The Celtics get the Bulls again on Friday night, and the quick rematch comes with very different recent form on both sides. The two teams already met on Monday at TD Garden, where Boston buried Chicago in a 134-99 rout. Since then, the Bulls went back home, dropped a tight one to the New York Knicks on Wednesday night, and now return to Boston for another crack at the Celtics.
That first meeting was never close. Payton Pritchard set the tone with a 19-point third quarter and finished with 28 points as the Celtics rolled.
Jayson Tatum added 23, while Hugo Gonzalez chipped in 13 points, five rebounds and two assists. On the Chicago side, Wilson’s numbers did not leap off the page, but he was still the Bulls player who stood out most.
The source material described him as having clear star potential, with development still ahead of him.
Boston has already seen a wide range of opponents in the early part of the season, and that was part of the conversation at shootaround on Friday morning. The Celtics have faced the Knicks, Pistons, Nets and Bulls in their first four games, a mix of styles that has already tested them in different ways. Gonzalez pointed out that some of those teams can be especially dangerous this early, when they are loose, energetic and playing with nothing to lose.
"Well, every team plays to win, especially early on," Hugo Gonzalez said at shootaround on Friday morning. "Everybody is trying to be connected.
Everybody's trying to build something that probably everybody is not going to be like that. So, especially those teams that you mentioned, at the beginning of the year, are really dangerous because they want to play with pace because they might think they're worse than what they are.
So, they got a lot of things -- They don't got, sometimes, nothing to lose. They're super dangerous, and we gotta we gotta do a great job of treating them with respect."
That message lines up with the standard Boston wants to keep in place no matter who is across from it. Joe Mazzulla said the Celtics should be anchored by their own system and process, while still adjusting to what each opponent presents. He also stressed that the game plan changes from night to night, even if the mentality should not.
"We have the system, the process that we want to play to, and it's really more just matching that," Joe Mazzulla said. "Having an understanding of the information that the game's showing you, and kind of playing there.
So not really. I mean, you want to make it the same, regardless of who you're playing.
You mentioned the best player on another team, but tonight the best players -- it changes.
"So, the best players are the engines of the team. We have to bring the same mentality of defending the best player at the highest level and understanding what the team does really well.
So it definitely changes from game to game per se. The game plan obviously changes.
The details that you focus on obviously changes. But the mentality and the psychology of the game shouldn't change."
Boston’s defense also drew attention after the Brooklyn game, when threes came too easily for the Nets and the Celtics did not meet their usual standard on that end. The defensive issues were broken down further afterward, with specific mistakes flagged for review.
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