out of the game by the team but did appear on the court during warmups, which prompted a loud ovation from the Boston fans. Smart sat on the Wizards bench during the game, and, towards the end, was involved in a shouting match with a fan that security stepped in to break up; the fan was removed by security.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Sunday evening’s game, with photos taken by ALOST photo editor Erica Denhoff. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page, Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are 32 pictures in total.
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