These are the days where you just hope it’s all worth it for the Boston Celtics.
The Celtics were right there against an Atlanta Hawks team that's clearly more talented than their record. We will bemoan the 24 points off 18 turnover statistic without giving Atlanta proper due for their involvement in at least a few of those. The Hawks protected the rim against Jayson Tatum’s drives and turned misses and mistakes into painful lessons.
Still, the cold-shooting Celtics with greased hands and a propensity for fouling were right there.
One point game. Ball in their hands.
“Settled for some tough shots. We could have attacked like we did in the third but settled for some cross-matches,” Ime Udoka said. “We settled for some threes and turned the ball over. Pretty much that simple. Eighteen for the night for 24 points and some came during that crucial stretch where we either settled or didn’t get a shot off at all.”
Tatum and Jaylen Brown weren’t the only ones settling out there. Udoka pulled the coach’s version of settling when he put Dennis Schroder on the floor with Marcus Smart, despite all the evidence that shows that pairing doesn’t work.
It took the ball out of Smart’s hands on a night when he was the best offensive player on the floor. Smart’s stated goal is to set up his star wing teammates, but he can’t do it waiting for the ball in the corner.
“Overall, Marcus was playing really well, Dennis was pushing the pace in the third when we got back into it and really wanted to have more scorers out there around when we were struggling to score tonight,” Udoka said. “So had those two out there with Jayson and Jaylen together so -- haven’t played it as much but at times, obviously, it's been really good for us at times earlier in the year and more so a situational thing with some of the guys not playing as well off the bench.”
The last line there is the answer. No one else off the bench was playing well, Schroder had a decent stretch, and so Udoka settled on that lineup because it was all he had.
But just like we ask Tatum and Brown to do the hard work of making the right reads, attacking, and finding teammates, Udoka has to do the hard work of reading what the team needs on the floor, attacking the other team’s weaknesses, and finding the right combinations.
And just like we’re waiting on Tatum and Brown to figure it out on a more consistent basis, the same applies to the coach.
They're all learning. They're all very good at what they do, despite how the results may be interpreted. Udoka earned his spot at the top of most coaching lists just like Tatum and Brown earned their selections at the top of the NBA draft. Gregg Popovich speaks glowingly of former protégé, and in a way that should reassure anyone with doubts about his abilities.
Still, watching someone drive for a few years is a lot different than driving. And the car Udoka is driving needs a bit of work. The engine is good, but the brakes suck and there's no power steering, so it’s cool on a nice open road but it’s terrible to drive when there are a lot of turns and traffic.
It would help him a lot if Tatum and Brown could figure their pillar selves out. Coaching is a hell of a lot easier when you can say “hey Jayson and Jaylen, make buckets” and they comply. They do a lot of the time, but not enough of the time right now.
“I know that myself, I may have settled for one too many 3s,” Tatum admitted, which is good. Self-realization is a step towards fixing things. “I think at the beginning, we were taking some tough shots, and we had too many turnovers. We turned the ball over that much, and they get some transition buckets, they just start to feel a little bit better about themselves. Half-court defense, we were pretty solid, but just turning the ball over in the beginning kind of hurt us.”
Jaylen Brown owned up to his part too, saying “I think I was shooting when I was supposed to pass and passing when I was supposed to shoot. Atlanta did a good job of keeping me on my toes, but just overall a lax game. Too many turnovers. And that’s my fault.”
These are the days where you just hope it’s all worth it for the Celtics.
Their failures sting a lot in the moment, but these are the failures that, hopefully, become lessons learned. If they don’t, then the whole thing has to be scrapped, and nobody wants that. But if they do, then we’ll look back on these days with a little more fondness for the growing pains they went through together.
Tatum summed it up for all three of them.
“I’m far from perfect, there are a lot of things I wish I would have done differently,” he said. “But sometimes it works, sometimes it don’t and you learn from it, you watch film and move on to the next game.”
