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“You haven’t gotten your ass kicked like this, in quite some time.”
Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe tells Joe Mazzulla following a horrific Game 2 loss to Cleveland Thursday night.
Well Gary, it isn’t rocket science at this point.
If the Celtics’ threes fall then they win, it’s really that simple.
The hair-pulling part comes when they don’t make them. Because that means that they’ll just pack it in — not their night.
“When you lose a game like that it could be a combination of tactics, a combination of effort,” Mazzulla said. “Not to say it was one thing the entire time.”
Boston lacked force, it lacked any sort of purpose. It thinks that it’ll roll out there and Derrick White will knock down a couple big buckets, Jayson Tatum will figure it out and Jaylen Brown will do his thing.
“I definitely think there were times in the game where we went through tough stretches offensively that affected our defense,” Mazzulla said.
So when things don’t go exactly to plan, what happens? They get run out of their own building.
“Overall, we missed some shots and we let that translate,” Brown said. “I don’t care if you’re missing shots, you have to guard a guy on the other end.”
Cleveland had a plan coming into Game 2 and executed it to perfection. Let the supporting cast of Evan Mobley (21 PTS, 10 REB and 5 AST) and Darius Garland (14 PTS, 4-5 3PT) find their games, and then have Donovan Mitchell (29 PTS, 7 REB and 8 AST) close it out. It’s what all the talking heads, and every person on Earth, knew what the Cavs needed to do and win.
Somehow Boston missed the memo.
The Celtics lacked any defensive intensity, barring a 16-3 run in the second, the shots didn’t fall, spelling a recipe for disaster. They had a chance to put a real stranglehold on the series, winning the first two games at home, and they just didn’t want it.
So just chalk it up as a bad night?
“I think it was just a bad game,” Brown said. “Defensively, it was an unacceptable performance.”
At a certain point a team has to evolve, develop a certain type of winning culture — they haven’t found it. Since 2018 we’ve been waiting for this team to learn, and somehow they just don’t get it.
“They responded, and we didn’t,” Al Horford said. “We just missed a lot of shots.”
So, you can examine every play, every shot and every coaching decision, it doesn’t really matter. It’ll either click or it won’t, and we’ll find out over the next month.
The facts still are the facts. Boston will win Game 3, and probably win the series in five games if we’re being honest. But it doesn’t really change the big picture. The Celtics don’t know how to win, Thursday crystallized that.
“You learn from it, you take it on the chin,” Brown said.
Isn’t the time for learning done?
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