Robb: Plenty of blame to pass around for Celtics in Game 3 disaster

CLEVELAND -- It all seemed a little bit too easy for the Celtics over the first two games against a LeBron James-led squad. That all changed quickly in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Saturday night at Quicken Loans Arena.

A three-day break gave the Cavs plenty of time to look themselves in the mirror, while the Celtics had just as much time to read their press clippings and hear all the praise that was being lavished upon them by the masses. Whether or not it got to their heads remains unclear, but that’s the message Terry Rozier seemed to send in the wake of a dismal 116-86 defeat, the biggest deficit of the season for the C’s.

“I mean, it’s something that we’ll look over the film, go back and see all the mistakes we made, how can we correct them for Monday,” he explained. “We know it’s not going to be easy Monday, but we know we’ve gotta come out and play better. I feel like we needed this to get us back, to get us ready for Monday.”

Rozier was asked to elaborate on just exactly what he meant when stating his team needed a 30-point beatdown to get them back.

“We needed to get our butts whipped, come back to reality, and take care of business on Monday,” he declared.

Will said wake-up call be enough to get the Celtics back on track in Game 4? A closer look at the dominant effort by the Cavs in Game 3 shows that the Celtics made life pretty easy for them in all facets of the game.

Isolation offense 

Rozier and Marcus Morris have been the worst two shooters on the road for the Celtics this postseason, yet each guy put it on themselves to be the early hero in Game 3. The duo combined to take half of Boston’s 18 shots in a disastrous offensive first quarter (17 points, 33 percent shooting), the majority of which were long mid-range jumpers or improvised isolations. Marcus Smart (2-of-9) also added his fair share of questionable attempts over the course of the evening to contribute to the issue.

“I'll go through the film and go through it and figure out us,” Brad Stevens said. “We talked about it -- I thought we took a lot of tough pull-ups in that quarter. But for now, clearly the team that played with more energy was Cleveland, and they guarded us with great togetherness.”

With Rozier and Morris firing, Jaylen Brown, Al Horford and Jayson Tatum combined to take a mere three total field goals attempts in the frame, despite being the team’s three most efficient weapons this postseason.

Ty Lue actually deserves some credit for slowing Brown down. He watched him average 13.5 points in the first quarter of both games this series and that was enough to wake LeBron James up on the defensive end. James got into Brown enough to force a couple early turnovers and the Cavs sent multiple bodies into his area when he got the ball in space.

“We changed a couple things up,” Ty Lue admitted. “We know Jaylen is a first-quarter player. He plays good throughout the game, but he really sets the tone early in that first quarter. So we wanted to do a good job on him. I thought LeBron really did a good job of closing out to him, making him put it on the floor, cutting him off and making him play in the crowd. It was good for us to slow him down that first quarter because he's been really good in Boston. That was good for us.”

While the defensive pressure changed Brown’s effectiveness, the C’s did not show good patience in trying to find Horford and Tatum, particularly early in the game. By the time Boston’s offense finally did stabilize a bit in the second quarter, they were already staring at a 17-point deficit and that’s when they finally got Tatum involved more (team-high 18 points). That never happened with Horford (series-low four field-goal attempts), something that needs to change as Rozier pointed out.

“There’s no way Al Horford, our Porsche, don’t get a shot in the first quarter,” Rozier said. “So we were all over the place, playing too fast, and (we need to) get it together.”

It’s one thing to have a bad shooting night (39 percent), it’s another to score just 86 points against one of the worst defenses in the NBA. The Cavs are going to be able to score in bunches when they play at home most nights, so the C’s can’t resort to hero ball with lackluster shooters to try to keep pace. They will never have a chance against this crew with that kind of shot distribution.

Defensive woes

The Celtics’ defensive discipline also failed to make the trip to Cleveland and fittingly it was a team effort when it came to the number of mistakes that this group made throughout the evening. The Cavs made a postseason-high 17 3-point field goals, and shot better from 3-point range (50 percent) than the field (48 percent). Five different players made three or more treys, signifying the first time that LeBron’s supporting cast had shown up all series long.

The vast majority of these open looks were caused by miscommunications and unnecessary gambles by various members of the Celtics defense. Brown was one of the worst culprits on this front, as he lost George Hill and J.R. Smith on multiple occasions and was out of position a few times with James. These struggles were similar to some of his rookie season mistakes that earned him a spot on the bench on many occasions last postseason. The same happened in Game 3 as he played just 20 minutes, the lowest by a wide margin among the starters.

Next on the list is Morris. The veteran did a terrific job on James over the first couple of games individually, but he was burned by James on numerous possessions of Game 3. Morris kept trying to ready himself to deal with picks from Tristan Thompson and James made him pay for the extra space he was given (3-of-3 from 3-point range). When Morris did tighten up on the forward, James got around him and found a way to the rim.

Rozier was another guy who did far too much ball watching early, which helped allowed Hill (11 first-quarter points) to break out of his funk and kept the Celtics in scramble mode all night long.

“We just didn't play our coverage,” Smart explained. “Guys were out of position, guys didn't know what we were doing. That is just communication. We weren't talking like we were in Games 1 and 2. We could barely hear each other. They did what we did to them over the first two games.”

When the damage was done, the Cavs scored 29 points or more in three of four quarters.

Questionable rotation choices

While the Celtics players are firmly on the hook in this effort, it was a little puzzling to see Brad Stevens trot out Guerschon Yabusele and Greg Monroe while facing a double-digit deficit in the first half. Yabusele proceeded to lose Hill around a double screen almost immediately upon entering the game and missed a pass from Aron Baynes on a cut on the very next possession. Meanwhile, Monroe was burned in the pick-and-roll and on the perimeter on several possessions in the second quarter. Unless James is out of the game, his defensive liabilities really make him unplayable in this series. Stevens was clearly looking for some sort of a spark by trying out both but it ultimately just made a bad deficit even worse.

“We were going to have to steal minutes with some guys,” Stevens explained. “Right now, with the way that they're playing, we're going to need some other guys to be ready to go come Monday.”

Monroe and Yabusele certainly don't look like the answer on that front, so it will be very interesting to see what direction Stevens goes in. A change in the starting lineup (Aron Baynes? Semi Ojeleye?) could be in order. Shane Larkin remains out with a shoulder injury so the only player that didn't see meaningful minutes tonight was Abdel Nader. Stevens obviously doesn't have a lot of options, so the challenge will be steep to contain a Cavs' offense that has its confidence back.

Time to panic?

It was a painful performance but a blowout was coming in one of these games. These Celtics have exceeded expectations but they’ve been a different team on the road all postseason long and they held true to form on that front tonight. The lack of fight was surprising and a bit disturbing (Boston never got the deficit below 14 points after the first quarter) but that’s what happens when you aren’t playing well against a desperate opponent.

The Cavs were never going to lay down in this series and the Celtics found that out the hard way on Saturday night. Now it’s up to them to regroup before letting the Cavs head back to Boston with all the momentum.

"We still have that opportunity. We're still hungry and we're not satisfied,” Smart explained. “It's a reminder that every game you have to bring it, especially in the playoffs. No one is just going to give you anything special on the court. Everybody plays well on their home court so we have to go and take it.”