Cleveland, Ohio Joe Mazzulla, the Celtics’ coach, can not see what everyone is worrying about.
Mazzulla said he appreciated some of his team’s possessions, specifically somewhat more than half, during a 17-point fourth quarter. He believes Boston remained composed despite blowing a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter (the season’s largest blown lead). Actually, he believes the Celtics’ 105-104 loss against the Cavs on Tuesday, which occurred without Donovan Mitchell and after Evan Mobley exited with an ankle injury, could be a positive.
“I thought it was really good for us to be in that situation,” Mazzulla said in an interview. “Composition is one thing, but execution is another. I thought we were composed; but, I do not believe we executed well on some of the possessions.
“On the possessions that we didn’t score on, there were a handful of extremely nice ones, but execution is all about the results. So I’d say half, or slightly more than half, of the (fourth-quarter) possessions we had really nice looks on and executed well. And for the others, you just need to obtain a few better images.”
I guess when you’re the best team going, you can minimize an embarrassing loss. Before their visit to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse — hereto forth referred as “the house that Dean Wade built” — Boston had hadn’t lost since Feb. 1, didn’t see a team within seven games of their league-best record and couldn’t do anything wrong, it seemed like.
But for 12 minutes against the Cavs, the Celtics couldn’t do much right. And even if Mazzulla liked their process, he can’t explain away the timing of their worst mistakes. If Wade makes one open 3-pointer in the fourth quarter, whatever. Honestly, that might be part of the gameplan given Wade’s status as a “decent” shooter (Mazzulla’s words postgame). Two open 3s? OK, creep closer. But four (out of five), including a go-ahead triple with 2:35 to play? Then the game-winning put-back dunk, on which he faced zero resistance from Jrue Holiday and Jayson Tatum, both of whom were ball-watching close enough to box Wade out but didn’t?
What are we doing here? Because from where I’m sitting, the Cavs just highlighted Boston’s most glaring — and perhaps only — flaw Tuesday night. The Celtics don’t seem to care, but their end-of-game execution is a problem, just like it has been for multiple years. Boston is 4-5 in 3-point games this season and 14-26 in 3-point games over the last three seasons (including 2-4 in the playoffs), during which the Celtics have made two Eastern Conference Finals appearances and one Finals appearance. That’s what the numbers-focused Mazzulla might call a trend, and that trend might be the only statistical evidence that these Celtics won’t win the championship.
Which is why it sounds weird to hear Boston say things like this.
“I think it’s healthy for us” center Kristaps Porzingis said. “… We do have a feeling that, pretty much, we’re gonna win every game, we’re invincible, we’re gonna win this game. No matter what happens we’re like, ah, we got this.”
“A little bit of that feeling is always there. It’s maybe healthy, but it’s also healthy to get a loss here and there to kind of like, ‘Alright, here we go. Let’s recalibrate a little bit, have that attention to detail again.’ So it’s completely fine, and I think it’s necessary for us to keep going.”
By “keep going”, I assume the Porzingis means advance in the playoffs. And by most measures, the Celtics appear equipped to go all the way. They boasted the best net rating (+11.6) of this century before the loss. They were 28-4 in 10-point games, which included 13 20-point wins and three 50-point wins, including one over the surging Warriors on Sunday without Porzingis.
But they also haven’t won a championship in the seven years since drafting Jayson Tatum (who, by the way, also played the “good shots, didn’t make them,” card Tuesday night). They’ve made one Finals appearance despite four trips to the conference finals (three losses as the higher seed). And they’ve lost two of those series in seven games.
Point being: Playoff margins are small, and old habits die hard. The Celtics can write off Tuesday’s loss as one wake-up call from one star-for-a-day on a team they might not see again this season. But Boston didn’t look so invincible during its fourth-quarter collapse, which, considering the Celtics’ track record, should be cause for their concern — and Cleveland’s hope. Because whether it’s March or May, and whether Mazzulla loved or hated the lead-up to all of his team’s misses, Boston couldn’t execute in crunch time (again) during its loss to the Cavs, which — again — resulted in the biggest blown lead by any team this season.
Among the Celtics who spoke after Tuesday’s loss, only one seemed bothered. Forward Jaylen Brown, coincidentally the longest-tenured player on Boston’s roster, said the Celtics got what they deserved for not matching Cleveland’s “gas” and taking little things for granted. He chastised the team’s “lax mindset” in the fourth quarter and called the result a “mentality loss.”
Does that sound healthy for a title contender? Does it sound like a good situation? Or does it sound too familiar for Brown, who has lost enough serious playoff series to know that every play counts?
“Today matters,” Brown said. “Whether everybody wants to throw it away or not, we’ve got to go look at the film and address some stuff because that matters. Your habits are everything; your mentality is everything – every game. You can’t waste no possessions, can’t waste no time out there on the floor. So no, today matters. We need to look at that.”
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