Celtics defeat tired Warriors 140-88 to record their third-biggest victory in team history behind Brown and Tatum.
Boston: With 29 points from Jaylen Brown and 27 from Jayson Tatum—who turned 26 on Sunday—the NBA-best Boston Celtics defeated the fatigued Golden State Warriors 140-88 on Sunday, posting their third-largest winning margin in team history.
The Celtics, who have won three games in a row by 50 points or more, established a league record with Payton Pritchard’s 19 points. Their winning run now stands at 11 games. Boston had a record-breaking lead of 44 points at the half and 51 points early in the third quarter before head coach Joe Mazzulla used his backups for the remainder of the game.
With a season-low four points for Golden State after missing the second half of the game due to a foot ailment, Stephen Curry’s performance is the lowest for Golden State since March 16, 2022, when he scored three points in 16 minutes against Boston. On Sunday, Curry shot just 2 of 13 from the floor and missed all 9 of his 3-point attempts, including back-to-back misses in the first quarter.
The Warriors had won eleven out of thirteen, including the first three games of their tour up the East Coast, which included three games in four days and a challenging travel to Toronto that involved spending hours sitting on a tarmac overnight.
In a team-high 33 minutes, Lester Quinones scored 17 points to lead Golden State. Moses Moody (11 points) was the only player for the Warriors to score in double figures, and none of the starters played longer than twenty minutes.
The two biggest margins of victory for Boston were 133-77 away to Chicago on December 8, 2018, and 128-75 against visiting Sacramento on January 25, 2022.
Due to an injured left quad, Kristaps Porzingis, a forward with the Celtics, was unable to play.
