Jaylen Brown scored 29 points, Jayson Tatum had 27 on his 26th birthday and the NBA-best Boston Celtics posted their third-largest winning margin in franchise history, drubbing the weary Golden State Warriors 140-88 on Sunday.
Payton Pritchard added 19 points for the Celtics, who set a league record with their third win this season by 50 points or more and extended their season-best winning streak to 11 games. Boston led by a franchise-record 44 points at halftime and pushed it to 51 early in the third quarter before coach Joe Mazzulla went to his reserves the rest of the way.
The Celtics are beating teams by an average of 22.1 points over their past 11 games, the best point differential over a win streak of at least 10 games in a single season in NBA history, according to Elias Sports Bureau research.
Boston has outscored teams by 29.8 PPG over their past six games, a span that includes two 50-point wins, something that only two other teams have done in an entire season. That’s the best point differential over a six-game span in NBA history, passing the 1971-72 Lakers (+28.3), who won a then-record 69 games.
“It feels great, but, at the same time, it’s always within humility,” Brown said. “We don’t take the game for granted. We didn’t come and mess around and that’s just how we show our respect to the game, we handle business and take care of it. … It’s a lot of respect for the Golden State Warriors, but we feel like it’s our time now.”
Stephen Curry didn’t play the second half and finished with a season-low four points for Golden State, his fewest since he had three points in 16 minutes on March 16, 2022, at Boston — a game he departed with a foot injury. Curry was 2-of-13 from the field Sunday and missed all 9 of his 3-point attempts, including consecutive airballs in the opening quarter.
“The way that they’ve been playing, they seem very sure of themselves in their identity and who they are,” Curry said. “Give them credit. They came out and whooped us tonight from the jump, and it was one of those perfect storms of a rough [day] on our end and them taking it to us.”
“We lost,” Draymond Green said. “Just flush it and move on.”
Boston’s only bigger blowout wins were 133-77 at Chicago on Dec. 8, 2018, and 128-75 over visiting Sacramento on Jan. 25, 2022.
Celtics forward Kristaps Porzingis missed the game with a bruised left quad.