BSJ Game Report: Thunder 119, Celtics 115 - C's shoot themselves in the foot again

Everything you need to know about the Celtics 119-11 loss to the Thunder with BSJ insight and analysis. 

Box Score

A new low. Just when you think the Celtics have things figured out and have learned their lessons of the ups and downs of this season, they give this effort. 

Everyone came into this game knowing they had to have this game, yet they still played like this. They gave up 41 points in the fourth quarter to the Oklahoma City Thunder a team that hadn’t won this month. 

“Your guess is as good as mine to be honest,” Jaylen Brown said when asked how they could come off a loss to the Hornets and still play like this. “I am not sure, but when we play the way we know we can play, we are tough to beat when we have that sense of urgency. I thought some guys had it, but we didn’t across the board. And if we don’t show up, we’re going to get beat. We don’t have a team that cannot show up and win games. We’ve gotta bring it, and as a full-team effort we didn’t bring it tonight.”

The Celtics keep getting dared and they gladly accept. “What they did on every screen, which we knew they were going to do, was they went under,” Brad Stevens said. “A lot of that's a dare.”

Daring the Celtics to shoot 3-pointers is like daring me to eat pizza. And while the Celtics need to take 3-pointers, they need to be generating them the right way. 

“Maybe you get a rescreen, you get a roll to the rim, then you get a kick out, but there's a lot of bodies in the paint,” Stevens said. “And that's what's available. There were some that were certainly forced, there's no question about it. And then there were some that were just missed.”

The Celtics had one stretch where they attacked, moved the ball, and generated the right kinds of shots and it got them back into the game. The rest of the time, not so much.

TURNING POINT

The Celtics were up 91-90 with 7:32 to play, and by the 2:25 mark, they were down 106-95. That's a 16-4 run by one of the worst teams in the league. It included eight missed shots, six of them 3-pointers. 

SECOND GUESS

The Celtics were down 3 with 30.8 left and chose to foul after going for a quick steal. Theo Maledon, a 74% free throw shooter, hit both and the “extend the game” strategy backfired. 

TOP PLAY

https://twitter.com/celtics/status/1387205347132145665

THREE UP 

Jaylen Brown: He held things together for most of the game to even give the Celtics a chance in this. He shot 13-26 from the field and 4-11 from 3. He cooled off significantly from deep as the game wore on, but he had 39 points, 11 rebounds, 4 assists, and 4 steals in this game. If it wasn’t for him, this would have been much uglier, much sooner.

Payton Pritchard: Pritchard with Brown’s sidekick with a 28 point night. That’s a new season-/career-high for him, though he, like Brown, cooled off after hitting a couple of early 3-pointers. He also made a couple of late defensive mistakes, but Pritchard had it all working offensively.

Luke Kornet: He stepped up in 20 minutes while Tristan Thompson was in foul trouble. He really defended well and he dropped 10 points on 5-7 shooting off the bench. It was a nice contribution that very easily will get lost in the misery of this game. 

THREE DOWN

Marcus Smart: He was 1-10 from deep and 4-17 overall from the field. There were definitely a few forced shots in Smart’s box score. He needs to be the guy who keeps the ball moving, especially without Kemba Walker and Jayson Tatum. 

Evan Fournier: He struggled from the field and could even keep it going after he finally hit back-to-back 3’s. His biggest problem right now seems to be a lack of confidence since returning from COVID.

“I want him to be aggressive,” Jaylen Brown said. “Today he passed up on some shots in the first half, trying to find his flow. Especially with Kemba and JT out we need him to be aggressive. Even if it’s a shot that he likes and feels good about, we all feel good about it. We need Evan to be aggressive. That’s what we brought him here for.”

Tristan Thompson: He got into foul trouble early and was a non-factor in this game. 

ONE TAKE KARALIS WILL PROBABLY REGRET LATER

This is the most unforgivable stretch of the season. I understood the earlier swoon. I understood the other factors involved in those games.

These games? Not so much. This wasn’t just a “we didn’t have three starters and we got beat” kind of game. The Celtics had chance after chance after chance to take this game. The OKC Thunder didn’t really want to win this, but the Celtics 

"Yeah, man, (expletive), we gotta play with more of a sense of urgency,” Brown admitted. “Tonight, I feel like we didn't have the sense of urgency that we needed across the board. And a team that has some young, talented players came ready to play and we got beat. We gotta come and have some pride and play with some urgency. I didn't think tonight was the night we played with urgency, especially after a tough game against Charlotte two days ago where we got our ass kicked. Everybody should've come ready to play with more urgency. And we didn't, for whatever reason."

Their last two losses were killers. They should have been 34-28 just like the Atlanta Hawks and New York Knicks. They had it right in front of them. The Hawks and Knicks are primed for a little slide but the Celtics just want to slide right along with them like they’re doing a line dance. 

There is still a little flicker of possibility that being whole eventually changes this, but they’re never whole, and they never respond well when they’re not. Circumstances or not, this team just doesn’t have the heart to do everything right from the beginning. 

These Celtics want to cram for the test the night before and then tell us “for whatever reason, we got a D.” They want to read the Cliffs Notes and pretend to know what’s going on.

Before the game, Stevens said “the bottom line is that we have to play as well as we can on every possession to give ourselves a chance to win. And I know that sounds like a coachism, but it’s the reality of it. We have to play well to win. We do not have this extra gear that people talk about, these switches. Like, we have to play well. We have to compete. We have to move the ball on one end. We have to defend with great urgency at the rim and at the 3-point line on the other end. And we have to play well. So if we don’t we’ll get beat tonight.”

So it’s not like they don’t know. The bigger question right now is whether they care.