Sunday’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder truly was the tale of two halves for the Boston Celtics. The first 24 minutes consisted of some of the best basketball we’ve seen from the Cs all year.
They had the now 30-5 Thunder in shambles after a highly-competitive start. The Celtics ballooned their lead up to 13 at one point and had the hosts rushing their entire offense.
Once the third quarter started, it was all Oklahoma City. They outscored the reigning champs 50-27.
“27 in the whole half, huh?,” questioned big man Kristaps Porzingis when presented with the stats postgame.
Yes, Kristaps. Only 27.
Listen, OKC put the Celtics in a blender. They upped their physicality to the max and Boston was frazzled.
“Once they turned up a little bit in the second, we played stupid, and we just gave some possessions away,” added Porzingis. “And once you start giving up possessions like this, it was just downhill for us, and rest of the time was battling uphill.”
He’s right. The Thunder sent multiple defenders at the ball handler, and just overall put more pressure on Boston, which made them crumble. All of a sudden, there were bad passes, rushed drives, and panic in just about every possession.
“It was a number of things,” said head coach Joe Mazzulla. “They had 17 points off turnovers in the second half. That’s a product of poor spacing, poor physicality on the ball, and poor screening…Those 17 points off turnovers I think were the difference maker down the stretch.”
Were the turnovers the difference maker?
Yes, absolutely.
Oklahoma City battled their way back into the game by getting the Cs to cough up the ball.
That doesn’t mean that the Celtics couldn’t have won this game. Despite the result being a disaster, Boston actually played pretty solid defense. They held one of the top teams in the league to just 105 points. With the last month of play considered, their effort on that side of the ball was certainly a silver lining.
The problem was that they couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean, shooting just 20% from the field in the second half. Again, the Thunder did a tremendous job creating chaos on defense, but there were still plenty of great looks that didn’t find the bottom of the net.
See below:
It’s always going to be pretty difficult to hold off a team when you only sink eight shots in an entire half — never mind if you’re playing the best team (record-wise, and probably talent-wise, too) in the Western Conference.
“Some stuff we forced a bit,” explained Porzingis. “Didn’t really give each other enough space. Some stuff they legitimately just played good defense. And some we missed… I don’t think we played selfish, but we didn’t play good.”
The sheer difference in efficiency between halves was remarkable. With the way that Boston was controlling the game before the break, there was no reason to feel that there would be such a shift.
Their freezing cold shooting combined with OKC’s determination to keep their 14, now 15-game winning streak alive, wound up being the story of the night. Sure, there was some abnormal dip there. Derrick White was 2-11 from deep, Sam Hauser was 1-5, Jrue Holiday was 0-4, and the list goes on.
Maybe that’s something that gets partially chalked up to this being Boston’s third game in four days, but that would be unfair to the Thunder. There’s no disputing that they came out and took this game right from the reigning champs.
The Cs will have a chance to get their lick back against OKC on March 12 when they visit TD Garden. For now, they’ll have to set their sights on the always-dangerous Denver Nuggets.
