– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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WASHINGTON — On their way to making more definitive statements on the court and ensuring they don’t rest on last year’s laurels, the Boston Celtics also took some time out to teach some young kids a lesson in championship basketball on Thursday.
Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum combined for 52 points in leading the Celtics to an easy 122-102 victory over the Washington Wizards inside Capital One Arena on Thursday evening. The margin of victory was not as large as the season-opening 132-109 win over the New York Knicks during the banner-raising ceremony on Tuesday, but Boston once again used a couple of big runs midway through the game to turn most of the second half into another glorified scrimmage.
The Wizards started two of their three first-round draft picks in their season opener, second-overall selection Alex Sarr and Bub Carrington, and they joined last year’s first-round selection, Bilal Coulibaly, to comprise a starting lineup in which 60 percent of it featured players aged 20 or younger.
One of the two veteran starters, 25-year-old Jordan Poole, scored 20 of his 26 points before halftime as Washington kept up with the defending champs as the Wizards found themselves down only one, 33-32, at the end of the first quarter. Boston responded right before the intermission, ending the first half on a 10-1 run to build its largest lead up to that point, 64-54. Tatum made a couple of threes during that run while assisting on a couple of layups from Brown to complete the scoring run.
The Celtics then outscored Washington 34-19 to put the competitive nature of the game to bed, with all Boston’s starters on the bench for good by the 8:34 mark of the fourth quarter.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Thursday evening’s game, with photos taken by ALOST staff photographer Rodney Pierce. 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 41 pictures in total.
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