Spurs at Celtics
The streaky San Antonio Spurs hope that they are not in the early stages of another downturn with the Western Conference playoff race in high gear. The Spurs will try to avoid a third straight loss on the heels of a nine-game winning streak when they visit the slumping Boston Celtics on Sunday.
The nine-game surge followed a brutal 1-7 road trip for San Antonio, which sits alone in eighth place in the West and needs to play more consistent basketball down the stretch. "We gave up a million points in the first quarter, they had 19 free throws in the first half and none in the third quarter," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich told reporters after a 111-105 loss at Houston on Friday. "You play with your heart but you play between the ears, also, so we played smarter and harder in the second half, but you can't do that against a good team like Houston or any team in the NBA." The Celtics will have little time to recover from a woeful collapse at Charlotte on Saturday, blowing an 18-point fourth-quarter lead in a 124-117 loss. Boston has lost three in a row and sits a game behind fourth-place Indiana in the East.
TV: 7:30 p.m. ET, NBATV, FS Southwest (San Antonio), NBCS Boston
ABOUT THE SPURS (42-31): Rockets superstar James Harden torched San Antonio for 61 points in Friday's affair and the Spurs had a few too many misses to keep pace. Guard Bryn Forbes hit all three of his 3-point tries en route to a team-high 20 points, but his teammates were just 4-of-21 from beyond the arc. LaMarcus Aldridge, who scored 32 points to lead San Antonio to a win over the Celtics at home earlier this season, was held to 10 at Houston and has fallen short of his average (21.0) in four of the last five games.
ABOUT THE CELTICS (43-30): Kyrie Irving scored 31 points and Jaylen Brown had 29 in Saturday's loss, which has the team wondering where to go as it heads into the second half of a back-to-back. "Obviously, when you lose an 18-point lead, there is a lot of things that go wrong," coach Brad Stevens told reporters. "I thought that they did a good job chipping away at it and hitting singles and whether it was after time outs, or in the middle of the run, or getting plays in transition that they made go their way, I thought they did a really good job. We did everything that the book is written on to lose a game that you are up 18 at that point." Irving has scored at least 30 points in five straight contests.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Spurs SF Davis Bertans is 7-for-31 from 3-point range over his last five games.
2. Celtics SF Gordon Hayward (concussion) and C Aron Baynes (ankle) could return Sunday.
3. Boston SF Jayson Tatum, who is 14-for-41 from the floor over the last three games, suffered a bruised lower back in Charlotte.