How can something like this happen? How on earth did Boston essentially lose a whole quarter by 30 points?
Well, that’s why I’m here. To answer questions like this.
So I put my hazmat suit on, grabbed a gallon of Pepto, and kept a bucket nearby as I poured through the fourth quarter collapse. Let’s start just before that, at the end of the third.
Al Horford hit a 3-pointer with less than 40 seconds on the clock in the third quarter to give Boston a 102-85 lead. It put them only a couple points away from the full 19 point lead that they’d had. The Bulls had made a run to turn this into a battle, but the Celtics, it seemed, were in position to withstand it.
The Celtics, though, were determined to give the Bulls life.
On the next possession, the Bulls ran a pick and roll with Tony Bradley and Zach LaVine. Horford challenged the LaVine layup and it was missed, but no one got a body on Bradley and he laid in the rebound easily.
Horford was clearly not happy about being the only one giving effort on that play.
The Celtics are one of the worst teams in the league when it comes to allowing offensive rebounds.
After Dennis Schröder made one of two free throws, LaVine made a layup and it was a 14 point game going into the fourth quarter.
"I think it was probably towards the end of the third. Not playing as hard as we were, starting to relax. Got a little cute, careless,” Ime Udoka said after the game. “Some nights you deserve to lose when you don't take the game seriously. We lost our composure a little bit when they started blitzing Jayson (Tatum). But overall, I think that we relaxed and got lazy. Acted like the game was over."
The Celtics first possession of the quarter actually wasn’t bad. They generated a Tatum drive which was challenged at the rim and missed, but they got the ball back, moved the ball and ...almost... got where they needed to be.
One more pass, Josh Richardson
Yes Alex Caruso, a good defender, smartly had his hands out wide to deter the extra swing to the corner, but the pass was still there. I’d rather Tatum taking that shot than Richardson every day.
Bulls got a transition layup out of it.
The next trip down, Tatum gets it in the post and gets triple teamed. He sees a skip pass to Grant Williams who swings it over to Schröder, who airballed a 3-pointer.
So right away we have 3-point attempts from Richardson and Schröder to start the fourth quarter, which is exactly what Chicago wants in this scenario. Yeah, Schröder has been hot to start the season, but he’s generally not a great shooter, so teams will take their chances.
Grant Williams drew an offensive foul on the next trip down, so there was still time here at the start of the quarter to calmly create something good, but Horford turned the ball over trying to find Williams on a cut.
The Celtics stole it back and Tatum took a shot he often takes, a lightly contested fadeaway. I’m guessing it’s because he finally got single coverage and wanted to get a good look when he could. It’s one of those shots that, if he hits it, it’s a big shot. If he misses, we feel like it’s a little forced. I’m not going to go too crazy over that one in particular. In fact, at this point, two minutes into the quarter, Tatum has been passing out of double teams like he’s supposed to.
But then he got caught in no-man’s land on defense.
He just lost Caruso for a moment. It looked like he was caught between helping and finding his man. He did neither, really.
The next trip down, they use Tatum as the screener, which is one way to combat the doubles. The Bulls switch and Schröder turns the corner but he gets blocked from behind -- nice play by Caruso to do so without fouling. Schröder was a bit casual with it. Then this happened…
This is hard play to stop. Richardson sort of jogs towards LaVine instead of getting back. He doesn’t foul LaVine, and he doesn’t challenge the pass. Tatum was jogging back instead of sprinting, turning, and identifying the ball handler so he could challenge the pass somehow. This is just poor transition defense, again.
103-96 Celtics. Timeout. Critical time for Boston. Chicago made their run, it’s a seven point game, and the coach has his guys on the bench to catch a breather and regroup. Ime Udoka comes out of it with Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart joining Schröder, Richardson, and Robert Williams.
Schröder goes to the basket and is challenged. Brown is in the game and on his same side. This has to be a kick out to Brown, who is in the game as the team’s hottest player of the night.
This is either a corner 3, or a fake and drive and let Brown make a play. Instead, as they often do, missed layups turn into transition opportunities.
This is why teams push the ball. Robert Williams was late getting back into the play, LaVine was going downhill against a backpedaling Brown, and he forced the issue to draw an and-1.
It’s now a 4-point game and Boston runs a set play. They use this set all the time, so Udoka is trying something they’re comfortable with. Brown is blitzed and he makes the right play to Williams in the middle, who turns and whips it to the corner, where Richardson misses a wide open 3.
Again, personnel ... get the ball out of a star’s hands and into the hands of the worst shooter on the floor.
Chicago missed a 3, but Boston couldn’t corral the rebound. They had zero defensive rebounds in the quarter. Williams tried tipping it to Schröder, but it went off him out of bounds. Then LaVine waltzed to the basket.
“We really got rejected a few times where he got away from us on the screen,” Udoka explained of plays like this. “We wanted to send him into the screen with our big, because he’s a great shooter. If he rejects it and goes the other way there’s no help with the big high on the other side. That hurt us, he got away from us in the screen a few times.”
Tatum needs to be more aware here. He needs to recognize LaVine is coming and protect the rim.
Two point game after Chicago’s 50th point in the paint (half their points in the game).
On offense, Tatum again gave it up in the face of a double team and ultimately Smart got a layup out of it. A Chicago offensive foul gave Boston the ball back, eventually getting an open Tatum jumper which just missed.
LaVine makes a tough, challenged shot to put the Bulls within two. It’s the type of shot that a guy on a roll makes, and he was rolling.
Tatum tried passing out of a double team the next time down, but the ball went off a leg and back into the hands of the Bulls, who turned it into an Ayo Dosunmu 3-point shot and a one-point Bulls lead.
It took less than half the fourth quarter to give up the lead. The culprits to this point: lazy transition defense and a couple lapses by Tatum and the lack of shooting that everyone was worried about coming into the season. Richardson and Schröder missing shots after Tatum and Brown passed out of double and triple teams played perfectly into what Chicago wanted Boston’s offense to look like.
LaVine kept getting to the rim, running off handoffs and challenging Horford to make plays at the rim. Horford made a couple of plays at the rim himself but then it was DeMar DeRozan’s turn to kill the Celtics, which he did with a pair of jumpers, including one off a Horford turnover.
At the 5:00 mark with Chicago up by two, Tatum again gets blitzed and he gets it to Horford for a 3-point attempt that misses. Here’s where a touch of bad luck creeps in because Boston took a foul earlier in the quarter when Robert Williams had to leave the floor with an injury. So when Tatum fouled LaVine diving for a loose ball that he almost stole, it was Boston’s fifth foul, putting them in the penalty and giving Chicago a four point lead instead of the ball out of bounds.
This play was the ultimate killer.
Tatum had just finished a spectacular baseline move with a layup, the game was going back and forth, and then, suddenly, they got that off an offensive rebound. It was a tough rebound off a long miss, but at the same time, that’s a crushing rebound to give up. Chicago went on a 12-0 run after that. This is where the worst of their habits, like Tatum losing a guy in transition because he was crying about a foul or quick shots trying to make a homerun play.
By then, desperation had set in, and guys were starting to get antsy about making plays after having seen others unable to do so.
The Celtics gave Chicago some life late in the third quarter and they rode that into the fourth. The Celtics had opportunities to stop the runs on a few separate occasions, but they were slow to get back into transition and, because of that, they gave up easy shots and fouled too much.
We can question the personnel Udoka put on the floor, and wonder why someone like Aaron Nesmith has fallen so out of favor. Richardson did nothing special defensively in this collapse that would make me say “well, this is why you live with his bad shooting.” Nesmith could have done what Richardson did out there, and he might have been more of a weapon from deep.
We can also question some of the set plays and wonder if there are more opportunities for Boston to work Brown and Tatum off each other. I saw one play in this quarter where they screened for each other off the ball.
And we can certainly question the all-around offensive execution. Tatum and Brown made the right plays giving up the ball when they were blitzed, but how about not putting them in positions to get blitzed? Maybe get them the ball on the move a bit more so defenses can’t send two? Or, when we know two are going to the ball, use cutters in that open space to punish it? Or have Tatum and Brown cut more often themselves?
There’s no one thing that led to going from up 14 to start a quarter to down 14 at the end of it. This was a concerted collapse.
“We let the number one team in transition in the league get out in transition. Let one of the top teams in the league in forcing turnovers, force turnovers,” Smart said. “We let one of the best free throw shooting teams getting to the line, get to the line and they hurt us. They showed up and they came back and did what they do and we fell right into it and they trampled us.”
