Saturday’s loss to the Atlanta Hawks might’ve been the worst of the season for the Boston Celtics. What’s really sad is that I could’ve used that line two other times in the last eight days.
It was pretty tough to imagine that they’d be able to top the lifeless effort that they showed up at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on Wednesday, but they did. Boston’s 13th loss of the season had it all: missed layups, poor defense, second-chance points, questionable offense, and game-costing mental lapses.
Let’s take a quick walk through the house of horrors, shall we?
The Cs actually started this game pretty strong and left the first quarter with a 12-point lead over Atlanta. Fans got their first warning that they could be in for it early in the second when Boston SMOKED back-to-back fastbreak chances.
They spent the remainder of the quarter missing shot after shot as the Hawks flew past them to capture the lead. The Celtics shot just 5-21 in the period and turned the ball over six times. It was a BRUTAL watch (as has been the last month and a half).
Though Boston recovered nicely in the third quarter, they still sprinkled in some impressive misses from point-blank range.
Considering this game went to overtime, these misses just hurt that much more.
If you want to talk about pain, look no further than the fourth quarter. It wouldn’t be a January Celtics loss without a fourth quarter letdown, now would it?
Boston’s unfocused defense reared its ugly head as they allowed Atlanta to climb back once again.
It’s incredible. We’ve seen plays like the ones above in several of these recent losses. There has been absolutely no sustained change somehow. Sure, they looked good against the Orlando Magic on Friday night, but that sort of effort was nowhere to be found when they needed it.
The lone bright spot in this game was Payton Pritchard’s hot scoring stretch that fueled the offense in the fourth.
He poured in 13 points on 5-6 from the field, including this behemoth triple at a pretty important part of the game.
THIS WAS THE LAST SHOT THAT HE HAD.
HOW???????
The guy just injected life into a team that looked dead for half the quarter and then he’s just left out?
The Celtics literally wasted a possession trying to switch Trae Young off of Pritchard and onto Jayson Tatum, so Tatum could attack him, only for it to result in a 30-foot heave.
Why wouldn’t they just let Pritchard work on Young?
Of course, everyone saw, or at least knows about, the absolute disaster stretch at the end of regulation. That’s right, “stretch,” not “moment.” This wasn’t just one mistake — it was several. After Onyeka Okungwu threw a bad pass out of bounds, it felt like the Cs were about to dribble the clock out for their 30th win of the year.
Then this happened.
Boston was still in control and decided to take a foul to give the Hawks two free throws to protect the three-point lead. The moment when the Cs lost control was when Jayson Tatum went 1-2 from the line on the following possession, only moving the lead back up to two, rather than three.
Everyone knew what the difference was, except for Jrue Holiday, who unintentionally fouled Trae Young and gave him a pair of free throws to send the game to overtime. The sequence of unforced errors erased a much-needed win from the win column.
What cemented it in the loss column was the inability to finish defensive possessions in overtime. I’m not going to go in and pull clips of this. What I can tell you is that the Hawks only missed four shots in OT. They had three offensive rebounds, one of which came with a chance for Boston to secure possession and a chance to win the game.
We’ve reached a point where the Celtics are trying to tell us who they are and we’re just going to have to listen. It’s going to take quite a bit now to convince me they’ve figured something out. Friday’s win was great, but it clearly did nothing. All of the bad habits resurfaced once the threes stopped finding the bottom of the net — the way it’s gone all season.
