What an ugly half of hoops.

We’re halfway through the one and only Golden State Warriors appearance at TD Garden this season and things are UGLY. Both teams have combined to score just 91 points the Boston Celtics are down 51-40.

Now, get ready for some Halftime Hot Takes, buddy.

Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Wow, Derrick White looks comfortable as THE No. 2 option

With Jaylen Brown missing his third-straight game with a hip strain, there are a few extra shots going around for the taking. So far tonight, Derrick White (nice rhyme, right?) looks more than comfortable taking on those additional looks.

Before the first TV timeout alone, he had already poured in 12 points for the Cs.

RAINING EARLY IN BOSTON 🔥🔥🔥

Derrick White has BOS up 14-3 early with 3 triples on ESPN! pic.twitter.com/TYussIujg2

— NBA (@NBA) November 7, 2024

Now, White has looked comfortable scoring the ball as a whole this season. He’s currently averaging 19.1 points per game on 48% from the field and 41% from beyond the arc. The Colorado native has shown an ability to be a creative scorer on drives, on top of being a lethal shooter from long range.

He’s grown so much, that Joe Mazzulla trusted him (and Jrue Holiday) to run the offense while Jayson Tatum was getting some rest.

As long as he is healthy, then Brown can take his time coming back from that hip issue and the Cs will be fine.

Jaylen, buddy, read your texts. Will ya?

Speaking of the first TV timeout. During the break, the Cs played a clip on the jumbotron of each player revealing how many unread text messages they have in their phone. Several members of the team had zero.

Not Jaylen Brown.

Brown, who literally everyone predicted to have the most texts, admitted to having over 2,000 unread messages.

https://twitter.com/NoaDalzell/status/1854326577112236214?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1854326577112236214%7Ctwgr%5Eec4377cc57bf9dd740de80f6f805262ac317aeef%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.celticsblog.com%2F2024%2F11%2F6%2F24290028%2Fhalftime-hot-takes-boston-celtics-golden-state-warriors-jayson-tatum-steve-kerr-derrick-white

Shoutout to the Celtics for this fun segment, though.

The Steve Kerr/Jayson Tatum ‘rivalry’ felt real

Let me start off by saying, that Steve Kerr wouldn’t let on that he was worried about the Tatum/Team USA storyline heading into this one. In the pregame press conference, he was happy that the group won Gold in France and that’s all that matters.

Kerr’s defensive instructions to his team may indicate otherwise. It felt like Tatum was seeing double teams just about every time he touched the ball. For what it’s worth, it does make quite a bit of sense to defend that way without Brown out there for Boston.

Tatum also seemed a bit wrapped up in the moment. Boston’s star forward looked like he was pressing a bit in the first half. He wasn’t awful by any means, but there were a few times that you could tell he was a bit sped up. There was a fastbreak where he elected to take on the lone Warriors defender, rather than hitting a wide-open Neemias Queta for an alley-oop slam.

It took him some time to get rolling, especially considering the precedent that he’s set for himself in first quarters, but he wound up with 12 points, four rebounds, and two assists at the half.