Everything you need to know about the Boston Celtics 111-90 loss to the Phoenix Suns with BSJ insight and analysis.
IN A NUTSHELL
The Celtics came out and played a pretty good first quarter. They attacked early, and Jayson Tatum had a quick 12 points. It looked like they really got the message after some slow starts, and they fought the Suns toe-to-toe.
Then the second quarter happened.
Another disaster stretch saw the Celtics go four full minutes without scoring and fall behind big. They recovered a little in the third to win the quarter, but the fourth was all Phoenix.
HEADLINES
Shooting was atrocious: They could not make a shot, and that really impacted them on the other end. The frustration was obvious as they put up their worst shooting performance of the season. They let the misses get to them.
“Once the shots didn’t fall, guys started letting it affect them on the defensive end,” Ime Udoka said. “Made a ton of mistakes there, didn’t play with the same pace as the first quarter when we were emphasizing getting up and down. But it’s tough to maintain much cohesion with our group when you’re not scoring the ball, but you can’t let it affect you o0n the other end and I think we did that.”
Celtics defense never made the trip: The Celtics gave up 137, 117, 117, 114, and 111 on this trip. The 117, 114, and 111 were even misleading because those were garbage time games that easily could have been much worse.
TURNING POINT
It was 32-30 in the third quarter when the Suns whipped off a 10-0 run. After Dennis Schröder hit two free throws, Phoenix went 15-0.
Tatum hit a jumper that gave Boston their 30th point at the 8:16 mark. The next Celtics made basket (they made a few free throws) came at 1:26, nearly SEVEN entire minutes later.
SECOND GUESS
With Josh Richardson out, the Celtics bench was very thin. Udoka probably could have gone with Schröder off the bench to at least stagger some of the scoring. Considering how bad this game went, it might not have mattered, but maybe Romeo Langford and his ability to spot up and drive off those catches in the corner, could have held it down as a starter so Schroder had more of a chance to carry the offense without Tatum.
ZERO UP
Not after this game. The best I’m giving anyone on this night is not being on the “down” list.
THREE DOWN
Marcus Smart: A rough shooting season is getting worse for Smart. He was 1-13 in this one, 0-5 from deep. Once again, all but one of his 3-pointers came from above the break, which is just a killer for him.
Robert Williams: He’s in a defensive funk. So much of the progress that he made over the course of the season seems to have just disappeared.
The collective defense: They came out working hard, then they started missing shots, then it got to their heads.
“Let the game get away from us again, obviously, not sticking to the game plan, not paying attention to personnel, and it got ugly,” Robert Williams said. “It’s completely on us as players to take ownership, put a stop to something if you don’t like it. Can’t blame it on anybody else.”
TOP PLAY
Let’s at least have some fun with some weirdness.
Rob Williams passes the ball to himself and then knocks down the midrange jumper pic.twitter.com/ParhmvIevh
— Taylor Snow (@taylorcsnow) December 11, 2021
ONE TAKE KARALIS WILL PROBABLY REGRET LATER
Frankly, this was more about the Suns making the Celtics quit than it was about the C’s.
Yes, they were missing Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton, but they are still the NBA Finalists, they have mostly the same cohesive team as last season, and they have Chris Paul and Monty Williams.
The Phoenix Suns are really good.
This absolutely does not absolve the Celtics of their basketball sins in this game, but it is different than the past couple of games.
The Suns went on that early second quarter run and the Celtics ran back trying to answer baskets, not run a good offense to get a good basket. They got sucked into responding to the Suns rather than playing their own game.
When they did that in the first and third quarters, they were actually not bad. When they got away from that in the second and late third, they were pure yuck.
In the end, the difference doesn’t mean a whole lot because the end result is the same. The ol’ college try isn’t enough at this level. But, like a sprout springing from a scorched forest, there's something in there that the coach is hoping he can build on.
“Literally three games ago we were playing a totally different style with the effort and the heart and intensity,” Udoka said. “So it's been inconsistent for sure, but it was just here and it's been here for most of the year the way we played, whether we make shots or not, and so you can't let that affect us.”
This isn’t what any of you want to hear. Some of you want heads on pikes outside the Garden. Some of you are just turned off by the sheer ugliness of it all. That's all understandable.
This road trip was the exact opposite of what I expected. They had two good games, two really ugly ones that were almost entirely on them, and then this one, which was just about as gross but in just a slightly different way.
Gross is gross though, and no one likes that. We knew December had the potential to be this bad and it could get worse. Udoka has to tap into whatever little drops of water he can find to give this team some life, or Monday could start bringing out the “rock bottom” storylines.