Not great, but C’s handle Indy
Brown, Tatum each score 30+
They can’t win by gargantuan totals every night, and as evidenced by the two narrow losses preceding Friday’s game against Indiana, the Celtics have experienced some recent slippage in tight game situations.
But if their 128-123 win over the Pacers was a tad low on the energy and efficiency scales, the Celtics were at least able to snap their twogame losing streak by grinding out a difficult night.
“Miami’s a really good team, Indiana’s a really good offensive team as of late, and I think it’s just part of it,” said Jayson Tatum. “We had a good stretch of double-digit wins, some easier wins, and lately we’ve had a stretch of tougher games. We can benefit from that, and I’m just glad we found a way and won the game.
That said, there’s no time like now, with four regular season games left, to sound an alarm if you’re Ime Udoka.
“You would like to play better basketball in that situation,” said the Celtics coach. “But like I said last game, it’s gonna be tight games, close games that we need to experience and go through and happen to win those.
“As much as we’d like to play better defensively and sharper in a lot of areas to avoid those situations, there are some benefits,” he said. “But in general, the meat of the game, we’d like to play better defense and not find ourselves in those situations where we have an eight-to10-point lead and we can’t stretch it because we can’t string some stops together. So gotta get back to that physicality. Communication was the main thing the last few games and start defending at a higher level going into the playoffs.”
Jaylen Brown (32 points) and Jayson Tatum (31) crossed the 30-plus barrier in the same game for the eighth time this season, and the Celtics moved a game ahead of Philadelphia for third place in the Eastern Conference — 1K games behind first place Miami.
But as evidenced by Wednesday’s loss to Miami, when the Celtics lost their composure — especially with the officiating — improvements are still in order. Udoka thought back to the Celtics’ recent 4-0 Western road trip, and the good feeling behind those wins, compared to the weariness his team has exhibited more recently.
“There’s still good teams we’d like to play better against,” said Udoka. “We were taking care of business against some of the lower teams earlier, but unless there’s some natural complacency after Golden State and Denver and Utah, some of the good teams we played — we can’t have that. Especially this late in the season. Habits that we built for the past few months have obviously been at a high level to get to where we’re at. That’s on me and the coaching staff to keep them sharp and focused on what’s to come on the next four games.”
Defensive communication will surely be near the top of the list, with Tyrese Haliburton putting his offensive ability on display since joining the Pacers at the trade deadline. Friday night the lanky point guard had 30 points over the first three quarters, including 6-for-6 downtown shooting, and hit his sixth 3-pointer of the night before fouling out early in the fourth.
But the Pacers kept threatening behind the sniping of Lance Stephenson, getting as close as three points (122119) with 1:26 left before baskets from Brown, Tatum and Derrick White put the game out of reach.
But the Pacers shot 51.9% overall, 47.2% from downtown, and exposed some gaps in Celtics coverage. Though the recuperating
Rob Williams has become an important figure in terms of defensive communication, last night’s breakdowns weren’t all due to his absence.
“Communication, that’s on us. One of those nights,” said Tatum. “We know we’re a really good defensive team, and there’s a lot of areas tonight where we could have been better. Do we miss Rob? Of course. But our mistakes tonight weren’t because we didn’t have Rob. A lot of communication on the perimeter - that was our fault. We’ve got to be better.”
After all, there’s not much time left before the real season begins.
“Get it out of the way now,” said Tatum. “Clean up some things these last three or four games, try to get it out of the way before the playoffs start.”