Why Celtics could benefit after being eliminated from In-season Tournament
BOSTON — Jayson Tatum didn’t hide his frustration after the Celtics lost to the Pacers in the quarterfinals of the In-season Tournament, which forced them to go home to Boston instead of a free trip to Las Vegas for the semifinals.
“I wanted to (expletive) go to Vegas,” Tatum told reporters in Indiana, flashing a mild smirk. “I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to go to Vegas, so yeah I’m mad. Next year, I guess.”
Added Jaylen Brown: “It’s unfortunate for us that we’re not going to Vegas, but I guess we’ll have to settle for Encore in Boston.”
Certainly, there should be some disappointment for the Celtics as their hopes of claiming the first in-season tournament championship came to an end. It certainly does not replace the ultimate goal of an NBA championship, but the IST proved as something of a playoff simulator. It was an opportunity for growth for a group that’s figuring out how to get over the hump. Not to mention the incentives of a trip to Vegas and a significant cash reward.
But it’s also not the end of the world that the Celtics did not advance. And there could be some benefits to it.
The Celtics, by not advancing, will not be playing an 83rd game they would get if they made the in-season tournament championship. A semifinal matchup on Thursday would have been their 82nd game on the schedule, but the IST championship would not have counted towards the regular season standings. It would have been an extra game that would have carried risk of injury, even if the rewards were significant. Instead, the Celtics receive a home game at TD Garden, where they’re 9-0 this season.
Getting eliminated from the tournament also gives
Kristaps Porzingis some extra time to recover from his calf strain that has now forced him to miss four games. With the Celtics’ next game coming Friday, it buys Porzingis an extra day to return for an important matchup against an Eastern Conference matchup.
It also gives the rest of his Celtics teammates some extra rest that’s rare in the midst of a typically packed 82-game schedule. They’ll have three days of rest before Friday’s home game, then another three days of rest before returning to action next Tuesday against the Cavaliers. That gives the team some welcomed time off before they hit a busy stretch of their schedule that includes six games in nine days and a West Coast trip that begins on Dec. 19.
Knicks: Julius Randle called winning Eastern Conference Player of the Week “humbling,” Josh Hart is mad at Jacksonville Jaguars running back Travis Etienne for ruining his Monday Night Football parlay, and it’s clear the Knicks want this In-season Tournament game against the Bucks.
Even if it’s only to justify a mid-season trip to Las Vegas.
Tuesday marked the third time Randle singledout the idea of a trip to Vegas as a motivating factor for making a deep In-season Tournament run, and if the Knicks can beat the Bucks on their own home court, they will punch a ticket out West to play the Indiana Pacers in the semifinal.
Randle has said the $500,000 prize money going to each of the players on the team that takes home the first-ever NBA Cup could be life-changing money, particularly for the lesser-paid guys at the end of the rotation. But, he reiterated Sin City as an attractive destination hours ahead of tipoff on Tuesday.