BSJ Game Report: Clippers 91, Celtics 82 - Historically bad shooting night dooms C's as slide continues

Everything you need to know about the Boston Celtics' 91-82 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers with BSJ insight and analysis:

IN A NUTSHELL

The Celtics and Clippers basically exchanged runs all game long, but the Celtics never could get it going from deep no matter how much they tried, which was a lot. The Celtics did a lot of other things right -- They held a 54-26 edge in points in the paint, 13-10 in fastbreak points, 19-16 in bench points, 8-14 in turnovers, 21-9 in offensive rebounds, 28-8 in second-chance points. They just couldn't make a damn thing.

HEADLINE

Holy cold shooting: This really is the only headline coming out of this one. The Celtics shot 4-42 on 3-pointers, which is obviously quite bad. Shooting 9.5% from behind the arc is never advisable. The Clippers were held to 40.7% shooting and Boston took 20 more shot attempts. 

TURNING POINT

The Celtics were down 78-74 with about five minutes left in the game — the Celtics got three good looks from deep but could hit none of them. Eventually Brown made a layup to make it a two-point game, but the Clippers closed the game on a 13-6 run. 

FOUR UP

Jaylen Brown: No one shot well from 3, but Brown did attack early on and shot 13-23 on 2-pointers (including some tough misses at the rim at the end). He had a couple of steals for breakaway dunks and, while he had no assists, he had 8 potential assists. You can argue that maybe he shouldn’t have taken as many 3’s, but aside from a couple of quick pull ups, most of his shots were fine.

Grant Williams: Don’t know why he only played 20 minutes. He was the only guy who shot a respectable number (2-3) from deep. 

Robert Williams: TEN offensive rebounds for Williams in this one. He kept a lot of possessions alive. He was bullied a bit by Ivica Zubac, who had 5 offensive rebounds of his own. 

Al Horford: Also a horrible shooting night for him (0-7 from 3) but he managed 8 assists, 2 steals, and 3 blocks for a decent all-around performance that would have looked a whole lot better had some of those shots been on target. 

TWO DOWN

Payton Pritchard: He couldn't make up for the lousy shooting on the other end. He was picked on defensively, especially early. 

Romeo Langford: He made a couple of nice cuts that were rewarded, but he also had some more defensive mistakes, including one on Luke Kennard that got him pulled from the game after two minutes of play. 

TOP PLAYS

TWO TAKES KARALIS WILL PROBABLY REGRET LATER

This wasn’t as bad as it looked. 

There is nothing pretty about 4-42 shooting from 3, and yes, we can point to some of these shots as being forced or jacked too early in the shot clock. 

At the same time, these really were shots that should have fallen. 

What that means is the type of shots the Celtics got from the people shooting those shots should have fallen at a much higher clip under normal circumstances. It takes into account the type of shot, who is shooting it, and where they're shooting from. 

“Obviously, a lot of high-quality looks, good looks. Couldn't ask for more wide-open looks,” Ime Udoka said. “Nobody tries to miss shots on purpose, we're being unselfish and passing the ball to get wide-open shots against the zone. That's what they're trying to do, protect the paint and make us take those threes.”

The looks were good, but the Celtics were also very willing to shoot, even straight off offensive rebounds with a new 14 seconds to shoot. Shouldn’t the Celtics have worked the ball around more?

“When you shift a zone, getting the ball into the middle there and you kick out to a wide open 3, whether it's at 14, 12, whatever (on the shot clock), I don't think you pass that shot up,” Udoka said. “Especially against a zone, you probably won't get a better shot in that possession. So the open ones are the open ones.”

The numbers support Boston’s explanation. 

Here’s the three 3-pointer sequence I mentioned earlier. 

“Usually those hit,” Grant Wiliams said. “At the end of the game the Clippers missed three in a row - they got an offensive rebound off a free throw, kicked it out, missed, kicked it out again, missed, got it out to Bledsoe and he hit it. Those are the shots you look for.”

Now, the Clippers' game plan very much seemed to be allowing the Celtics to get those shots and dare them to hit them. After the man-to-man didn’t work earlier, the zone basically was about mucking it up and packing the paint. 

“We'd like to go a little more big-to-big, high-low action to get something near the basket or guys finishing around, but when they collapse it, we kicked out and got open looks and that's all you can really ask for against that zone,” Udoka said. “And on a night we shoot it better, obviously we're in the 100s and it's a different story.”

Even if I grant you every example you pull of a forced 3-pointer, the ones that weren’t still should have fallen and they just didn’t. 

There are other areas to be more upset about

“When you hold a team to 91, some of the sloppiness in transition when you do have a chance to get some easy baskets, those stand out,” Udoka said. “Didn't get to the free-throw line a ton and then the simple play like the offensive rebound toward the end of a two-point game, as poorly as we shot, we still have a chance and then give up three offensive rebounds, they hit a three. Several things to look at besides the shooting.”

The Celtics are a terrible transition team. They don’t know how to run a fastbreak at all this season. They continue to give up offensive rebounds, including committing the cardinal sin of giving one up on a free throw. 

They held the Clippers to 91 and they made some real bad mistakes that could have swung the game even with the shooting. Frankly, as I watched the game, it wasn’t until late in the third that I thought the shooting was going to kill them. I thought second chances and defensive mistakes were their undoing. 

I’ll leave this recap with one of my favorite things to say about a game: If all you see on the floor is makes and misses, you’re missing a whole lot of basketball. The Celtics shot a disgusting number from deep, but there were, actually, other things they could have done to win.