Celts fail their boards
Biggest weakness bites ’em in opener
Isaiah Thomas decided that a playoff game in the Garden was the salve for his grieving heart.
But this time the point guard’s presence wasn’t enough to save his team from a disappointing opening to the postseason with last night’s 106-102 loss to Chicago.
The Bulls limited the Celtics to 41.8 percent shooting, thus making their own lowly shooting performance (42.2) hold up in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference first-round series. This coverage included making sure that Thomas, despite his 33 points, was trapped and bumped whenever he got near the paint, including a lot of time in the sights of Bulls forward Jimmy Butler, who has volunteered for the duty.
But Thomas’ offense was one of the few bright spots.
Butler, with 23 of his 30 points in the second half, and power forward Bobby Portis, with a 19-point performance off the bench that included three cold-blooded 3-pointers, provided just enough offense.
Rebounding, which figured to be the chief Celtics issue in this series, now looks like a problem that’s here to stay. The Celtics were vulnerable to a pounding on the glass, and the Bulls certainly obliged, out-boarding the C’s by a 53-36 margin and scoring 23 second-chance points.
After averaging 15 offensive rebounds against the Celtics in four regular-season games, the Bulls actually improved last night with 20 offensive boards, including eight from center Robin Lopez, who had 11 overall.
Lopez said that he’s well aware of this Celtics weakness, too.
“That’s something I’m aware of and I’m sure they are as well,” Lopez said. “I know when I put that kind of pressure on the rim it opens up things for my teammates. That’s something I’m going to keep trying to do.”
Lopez made perhaps his biggest play of the night after boxing out Al Horford and drawing a foul on the C’s center with 1:41 left. He hit both free throws for a 99-92 lead, and after a Horford baseline drive coming out of a Celtics timeout, Butler beat his old college teammate, Jae Crowder, off the dribble for a 103-94 Bulls lead.
Crowder hit from downtown with 38 seconds left, and Thomas hit a pull-up 3 with 14.4 seconds left that cut the Bulls’ edge to 104100.
The Celtics caught a break when video review ruled that Jerian Grant lost a ball out of bounds, and with 7.5 seconds left Thomas beat Lopez off the dribble and finished the drive, cutting the Chicago lead to 104-102.
But Butler hit two foul shots with 3.3 seconds left to give the Bulls a twopossession lead. It capped a big second half for the Bulls forward, who scored eight straight Chicago points in the last 1:29 of the third quarter, and then opened the fourth quarter with a pull-up jumper.
The Celtics took their last lead with 5:33 left, when Thomas hit three free throws for an 88-87 lead that the Bulls immediately erased with an 8-0 run, including a Grant 3-pointer and three Butler free throws.
It was a horrid opening for the No. 1 seed in the East, not to mention its coach. Coach Brad Stevens now has a 2-9 postseason record in his three trips.
“We’ll go back and see what we need to do different, see what we need to do better, and get ready to play (tomorrow),” Stevens said. “We’ve got a great opportunity to compete in the playoffs and we’ve got another game (tomorrow). It’s a seven-game series and we’ll go from there.”
It’s guaranteed that rebounding — or lack thereof — dominates the first video session today.
“I think just awareness is a major key on it,” Crowder said. “We have to be more aware of where (Butler’s) at on the court and where their rebounders are. And I think once we have an awareness of where they are, we can take care of it. But I think it’s not just only on the bigs. It’s on the guards to come in and clean up.
“Those guys are in the trenches fighting, so us guards have to come help our bigs out the entire series.”