BOSTON — TD Garden was approved for a construction permit on Wednesday night. Unfortunately for the Boston Celtics, they were the ones getting bulldozed.
The red-hot Charlotte Hornets began the game with a LaMelo Ball back screen that led to a Moussa Diabate dunk. The jam echoed throughout the entire arena, and it was a sign of what was to come.
For the remainder of the first half, Charlotte absolutely decimated the Celtics.
Kon Knueppel was flying off screens and draining threes. Brandon Miller was attacking Baylor Scheierman off the dribble, making tough shot after tough shot. Anyone who touched the rock for Charlotte was liable to make a shot.
Meanwhile, the Celtics couldn't buy a bucket. Nikola Vucevic whiffed every single layup he took. Jaylen Brown did, too. The only guy who found any semblance of a rhythm for the Celtics was Derrick White.
Boston kept it close in the first half thanks to some impressive offensive rebounding (Hugo Gonzalez, in particular, was a monster on the glass), but it wasn't nearly enough.
The Celtics' missed layups allowed the Hornets to run in transition (11 fastbreak points in the first half), but more importantly, they just prevented the Celtics from putting up a reasonable point total.
By the end of the first half, Charlotte was up 64-43.
There were some fleeting signs of life in the third quarter. White went on a personal scoring run that forced a Charles Lee timeout. Brown had a big-time poster dunk that was followed by a Scheierman three. But every time Boston got the TD Garden crowd flowing, the Hornets snuffed out the momentum.
In the final few minutes of the third, Brown missed a layup that hung on the rim for over three seconds, and not long after, Coby White ran the floor for an and-one layup. It was crushing.
Nothing went down for Boston. They got a pair of wide-open triples to start the fourth (one for Scheierman and one for Gonzalez), but neither fell. It painted the perfect picture of the evening.
That was that. The walls continued to crumble around the Celtics for the rest of the game, as the Hornets surged to a blowout victory in what was easily one of Boston's worst performances of the season.
Big winner: It's official: White has refound his shot.
The offensive woes that plagued White earlier in the season are no longer. He was the only Celtic to put up respectable shooting numbers on Wednesday night, and even his splits were fueled by an impressive third quarter.
Still, seeing him gain some momentum heading into the final months of the season is a great sign.
Ouch, tough one: The entire game? Maybe?
Boston failed to guard the
