Give it their best shot
C’s must find points even if IT corralled
Isaiah Thomas made it very clear after the Celtics’ Game 4 loss to Washington on Sunday night that he deserved better, as in more respect from the officials, after not attempting a free throw for only the second time in the postseason and the fifth time all year.
Thomas also took only three shots after halftime in the 121-102 loss, which evened the series at 2-2 and probably points to the Wizards’ ability to double and triple team him more than anything involving the guys with the whistles.
Consider what Wizards forward Markieff Morris said about Washington’s successful strategy.
“We just have to corral him,” he said. “Like he’s a small guy, so at the end of the day, if you got three players around you, how can you make a pass? How can you make a shot? It’s just basically what we’ve been doing and just trying, you know, to get the ball out of his hands. Hopefully, the other guys miss shots like they’ve been doing.”
In the aftermath of Thomas’ 53-point performance in Game 2, and after he scored 15 points in his first 11 minutes in Game 4, the Wizards have done a better job than Chicago did in the first round.
Thomas had 13 points on 3-for-8 shooting in the Game 3 loss when free throws weren’t a problem. He was 7-for-11 from the line. He followed that in Game 4 with a front-heavy, 7-for-14 performance, reduced to 1-for-3 shooting in the second half.
The Celtics blamed Thomas’ lack of secondhalf looks on turnovers, including eight during the 26-0 portion of Washington’s 38-7 third-quarter run. The Wizards ultimately scored 34 points off the Celtics’ 18 turnovers.
That’s a truly daunting number, when you consider what stat guru Dick Lipe dug up. Those 34 points are tied with two other games this season — losses in Portland and Philadelphia — for second most in the Brad Stevens era. Only Toronto’s 38 points off turnovers in November 2014 ranks higher. Thomas also didn’t help himself with six turnovers, five in the infamous third quarter.
“I think they obviously were locked into him the whole game, but obviously more so after (Thomas’) barrage of 3’s,” said Stevens. “They did a little bit more switching, (Wizards center Marcin) Gortat ended up on Isaiah on more than a couple of occasions. But certainly any time they could be aggressive off pick-and-roll, blitz pickandwhatever the case may be, they were really up into him.
“He did a great job in that first half of finding seams and finding avenues and our guys looked for him and they made plays together. I thought we missed a ton of shots in the first half that I felt really good about. I was actually surprised at our shooting percentage in the first half. I would have thought it was worse, because I felt like we were getting great looks.
“But then in the third quarter, that six-minute spurt or whatever, it changed the whole game.”
Thomas also didn’t like his team’s body language as the drought wore on.
“We’ve got to be confident. For whatever reason today there were guys with their heads down after missing a few shots,” he said. “If we’re getting the right shots and we’re missing, just continue to shoot. We have to remain confident. The only thing they did was take care of business at home, like we did. It’s a series now. It’s back to 0-0, so we’ve just got to remain confident, keep shooting with confidence and don’t allow them to go on 22-0 runs, 26-0 runs, like any team gets hit with that, you’re most likely gonna lose.”
Avery Bradley scored five points on 2-for-9 shooting, including four turnovers, but he understands the effort started with everyone else’s offensive initiative.
During times like this the Celts have to break their dependency on their 5-foot-9 leading scorer.
“I think he’s being pretty aggressive,” Bradley said of Thomas. “Unfortunately, he’s not able to get some of the calls that he usually gets. As a team we have to find other ways to get going. I feel like it’s our job, as in me, Al (Horford), Jae Crowder, we have to do a better job of creating offense for our team. If that’s scoring or if it’s just making plays for each other, making plays for him, putting him in good situations like he does for us, we have to do a better job as a team.
“First off, we have to limit our turnovers. They’re scoring a lot in transition, that’s a lot of their offense right there. Sometimes just getting a shot is good offense for us, and we weren’t able to get that on a consistent basis.”