Boston Celtics sharpshooter Sam Hauser has had himself a stellar season overall. But Friday’s contest against the Sacramento Kings was one game Hauser would probably want to forget.
The Celtics managed to survive a 101-100 affair over the Kings at TD Garden in Boston, Mass. Hauser didn’t exactly help the cause very much with arguably the worst performance of his career.
Boston Celtics Guard Wing Sam Hauser Enters Single-Game Hall-Of-Infamy
Hauser entered Friday’s contest shooting 43.8% from beyond the arc, placing him among the NBA’s qualified top five shooters based on percentage.
But his shooting percentage dropped an entire point to 42.7% after his brutal 1/13 shooting game against the Kings. Hauser also missed all five of his two-point attempts to finish with just three points on 18 shot attempts.
According to StateMuse, Hauser became just the fourth player over the last 50 years to take 18 or more shot attempts and convert on 1 or less of them. It’s only happened 12 times in NBA history, with a majority of them happening before 1973.
Coincidentally, the last player to suffer the same fate was his All-NBA teammate Jayson Tatum . The Celtics star also shot 1/18 in 2019 against Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks.
Robert Covington in 2018 and Chris Bosh in 2011 were the only other players to match the ugly feat since 1973.
Boston Celtics Overcame Historically Bad Shooting From Sam Hauser
The one thing Hauser and Tatum’s historically bad shooting nights had in common — other than shooting 1/18 — was that the Celtics won both games. Boston beat Dallas 116-106 back in 2019 despite Tatum shooting bricks.
Kemba Walker (29 points), Jaylen Brown (25 points), and Marcus Smart (17 points) picked up the slack for Tatum, who finished with just five points.
The 2023-24 Celtics have proven to be just as capable of winning when some of their key pieces aren’t firing on all cylinders. Both Brown and Derrick White were missing from Friday’s game, and yet they still managed to beat the Kings in crunch time.
The Celtics have clinched the NBA’s best record for a reason.
H/T NBA Reddit
More must-reads: