BOSTON — It felt wrong from the start. It felt quiet. It felt thin.
The hallowed parquet, a canvas for decades of holy war, hosted a phantom limb of a game Friday night. The Lakers and Celtics, a rivalry forged in blood and banners, played a game stripped of its soul. No LeBron James. No Luka Dončić. Just a 126-105 Boston blowout that echoed in the vaulted rafters like a whisper.
The aura was absent. The electricity, absent. The tension, absent.
In their place, a methodical, merciless dissection. The Celtics shot the lights out, a blistering 24 of 45 from deep, a franchise record against Los Angeles.
Jaylen Brown with 30 points, eight rebounds and eight assists, was a show of force.
Derrick White with 19 points, including five 3-pointers, was a silent assassin.
Jordan Walsh provided a spark off the bench with 17 points.
Boston moved the ball to the tune of 31 assists, while the Lakers stagnated with 14.
It was clinical. It was cold. It was over almost as soon as it began.
"Expected score, we won by two in the second half," head coach JJ Redick said.
He grasped for analytical straws in a hurricane of made shots.
"We outscored them by one the last three quarters. Unfortunately, that's not how basketball works."
Without its twin engines, the Laker offense was a stalled car on the interstate.
Boston's defense swarmed, confident, unafraid. The Celtics' offense flowed, a cascade of open looks and confident triggers.
The Lakers climbed a hill of sand. Every step up triggered a slide back down.
"They were hitting threes from absolutely everywhere," Redick said. "We've got to be willing to live with certain things. They made us pay tonight."
Amid the wreckage, one Laker refused to be buried.
Austin Reaves fought. He slashed. He absorbed contact.
Reaves poured in 36 points on 9-of-18 shooting, marching to the line 17 times. He dished eight assists into hands that too often failed him. It was a solo performance in a hollow hall, a testament to stubborn pride when the script was already ash.
"You find some energy somewhere," Reaves said. "You just try to go compete at the highest level."
Rarely will one man's fire warm an empty arena. Boston's barrage was a collective effort, a relentless wave that crested early and never broke.
Brown set the tone, Walsh hit daggers, White managed the kill.
Missing Dončić and James, the Lakers had no counter-punch, no rally point beyond Reaves' individual will.
"When you permit that… it just kept piling," Redick said.
The math was brutal, final. The Celtics had eight players hit threes, outscoring Los Angeles by 30 points from deep.
The process, Redick insisted, wasn't all bad. The fight, he claimed, was there. But in Boston, against this foe, process is a postscript. Results are gospel.
The result was a beating. The result was a reminder of how paper-thin the margin for error becomes when gods are made mortal, when superstars sit in street clothes.
In this city, in this building, there are no silver linings to take home.
The final buzzer was a mercy. The Garden crowd roared, a sound born of satisfaction, not passion.
A rivalry game concluded, but the rivalry itself was elsewhere on the night. As the score shone on the jumbotron, the lonely figure of Austin Reaves walked off the court of lore and legends, his big night a tiny footnote in a massive, empty loss.