BSJ Game Report: Five takeaways from the Celtics' 103-101 loss to the Magic

Five takeaways from the Celtics' 103-101 loss to the Magic with BSJ insight and analysis:

Box Score

1. Kyrie Irving is frustrated with the C’s inexperience: The Celtics had this game in hand on a couple of occasions, but some lackluster play by the second unit help the visitors blow a 10-point lead in the first half and a 12-point lead in the second half on the way to the 103-101 defeat. With a clear discrepancy in the plus/minus department between the starters (plus-65) and the bench (minus-73), Irving elected to let some of the young guys have it after the game in some pointed comments about the team lacking experience in a lengthy rant.

"Experience," Irving said of what this team is lacking. "It’s the best thing I can say is experience. We’re lacking it and, because of that, we have a lot of learning to do. So we have a lot of ground to make up in that aspect. It gets tough. When it gets hard you’ve got to think. You’ve got to do the right things. You can’t gamble and think that it’s going to be the winning play. You’ve got to be able to play the full 48 minutes, no matter what’s going on, and hold your head high when you make mistakes. When your job is called upon, you’ve got to do it to the best of your ability. You’ve got to come in and make an impact for the minutes that you’re playing out there.”

Irving scored 14 of Boston’s final 16 points as the C’s tried to rally down the stretch from a nine-point fourth quarter deficit before ultimately falling short as Jayson Tatum’s buzzer-beater rimmed out. However, it’s important to look at the big picture here. Between Irving voicing his frustrations on and off the court to the dustup between Marcus Morris and Jaylen Brown, tensions are still running high with this group, even after the “team meeting.” They are falling into old ugly habits and it’s costing them valuable games in the standings.

2. The road woes are developing into an issue: Saturday’s loss marked the fifth defeat for Boston away from the TD Garden over the past six games and dropped the C’s road record to 10-12 on the season. During that stretch, Boston has been mediocre on offense and horrific on defense in road arenas, allowing 113 points per 100 possessions, which is 10 points worse than their season average. Those issues cropped up in the second half on Saturday night as the Green allowed 64 points to the third-worst offense in the NBA. Terrence Ross (25 points) got hot and Aaron Gordon (28 points) played well but mistakes were prevalent in the half court after intermission that resulted in easy buckets. It’s a focus issue for a lot of players in this group and the C's won’t start consistently winning on the road until it is fixed.

3. The bench unit remains a chief concern: Brad Stevens has always liked to lump his bench players in together for long stints and that shouldn’t be a problem when you have so many starting caliber players coming off the bench in Terry Rozier, Brown and Gordon Hayward. However, that group along with Daniel Theis continues to be a weak spot, particularly in road environments. They couldn’t score in the first half in the midst of a Magic 16-3 run and they collectively helped blow another double-digit lead in the second half. With Al Horford seeing his minutes limit raised (30), it might be time to break up this four-man bench group a bit and keep two starters on the floor all game long. There have been too many nights recently when the reserves can’t carry their weight and Brad Stevens can’t continue to let that happen.

4. It might be time for Brad Stevens to shake something up in the rotation: Danny Ainge has said publicly he is not looking to make any trades to shake things up within this group and that’s not a major surprise. Therefore, it might be on Brad Stevens now to mix things up more beyond just substitution patterns. A chief candidate to be benched has to be Rozier based on his play of late. He’s gone 1-of-13 from the field over the last two games with continuous poor shot selection that has plagued him all year long. With his inability to make his teammates better and run the point effectively, something has to give unless his production changes. Whether that’s giving Brad Wanamaker some minutes over him at point guard or playing Rozier as strictly an off-guard, he’s been given far more latitude than some of his teammates. Stevens clearly doesn’t want to bench and ‘lose’ him, but Rozier is costing this team dearly on nights like Saturday.

5. Climbing up to the No. 1 seed is looking more like a pipe dream: The Raptors are now six games ahead of Boston with 40 games remaining in the season AND Toronto also has the easiest strength of schedule remaining in the league. Even with two head-to-head matchups looming, including one on Wednesday at the TD Garden, it’s hard to envision the Celtics getting on a winning pace right now that would allow them to make up that much ground against the NBA’s best team thus far. It looks like any trip to the NBA Finals is going to go through Toronto now and that’s not great news for a team that hasn’t won there in three years.