C’s a poor opening act
New-look Cleveland runs wild
CAVALIERS 121 CELTICS 99
Paul Pierce helped define the early part of LeBron James’ career as the one opponent standing in the way before the once-again star of the Cavaliers briefly took his talents to South Beach.
With No.34 sitting courtside by his family and accompanied by ex-teammates Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo plus former coach Doc Rivers, Pierce’s descendants on the Green didn’t exactly represent the old “ubuntu” way against James.
James and his made-over Cleveland lineup took an offensive Ginsu knife to the best defensive team in the NBA, slicing up the Celtics for a 121-99 win yesterday at the Garden.
The final gap fell a point shy of tying the Celtics’ worst losing margin of the season. It was also their third stumble in the last four games.
Coupled with Toronto’s blowout win over Charlotte earlier in the day, the Celtics finally were knocked off their perch atop the Eastern Conference, and now trail the Raptors by a halfgame.
Coach Brad Stevens and guard Kyrie Irving were more than willing to praise the Cavaliers — clearly a quicker supporting cast for James with athletic additions like Jordan Clarkson, Rodney Hood and George Hill. But after starting off well offensively, and allowing the Cavs just about anything they wanted with the ball, the C’s are clearly slumping.
“I’d say the constant has been we’ve gotten outplayed pretty thoroughly in segments of each of those games and teams have been very aggressive against us, very physical against us and have played really well, and we haven’t played as well,” said Stevens. “And obviously against a team like this, against players like this, things don’t go your way when that happens. You’re gonna get a result like that.”
Or a pattern of results like that.
The Celtics trailed Cleveland by a peak deficit of 29 points — the same hole they dug themselves during a loss in Toronto last Tuesday. In the process of getting spanked by Indiana Friday night, they trailed by as many as 26.
Their lone win in that stretch came in overtime against a Washington team without John Wall.
Stevens has been talking for the better part of a month about his team’s lack of offensive effort as well. Those flaws again were apparent against Cleveland. The C’s rarely attacked in the paint, shot 40.4 percent against one of the NBA’s statistically worst defensive teams — although, maybe this new edition of the Cavs has upgraded in that area — and by the midpoint of the final quarter had dipped under 40 percent.
Irving scored 18 points, shooting only 1-for-7 from downtown, where the Celtics shot a miserable 26.3 percent. Jaylen Brown (five points, 2-for-9), Al Horford (nine points, only eight shots) and Jayson Tatum (nine points, 4-for-11) all were washed down the offensive drain.
“I think that, as coach said, we came out with a very aggressive mindset and then they made a few things difficult, put us in some positions ourselves where you can tell they’ve made adjustments,” said Irving. “I feel like over the last three games of playing some of these teams, they’ve made some adjustments since the last time we’ve played them.
“As we go forward, I think we can consistently learn from not only a game like (this) but the last few games of playing the high-intense teams in the Eastern Conference where we’ve been tested,” he said. “I have a lot to learn. Us as a team, I think we do as well, but it’s just great when you get a chance to kind of go through these things as a young group ... and I’m looking forward to how we respond.”
On this special occasion, the only way the Garden crowd could respond was with chants for Pierce and the retirement ceremony for No. 34 to take the center stage.