Thanks to Dejounte Murray’s heroics on Thursday night, the Hawks defeated the Celtics for the second time in a row.
With 0.1 seconds left in overtime, the Hawks guard scored a career-high 44 points, which included the game-winning basket that sealed Atlanta’s 123-122 victory.
Murray kept some of his greatest play for overtime, using five of his eight field goal attempts, including a mid-range jumper by Jrue Holiday with seconds remaining, to score all eleven points for the Hawks.
Despite Atlanta’s fourth straight victory, Murray was still dissatisfied with his performance. Despite scoring a career-high number of points, he actually had a negative opinion on his play.
“We didn’t use a back-to-back as an excuse,” Murray told Bally Sports South postgame. “We came out and competed. These are he games I want to be a part of.
I still feel like I played awful. I don’t want to take that many shots but I know Kobe (Bryant) would be proud of me. At the end of the day, we competed at a high level to the end and had a great team win.”
Upon examining Murray’s box score more closely, his critique of himself becomes somewhat more comprehensible. Murray made 44 field goals for 44 points, however he only shot 40% from the field overall (18 of 44) and 30% from three points away (6 of 19). Due of his team’s lackluster performance, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla became irritated and argued with an Atlanta reporter about his team’s defense of Murray the entire evening.
“You better not say we couldn’t guard Murray,” Mazzulla said. “He had 44 points on 44 shots…I thought we played great defense on him.”
When Murray was given the assignment during his last play sequence, Jrue Holiday was only able to give the powerful scorer a tip following his third game-winning performance of the year.
“I think he had a good take,” Holiday said. “It was a difficult shot but he had making difficult shots all night. Give it to the man and he made the game-winner.”
Murray cemented himself as the Hawks’ top option with Trae Young out of the lineup by finishing the two-game set against the Celtics with 37 points and seven assists per game. If Atlanta and Murray win their two games in the play-in round next month, they will get to play Boston in the first round of the playoffs.