It was Star Wars night at Vivint arena in Salt Lake City, which explains Utah’s hot shooting. They very clearly used the force to guide some of those shots through the net (I don’t blame them. If I had the force, I’d absolutely use it to become an elite 3-point shooter).
The most 3-pointers Sith lord Mike Conley had ever taken without a miss was three prior to this game, so of course he found his way to a perfect 7-7 on a night that Boston’s offense finally erupts for 130.
It would be easier for the Celtics to accept that George Lucas-inspired dark arts were the reason for the Jazz ripping the nets off the rims with their shooting. The reality was that, like Luke Skywalker entering the cave during a failed Yoda test, the problems started with themselves.
“Thought we didn’t come out prepared for that,” Ime Udoka said of the Celtics first quarter effort. “I don’t feel we defended well. They hit a ton of tough shots late over really good contests, but to my point, by letting them get confidence and get going early, they hurt us later down the stretch.”
The Jazz came out of the locker room hot. Their first 3-pointer was a 31-foot bomb from Donovan Mitchell. Conley followed that up with one from 28 feet and another from 29.
The line is 23 feet, 9 inches away from the rim. If there was a 4-point line, they’d have cleared that by a comfortable margin too.
“I felt that we were there,” Al Horford said. “There were some that there were mistakes. We helped off them when we didn’t need to, we gave them looks. But I definitely feel there were some really, really tough ones, we were there, we contested them. And you’ve gotta shake their hand and give them credit. We’ve been playing really good defensively, and they were just hitting.”
Here’s one of the mistakes Horford was talking about.
Yes, Grant Williams helped when he shouldn’t have. Williams failed the KYP test -- know your personnel -- and Mitchell is too good to miss that pass. Bojan Bogdanovic is too good to miss that shot, too.
Watch Horford closely. As the ball is going through the net, he throws his arm out and says something to Williams. Horford and Josh Richardson had it covered. In fact, Richardson would have been blamed on this play if Williams stayed put because that would have become a tough contested shot that most likely would have missed and Hassan Whiteside was right there, uncovered, for the putback.
That's what happened on this play from Robert Williams.
Horford switched out on Bogdanovic and challenged the shot well, but Robert Williams came over like a moth drawn to a light, which left Rudy Gobert uncovered for offensive rebound.
Again, Horford is clearly upset, pounding the ball in frustration at the lack of defensive discipline.
The Jazz are one of the league’s elite (at least in the regular season), and the bottom line for Boston is that anything less than their absolute best against a team like that can make things ugly in a hurry.
“I think that we weren't aggressive enough on the defensive end in the first quarter,” Jayson Tatum admitted. “We gave up thirty-something. I think, from then on, they just felt comfortable. ... It was just a good team who got aggressive tonight.”
The Jazz hit 27 3-pointers, two shy of the NBA record for most in a game, yet it was not a team record. They hit 28 this past February. They also hit 26 twice this calendar year, and 25. They own five of the top 16 3-point shooting performances in all of NBA history and all of those came in 2021.
Full disclosure: I typed that last paragraph and then stopped, stared at it for a bit, and contemplated how this is even possible for five full minutes.
“Obviously to get up 51 and make 27, it’s going to be hard to win any night,” Udoka said. “We scored obviously plenty of points, 130 ourselves, so they didn’t stop us exactly either, but to not take that away early in the game helped them get a rhythm, helped them pretty carry them through the game.”
This trip is another one of those measuring sticks for the Celtics, and I’d say the Celtics come out of this game looking pretty good. They didn’t have one of their star players and they fought back against an elite team to take a late lead only to be undone by one of the greatest shooting nights the league has ever seen.
Considering the ugliness of the Sixers game, I think we can mostly agree that if you swapped the performances, Boston would still be 1-1 over those two games. This stretch definitely falls under the “sometimes you win games you should lose, and sometimes you lose games you should win” NBA cliché.
"Tonight was just one of those nights that I’ve never been a part of – a team hitting that many threes like that," Horford said. "And especially the type of threes – they weren’t necessarily all open; they were tough, contested threes. And it was definitely tough, but I felt that the group didn’t get discouraged."
But they don't count moral victories in the standings. The best team the Celtics have faced so far did what things no other has team has ever done to a Celtics team. The Celtics still almost won, but they also almost won. The next step is actually winning these games and turning the encouraging signs into actual wins.