With the halfway point of the NBA season finally here, I decided for this article instead of giving hot takes, to go down a more fun route pick my 5 favorite plays/moments from the first half of this incredibly fun Celtics season. These plays are in no particular order and are just 5 of my favorite plays so if a better play is behind the one you think is not as great, there is no ranking system.
1) Kyrie splits the Bucks defense
When watching this play develop I see Kyrie slowly dribbling in and then all of the sudden he's double teamed and the shot clock is low usually means a not so great situation. But this is Kyrie Irving, the guy with the best handles in the league just splits the defense and makes the floater. I could just pick 10 plays from Kyrie this year and that would make this list but there were other nice plays, so let's continue.
2) Jayson Tatum dunks on Karl Anthony-Towns
May I just remind everyone that Tatum is just 19. No way 19-year-olds should be doing what he's doing with the season he is having. If it was not for Ben Simmons, Tatum would be rookie of the year. Seeing Tatum dunk over a like KAT is so impressive because he's a center and just makes you more and more excited to see what Tatum can turn into if he's showing this fearlessness early in his career.
3) 19-0 Third Quarter run against the Warriors
When watching this game, it was starting to get ugly real quick and I didn't have the greatest feeling. But it was this 19-0 run that more or less sealed the game for the Celtics by getting all the momentum and playing a smart 4th to give them the win.
4) The last 18.4 seconds against the Rockets
Similar to the Warriors game, I hated everything about this game until the middle of the 3rd onward. The Celtics came back with amazing defense and smart shot selection and at the end of the game, this was helped them win. It could be one of the craziest sequences I've seen in a long time, but the Celtics played smart basketball and forced dumb mistakes by Houston.
5) Jaylen 'dunks on LeBron'
While the play is not what you think is getting dunked on, it was close enough. This was from the first game of the season and Jaylen just blows right by LeBron and wants zero to do with Jaylen. I love this play because it showed Jaylen is still going to be aggressive and does not care who is guarding him. He will take it to the hoop and that's the thing I like about Jaylen. If he can polish his handles and control his effort level, he can be real good at getting to the basket and drawing contact or dunking in spectacular fashion. Plus this dunk led to one of my favorite pictures from this season:
