Batman effect lifts Celtics to NBA's best record
Grant Williams wore a Batman costume to the Celtics game on Halloween Eve. Boston has played like superheroes ever since.
Boston was 3-2 when Williams strolled into the TD Garden Oct. 30, dressed like the Caped Crusader. Since then, the C's gave gone 15-2 and scored 123.7 points per game, with a utility belt's worth of contributors.
Williams has been a big part of that offensive dominance, making 44.2 percent of his three-pointers so far this year, accuracy worthy of the Green Arrow. Of course, the team is led by Jayson Tatum and his 31.6 points per game. He's been on a mission after seeing his championship hopes murdered in front of him last June, when Steph Curry shot them down.
Tatum's sidekick, Jaylen Brown, is also playing great, scoring 26.1 points per game. He's haunted by losing his family — Kanye West and Kyrie Irving — to cancellation, and he's taking it out on the NBA. They also have a point guard with green hair, another guard nicknamed "The Professor" and a center that fans call Time Lord. All of those people could easily exist in a Bruce Wayne storyline.
The only losses in this stretch came in overtime versus the Cleveland Cavaliers, when Donovan Mitchell, who likes to dress up as Spider-Man, lit them up for 25 points in an overtime victory. That's not a real loss. That's just a crossover event.
Boston's other defeat came against the Bulls when they abandoned their commitment to crime-stopping and let Chicago get away with 10 steals. Still, the Celtics dominated their one game in Gotham, hanging 133 points on the Knicks.
Today, Celtics management decided to treat Al Horford like Batman treats the Penguin: They locked him up for two more years.
Things are going so well that Williams might actually get his teammates to call him Batman, which he suggested after defending "The Joker" (Nikola Jokic) against Denver last season. (Tatum told reporters, "I'm going to call him Grant, not no damned Batman.")
Riddle me this: Who is beating this team in the Eastern Conference? No one has a chance except a powerful figure with a nickname worthy of a Batman villain: The Greek Freak.
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