Particularly nasty loss
No shot for Celts vs. ATL
The Celtics are building quite a list of enemies, like the funeral-clad Washington Wizards, and after last Friday’s theatrics between Isaiah Thomas and DeMarre Carroll, a Toronto Raptors team that has three wins against them this season.
But the Atlanta Hawks held a grudge before any of the others, dating to last spring’s first-round playoff series. Even after losing Al Horford to the C’s last summer, though, the Hawks still have a knack for beating this team.
And the Celtics, with last night’s emotional 114-98 loss to Atlanta, suddenly look like a team that’s reeling. The C’s have lost three of their last four games.
Isaiah Thomas’ franchisestreak of 20-point performances died at 43, as he finished with 19 points, seven rebounds, seven assists and, to complete the chain, seven turnovers. Thomas struggled through a rough night, shooting 4-for-21 (1for-6 on 3-pointers), and was very much reflective of a team shooting 39 percent. Worse yet, he suffered through a two-point fourth quarter — his realm — on 1-for-4 shooting.
Adding insult to the evening, the player Thomas loves to hate, Dennis Schroder, outscored him with 21 points.
Over the last three games, Thomas has suffered through fourth quarters of two, eight and four points.
“Isaiah has been scoring at a really high clip. You can never relax when you’re guarding him,” Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer said. “You need your bigs to be engaged. It was a little bit scary when he got to the free-throw line to start the third quarter (and cut Atlanta’s lead to two), but everyone that was on him was able to scramble out to shooter when he did pass.”
The Hawks, not known for their 3-point defense, would indeed get out to the Celtics’ shooters. The C’s stumbled through a 29.4 percent shooting night from 3-point range (10-for34).
Dwight Howard, one of those players who Garden fans take pleasure in riding, may have triggered the Hawks’ second-half surge despite himself. It started late in the third with an unintentional and somewhat innocuous horse-collar foul on Thomas, and spread when Howard lost his cool after absorbing a hard foul from Horford, the man he replaced in Atlanta.
Howard, being silly, then drew a technical foul for his half-hearted shove to Horford’s chest. The players were separated, and an unusually angry Horford implored the home crowd to continue booing Howard.
Howard responded to the jeers by making thumbs-down signals at the crowd, and checked out for good by picking up his second technical foul for hanging on the rim with 4:03 left in the quarter. (The second technical was rescinded by the NBA after the game).
There were other flareups, like an argument between Thomas and the normally placid Paul Millsap in the fourth quarter. But by then the Hawks were rolling, first with a series of short runs that produced an 84-71 lead by the end of the third, then with an 11-2 run mid-fourth that put the game out of reach at 108-84.
Avery Bradley, who played under a minutes restriction and watched the second half from the bench in his return from an Achilles injury, recognized something very distressing.
“We got punked,” Bradley said. “It just felt like we didn’t play hard enough. In the second half they played harder than us.”
Said coach Brad Stevens: “I thought that we were haphazard on offense a lot of the game and I thought that hurt us with transition defense, and then again, throwing the ball all over the gym. And then on the other end of the court, they just went skilled and small and made shots and made it hard to guard them. And that’s one of the things that when they play Millsap at (center), that’s a bear.”