Jayson Tatum starred as the Boston Celtics took a 2-0 series lead over the Atlanta Hawks in the NBA playoffs on Tuesday, while Darius Garland delivered a 32-point gem in Cleveland’s series-leveling rout of the New York Knicks.
Tatum finished with 29 points as the second-seeded Celtics overcame a slow start to dominate the seventh-seeded Hawks for a 119-106 victory at Bos-ton’s TD Garden.
“Playoffs are all about adjustments, trying to move on from game to game, seeing what you can do better — and I think we played better,” Tatum said after the win.
“We want to be peaking at this time of year. Everybody’s healthy, playing the right way, playing really well — but we’ve got another level we can go to hopefully.”
Atlanta jumped out to a 22-11 lead in the first quarter before Boston’s offense clicked to give the Celtics a 28-25 lead heading into the second quarter.
Once in front, the Celtics never relinquished the advantage, opening up a 61-49 half-time lead and extending that to 20 points midway through the third quarter as Boston’s defense shut down Atlanta’s scoring.
Atlanta rallied to get within eight points of the Celtics in the fourth quarter, but Boston never looked like squandering their lead down the stretch and pulled away convincingly to ensure they will take a 2-0 advantage into game three in Atlanta on Friday.
Tatum finished with 29 points including five three-pointers, while Derrick White provided offen-sive support with 26 points and Jaylen Brown added 18 points.
Dejounte Murray led Atlanta’s scorers with 29 points while Trae Young finished with 24. “They won, we lost — we’ve just got to be better,” Atlanta playmaker Young said after the defeat.—APP
