As Jayson Tatum sits, Celtics throttle Suns for seventh straight win

The Celtics didn’t need Jayson Tatum to steamroll the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday night.

With Tatum sitting out after spraining his ankle two nights earlier, Boston rode big nights from Kristaps Porzingis and Jaylen Brown a 132-102 win at PHX Arena.

It was the seventh consecutive victory for the streaking Celtics, who are 12-1 in their last 13 games and an NBA-best 30-7 on the road this season.

Porzingis nearly matched his season high with 30 points on 10-of-15 shooting, including 4-of-5 from 3-point range, despite not playing in the fourth quarter. Brown, quiet in Monday’s win over Sacramento after missing the previous three games with a knee injury, added 24 points (7-of-15, 4-of-9 from three, 6-of-6 on free throws). He, too, sat the final 12 minutes with Boston up big.

Tatum’s replacement in the starting lineup, Al Horford, continued his strong second half of the season with another high-impact performance, tallying 16 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, two blocks and one steal. Four of the veteran big man’s rebounds were offensive boards, and those led to 11 Celtics points.

Derrick White and Jrue Holiday each scored 16 points for Boston, with White hitting four of the team’s 22 3-pointers and finishing as a game-best plus-34. Boston’s starters combined for 22 assists and just five turnovers in the win.

The Kevin Durant-led Suns have been one of the NBA’s most disappointing teams this season, but they’d won four straight entering Wednesday, including a double-digit victory over the Eastern Conference-leading Cleveland Cavaliers. Durant led Phoenix with 30 points but had just one rebound and two assists. Boston held his co-star, Devin Booker, to 14 points on 4-of-13 shooting.

The Celtics opened the game with a remarkable display of 3-point shooting, even by their lofty standards. Over the first 4:20, Boston went 7-for-9 from beyond the arc, with all five starters hitting at least one. Six of those makes came on wide-open looks against a soft Phoenix defense that ranks 26th in the NBA in points allowed per 100 possessions.

Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser joined the 3-point party shortly thereafter. The Celtics hit a total of 10 threes in the first quarter, tying a franchise record.

Their defense, though, wasn’t much stouter than the Suns’. After Boston built an early 21-9 lead, Phoenix responded with a 13-2 run. The teams then combined to score on 13 of the final 16 possessions of an 80-point first quarter, with the Celtics holding a 42-38 lead when the dust settled.

The 42 first-quarter points were Boston’s most since opening night, when it scored 43 in a rout of the New York Knicks. Durant scored 16 for Phoenix in the first.

The Celtics’ defense improved in the second quarter. Horford and Luke Kornet both rejected dunk attempts by Oso Ighodaro. Hauser and Brown both notched steals, with Brown’s coming in isolation against Durant. Boston held Phoenix to 16 points in the quarter and 0-for-9 shooting from deep.

“We wanted to take away their threes,” Porzingis told NBC Sports Boston’s Eddie House in a postgame interview. “They’re a good shooting team, and those kind of teams are dangerous. With (Booker) and KD — obviously with KD, he was really hot today, so we wanted to make sure we run him off the line, make him drive, make him do something else. It was a collective effort for that second quarter, and that kind of set the tone for the rest of the game.”

Meanwhile, the Suns continued to serve up clean looks to the Celtics, both on the perimeter and at the rim. Boston led by as many as 25 points in the quarter and took a 73-54 advantage into halftime.

The lead ballooned to 34 points in the third quarter, during which the Suns had little answer for Porzingis. The big man, who’s shown no ill effects from the injury that sidelined him for eight games earlier this month, scored 13 points in the final six minutes of the third before shutting it down for the night.

Before Porzingis’ takeover, Brown hit a three and threw down a seismic driving dunk on back-to-back Celtics possessions.

“I thought he was great,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla told reporters. “I thought he found his groove a little bit, especially in that third quarter. But he’s just a guy that, whatever he has to do to put himself in the best chance to be at his best for us and to help us win, he does. For a couple games, it was taking care of his knee, and now it’s doing what he needs to do. I thought he was really efficient … but his defense was great. His presence was great for us.”

The rest of the Celtics’ starters subbed out before the midway point of the fourth quarter, with Pritchard, Baylor Scheierman, Torrey Craig, Jordan Walsh and Neemias Queta closing things out for Boston.

Though Tatum did not suit up, it became increasingly clear over the course of the day that the sprained ankle he suffered in Sacramento was nothing major. First, he was upgraded from doubtful (an encouraging designation to begin with) to questionable. Then, he went through an extensive pregame warmup before watching the game from the bench in a Duke T-shirt.

The Celtics — who are 6-1 this season when Tatum sits — would be wise to take a cautious approach with their All-NBA superstar, especially since their playoff seeding (No. 2 in the East) is unlikely to change over the final nine games. But he seemingly avoided the type of injury that would have radically altered Boston’s championship chances.

“I think it was a scare initially, and then it looked pretty good right out of the gate,” Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens told reporters in Phoenix, via CLNS Media. “So he did treatment all day (Tuesday). He wants to play all the time, and that’s a great thing. You can never Jayson Tatum doesn’t want to play. But today, we’ve got to make sure he’s 100%.”

The Celtics will look to stay unbeaten on their six-game West Coast swing when they visit the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday. They’ll then close out the road trip Monday night in Memphis.

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