By DJ Harding –
Coming off a horrible 150-117 loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder on the 2nd game of their Road Trip out West. The Celtics and Jayson Tatum faced off against fellow MVP Candidate Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks. A Nationally Televised game being the first part of a Thursday Night Double Header on TNT. The Question was of the 2 MVP candidates who would come to play. The Celtics have been in a slump as of late going into the game after starting off 21-5 the last 12 games went not as well and have gone 5-7 since then.
Despite still being 1st in the East at 26-12 fans have Tatum at 4th in all star voting and when it comes to Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid, and Jayson Tatum most people have him ranked 4th and projected not to start the All-star game. So people don’t see Boston as a big threat.
Luka Doncic on the other hand is coming on the stretch of the lifetime while the Mavericks are on a 7 game winning streak. Doncic had 3 50 plus point games within 5 games. One of those games Doncic recorded the first 60 point 20 rebound 10 assist triple double in NBA history.
The first quarter itself was a slow start scoring wise for tatum only having 4 points in the first Doncic had 11. But where tatum didn’t score his team did with a group effort as Boston led after the 1st with a 29 to 20 point lead. But as Luka had for him what was an off night only scoring 12 more the rest of the game as Tatum went from 4 in the first to 29 in total adding to that 14 rebounds and 10 assist achieving his second career triple double. The Celtics got rolling and ended the half up 18 but it didn’t stop there as the Celtics outscored the Mavericks in every quarter of the game winning 124-95. Jayson Tatum when asked about the turnaround win he said “You know it was a tough one the other day and we lost 2 in a row, but we had a responsibility to respond and play better.” When asked about Luka having a rough day he said “We just tried to make it tough for him”. Make it tough they did as the Celtics improve to 27-12, next they face off the spurs in game 4 of the western road trip. The Mavericks play against the Pelicans who are 2 games ahead of them in the western standings. Both games are on Saturday.
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