Everything you need to know about the Boston Celtics 110-99 loss to the Atlanta Hawks with BSJ insight and analysis.
IN A NUTSHELL...
The Hawks and Celtics spent a lot of the first half trading runs and throwing haymakers at each other, but the Hawks started to get some separation at the end of the half. Boston got the game down to four in the third quarter but the Hawks answered with a flurry of their own and, while the Celtics didn’t fold, they never could make that one last serious run down the stretch.
HEADLINES
Trae Young is too good: The Celtics threw everything at him, switches, traps, chasing over the top of picks -- none of it really mattered. His shooting wasn’t good (4-12, 0-6 3pt), but he had 11 assists and the attention he was getting off the blitzes turned into multiple passes and baskets.
Boston needs shooting: Jayson Tatum was 5-12 (41.7%) from 3. Grant Williams was 3-8 (37.5%). Shooting 8-20 is 40% and 40% from 3 will win you a lot of games ... except the rest of the team was a combined 3-21 which was ... well ... let’s just say the poison center show those shooting numbers to people to get them to vomit immediately. I’ll have more on this separately, but this needs to be fixed.
Tatum comes alive: He shot 54.5% from the field and still dished 5 assists. It would be nice to get him the ball down the stretch (again, more on this later).
TURNING POINT
After a Tatum 3-pointer cut the lead down to four, Marcus Smart missed a contested layup, which the Hawks converted into a Bogdan Bogdanovic 3-pointer. After Al Horford couldn’t handle an alley oop, the Hawks got it back down to Bogdanovic for another 3. It went from four to 10 in 26 seconds.
SECOND GUESS
Ime Udoka lamented Boston’s lack of shooting, but they didn’t put Grant Williams into the fourth quarter until 3:54 with the Celtis down 12. Josh Richardson wasn’t horrible overall, but he was 0-3 in the fourth, 0-2 from 3.
THREE UP
Jayson Tatum: 34 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists. It was nice to see some 3-pointers fall. It would be nice to see this game kick off a bit of a run for Tatum during this big stretch of home games coming up.
Grant Williams: He tied a career-high with his 18 points and was 6-12 overall from the field. His shooting carried Boston early in the game until Tatum got hot.
Al Horford: There were times when he was the best defensive player on the floor. There were some down times when he couldn’t contain Young, but there were some times where he did a good job of it.
ONE DOWN
The bench (non-Josh Richardson edition): Richardson had his moments outside of the fourth quarter, so he was alright. Everyone else struggled. Romeo Langford and Aaron Nesmith got important minutes and were 0-3 from deep and 0-4 overall. Enes Kanter got 4 offensive rebounds but couldn’t convert any of them. And no one could defend a pick-and-roll.
TWO SO-SO
Marcus Smart: He made some great defensive plays and dished 11 assists, but his cold shooting is just rampaging on. We know all about his shooting, but he’s especially cold. He also had a tough stretch in the third quarter that factored into Atlanta’s turning point.
Dennis Schröder: 15 points on 6-12 shooting is fine, but he felt mostly non-existent.
TOP PLAY
🗣 AND OOOONNNE pic.twitter.com/WgDMMXeUOP
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) November 18, 2021
ONE TAKE KARALIS MIGHT REGRET LATER
I know full well that this will change once Jaylen Brown returns from injury, but in these situations, it’s absolutely unacceptable that Jayson Tatum went nearly seven full minutes without a shot attempt.
“It’s what teams are gonna do. Some teams have blitzed him and some teams are showing him that crowd,” Ime Udoka said. “Credit to him, he’s getting off the ball. The thing we always tell him is if guys are making shots, you pass up a shot and get a good look it’ll open up the lanes for you. So, he’s doing the right thing.”
Yes. He’s doing the right thing. No one wants Tatum forcing everything. If he tried to force the issue and turned it over, we’d be killing him for late-game turnovers, so fair is fair.
However, giving the ball up doesn’t mean removing him from the play. At some point, the team has to get creative in how Tatum handles the ball late in the game so he’s not always blitzed.
“We could try to get him balls in other spots, on the post perhaps, but we liked what he was doing in pick-and-roll, off-ball actions,” Udoka said. “Easy to double him in the post, so we didn’t go to the post as much, and just got to trust teammates, like we all do, and encourage him to do the right thing, which is getting off the ball, and guys got to make the teams pay when they double him.”
That’s part of a separate issue for a separate piece. And it’s true that if Tatum gives the ball up and it swings to an open shooter who drills it, the reaction would be “wow, great ball movement and great unselfishness by Tatum.” So that’s also a fair reaction.
Except it’s not happening. Guys aren't hitting shots. And while it is absolutely appropriate to trust teammates in those situations, there just has to be some sort of counter where the Celtics aren’t doing exactly what the other team wants.
“I think that’s a responsibility that not a lot of people I guess understand,” Tatum said. “And it’s something that being in that situation, being in that position, that guy on the team, you’ve gotta try to figure out.
“And it is a balance. And I think the simple answer is to make the right play. And that could be passing to somebody, being a good screener or finding a matchup and creating for yourself. So it’s hard to just kind of answer that, but each possession is a little different than the rest.”
I swear I’m not doing the reactionary reporter thing that I’d contradict if the results of the play were a little different. The Celtics will get away with it from time to time when guys are hot, and the conversation is different when Brown is one of the other guys on the floor.
But no matter what, Ime Udoka needs to have some plays in his back pocket that either allow Tatum to catch the ball in situations where the blitzing is less likely, or some secondary action off those blitzes, like a back-pick or something as soon as he passes it, for him to spring back open and get the ball back.
There has to be something other than him giving it up and not getting it back, because the Celtics keep saying it’s the right play, but it’s also exactly what the opposition wants.
