The Boston Celtics’ game against the Atlanta Hawks on Monday night was proceeding much like many of the team’s games during the 2023–24 NBA season. Throughout the whole game, Boston—who now owns the best record in the league—dominated the faltering Hawks.
Atlanta is making slow progress in the NBA Play-In Tournament, even without All-Star point guard Trae Young on the field. As of right now, they hold the 10th seed in the Eastern Conference, but on Monday, it appeared as though their hold would deteriorate.
Al Horford’s three-pointer with a few minutes left in the first half gave the Celtics a thirty-point lead, 68-38. Nobody would have been shocked to see Atlanta lose given the way each club is going.
Boston had won 20 of their previous 22 games and entered the contest on a nine-game winning streak. But that was not at all what transpired. After that, the Hawks experienced a breakthrough that led to the largest NBA comeback in recent memory.
After a back-and-forth fourth quarter, Atlanta emerged victorious, winning 120-118. With 9:42 left in the game, Wesley Matthew made a 3-pointer to give the Hawks their first lead of the contest, 97-96.
In the final seconds, Atlanta’s punctuation arrived. Clint Capela snatched the offensive rebound after Dejounte Murray missed a jump shot, then sent the ball out to D’Andre Hunter.
Hunter had the option to try to seal the victory by waiting for a Celtics player to foul him, but he chose to go for a 3-point shot that went in.
Hunter told himself, “I’m shooting if he passes it to me.” “I shot it after he passed it to me after he got the rebound.”
The Hawks’ comeback, one of the most spectacular in NBA history, was capped off with that shot. With 30 points, Atlanta has made its biggest comeback since at least the 1997–98 season, when precise play-by-play tracking was implemented. This turnaround is tied for the fourth largest in league history.
The Los Angeles Clippers defeated the Washington Wizards in the 2021–22 NBA season despite trailing by 35 points, marking the latest 30-point comeback in NBA history. Teams that fell down by more than thirty points in an NBA game in the previous twenty-five years, before the Hawks did, were 5-2,606 in total.
