Celtics embarrass themselves
ATLANTA — Those two late-game possessions with Jayson Tatum being stripped by Dejounte Murray and Jaylen Brown endlessly pounding the ball until he settled for a contested 3-pointer could strongly be considered the issue of why the Celtics lost Monday night to the Hawks.
But the genesis of their blown 30-point lead and another painful embarrassment against a lesser opponent began late in the first half when the Celtics started messing around with the game, stopped moving the ball, and allowed what appeared to be a harmless Hawks run.
Atlanta ended the first half with an 18-6 surge, cutting the Celtics lead to 18 by halftime. It admittedly tainted what was a flawless first 20 minutes for Boston. Coach Joe Mazzulla said he knew it, yet there was very little chance in the third quarter. The
Hawks’ first play of the third quarter resulted in an easy dunk by De’Andre Hunter, and the comeback continued on.
A 37-10 run brought the Hawks to within 3. A high-powered Celtics offense scored 10 points in a span of 8 minutes, 44 seconds after scoring 49 in the first 13. During that span, the Celtics were 4-for-17 shooting, 2 for 10 on 3-pointers and committed four turnovers against a team that’s 27 th in defensive rating.
It was a combination of poor offense and even worse transition defense. The Hawks were going to make a run but the Celtics did little to prevent this from happening, because they never adjusted their game plan and the shots that were dropping in the first half weren’t in the second.
Mazzulla tried to explain the run.
“That’s the weapon of the 3-pointer,” he said. “They shoot 50 percent from the three [18 for 36] and it changes everything in the game. It’s a combination of a bunch of stuff. It always comes down to that, those margins. We played them last year in the [sixgame, first-round playoff ] series and it was those margins. It was the 3-point line. It was limiting them to one shot. We’ve just got to learn from that.”
Mazzulla points out the margins. The difference in 3-point shooting or offensive rebounds. But he doesn’t mention the psychological aspects of losing big leads: letting down after taking big leads, playing with the game, taking less than optimal shots because the consequences are lower when the game appears out of hand.
The Celtics took a break after taking a 6838 lead, allowed the Hawks to creep back in by falling asleep the last four minutes of the first half and then made little adjustments for the second half. The players plainly said the issue was mental, that despite their past failures in these situations, despite knowing that NBA teams can easily rally from 20point deficits, the Celtics still believe they’re above such reproach, until they find out the hard way they’re not.
When will they learn?
“Relaxing, which is natural,” Kristaps Porzingis said when asked about the lackadaisical stretches. “Everything’s just smooth and you relax. You give them some [hope] to that type of team, you relax too much and give them some open looks, those guys can make shots. They’re an offensive-minded team and they got it going and then it’s a tough battle to kind of bring it back to what we wanted.
We just gave them too much life.”
Even without Jrue Holiday and Derrick White, the Celtics were considerably a better team than the Hawks. They raced out to a 49-22 lead 13 minutes into the game and and at that point the complacency began to set in. The pace slowed. The threes became more contested. They played into trying to impress their partisan road crowd. The Celtics believed they were the Harlem Globetrotters and the Hawks were the Washington Generals.
Boston has the ability to make the game look so beautiful, so effortless, so flawless but seems so unprepared at times when opposing teams make major adjustments. Atlanta became more physical defensively, shrunk the paint and forced the Celtics into contested shots.
When the game drew closer, the Celtics melted under the pressure. They have to devise a way to withstand furious runs, stick with their concepts, and punch back without relying on one-on-one play or hero ball. That final Celtics possession, when Brown dribbled — and dribbled — until he was forced to launch a contested 3-pointer is a prime example of how they executed last year in the Eastern Conference finals against the Heat and several other playoff series in recent years.
On some occasions, great individual plays overcome set defense. But on many occasions, they don’t.
“I didn’t love the last shot that we got, think we kind of waited too late,” Brown said. “Waiting for the action to kind of develop, the clock was winding down, taking too much time. I didn’t really like the last shot that I got on the right wing. Other than that I feel like we got some good looks. That’s something we’ll continue to work on.
“Still, like, this is good to watch and see and learn and inspire and motivate. We need to learn from our mistakes and hopefully that puts a battery in our back coming out next game.”
That next game is a rematch with the Hawks Thursday night.
A team that played this season as if it had no real weaknesses is still beset by an old detractor that has cost the franchise a chance at championships. The hope is the Celtics will take Monday’s debacle seriously, better mentally prepare for in-game adversity and play with less arrogance and more fortitude and killer instinct.