Celtics 120, Suns 112

 

Mr. Brown with 41 points. Mr. White with 21. Mr. Tatum, 21, too. Mr. Pritchard with 19 off the bench. Brown and Tatum both had seven rebounds, six defensive and one offensive each. 

Devin Booker had 40 points for the Suns, but it was all seeds and stems for Phoenix after that. The entire game was actually pretty close - no team scored more than five points than the other for all four periods. But somehow, when the clock finally expired, the C's had eight more points than the Suns.

Boston (45-23) has managed to move up to within 3½ of Detroit in the Eastern Conference standings, but Detroit somehow managed to arrange two consecutive games against the lowly Washington Wizards tonight and tomorrow, so the Celtics will have to keep pushing hard to cut deeper into that margin, starting with Wednesday night's game against Golden State. Once our kryptonite team, the Warriors have fallen on hard times (33-35), despite an all-star roster that includes Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, Draymond Green, and our old friends Kristaps Porziņģis and Al Horford.