Jaylen Brown scored 26 points, Jayson Tatum added 23, and the hot-shooting Boston Celtics capitalized on another fast start in a 133-101 victory over the short-handed Milwaukee Bucks on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Tatum was an assist shy of his second straight triple-double despite sitting out the entire fourth quarter of a game the Celtics never trailed. He had 11 rebounds and nine assists Friday after collecting 25 points, 18 rebounds and 11 assists Wednesday in a 147-129 triumph over the Miami Heat.<\/p>\n
In the Miami game, Boston scored 53 points in the opening period \u2014 its highest first-quarter point total in franchise history. The Celtics didn\u2019t quite match that Friday, but they made eight of their first nine 3-point attempts and led 43-26 after the opening period.<\/p>\n
That represented the most first-quarter points Milwaukee had allowed all season.<\/p>\n
Boston (52-25) remained 2 1\/2 games ahead of the New York Knicks in the competition for the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. The Celtics are four games behind the Eastern Conference-leading Detroit Pistons.<\/p>\n
Neemias Queta had 19 points and 10 rebounds for the Celtics, who shot 56.2% overall and 17 of 37 from 3-point range. Derrick White scored 17, Payton Pritchard 16 and Sam Hauser 13.<\/p>\n
Taurean Prince scored 18 points to lead Milwaukee. Pete Nance had 14 points and a career-high 10 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo missed a 10th straight game due to what the Bucks have described as hyperextension in his left knee and a bone bruise. He told The Athletic and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before the game that he’s healthy and wants to play.<\/p>\n
The Bucks also were missing Kevin Porter Jr. (right knee), Bobby Portis (left wrist sprain), Ryan Rollins (right hip strain) and Gary Trent Jr. (left hip pointer).<\/p>\n
Boston was without Nikola Vucevic, who last played March 6 as he deals with a fractured right ring finger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jaylen Brown scored 26 points, Jayson Tatum added 23, and the hot-shooting Boston Celtics capitalized on another fast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-584957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}