C’s worst slide story
Another loss despite Irving’s 40 in return
Celtics coach Brad Stevens called attention to a weird contradiction in basketball physics last Thursday night. His team was playing hard on defense while also going through the motions offensively.
And then came yesterday’s 103-95 loss to Orlando, which moved the Magic from tied (with the Atlanta Hawks) for the bottom spot in the East up to the second-worst team.
The Celtics’ first threegame losing streak formed on the eve of a four-game road trip to the West for stops against the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers, the Golden State Warriors and the Denver Nuggets.
Although Stevens and Jaylen Brown chose to praise the Magic instead of heaping any further misery on their own team, for at least one Celtic it feels like the floor just caved in.
“In my eyes, I feel like we’re fighting for our lives right now,” Al Horford said. “That has to be our mindset going into (tomorrow’s) game, and we’ll take it a game at a time, focus on (tomorrow) and make sure we come out with a lot of energy and that we’re able to sustain it throughout the game.”
The result against Orlando was clearly not a picture of sustainability, despite the return of Kyrie Irving after missing one game with a shoulder-related issue.
The Celtics showed a high dependency on Irving. He scored 40 of the Celtics’ 95 points, including a 5-for-7 performance on 3-pointers.
From Horford, who had nine points on 4-of-11 shooting, and Jayson Tatum, who also scored nine on 4-of-11 from the field, to the bench getting outscored by a 38-8 margin, balance clearly wasn’t on the docket.
Stevens was asked if the team is depending too much on its All-Star guard.
“No. I think we all have to play better,” Stevens said.
Brown, one of only three Celtics scoring in double figures with 17 points on 7-of-12 shooting, sided with his coach.
“Kyrie was being Kyrie. He was trying to make plays, and we came up short,” Brown said.
Irving and a late-rising Tatum were placed in the familiar roles of attempting to come back against a 19-point Orlando lead in the fourth quarter.
Orlando outscored the Celtics 32-12 in the third, including a voluminous 27-7 run that found the Celtics at their worst at both ends of the floor. Orlando finally exited the third with a 90-71 lead thanks to 56.7 percent shooting.
All the Celtics expected more.
“I think as a group we’re disappointed because we expected to come out strong and do what we needed to do and get this win before we got out on the road,” Horford said. “They just kept hitting us. We played kind of at their pace, and that’s something I’ve noticed the past couple of games. We’ve let other teams dictate the kind of pace they want to play. I felt like we were playing a little too fast at times. So it is disappointing for us.”
Neither team started the fourth well, though the Celtics managed to score the first two baskets over a slow 2:30 stretch, cutting the Orlando lead to 90-75 with 9:29 left.
Tatum then took over, scoring three times in a two-minute span, including a put-back that cut the Orlando lead to 93-81 with 7:07 left, and then cutting the margin to nine with his only 3-pointer.
Neither side scored again for two minutes, when Elfrid Payton finally hit the first of two from the line. The Orlando point guard fouled Irving in 3-point range down the other end, with Irving hitting two of his three free throws.
A Payton jumper pushed the Orlando lead back up at 96-86 with 3:54 left, Khem Birch extended it to 12.
Horford hit a 3-pointer with 2:55 left, and Irving scored against a triple team, leaving the Celtics down 98-91 with 1:42 left, yet unable to catch up.
“We’ve just gotta play better,” Irving said. “That’s all. It’s as simple as that.”