“We don't do this shit on purpose. I promise you, we don't. We trying as hard as we can.” - Jayson Tatum.
Welcome to the latest edition of “we know what you’re saying is true, but it’s really hard to believe you” theater (working title).
We know the Celtics don't want things to go this way, yet they keep doing things in games to make them go this way. It’s a familiar refrain from earlier in the season when the Celtics were doing similar things, just on a more planetary scale.
The days of the massive blown leads are gone, but that doesn’t mean some of those tendencies don’t lurk just beneath the surface. Just because they’ve harnessed the power of the collective doesn’t mean the individual still doesn’t gum up the works sometimes.
Boston led the game 94-90 with less than five minutes to play. They were outscored 17-3 the rest of the way.
That's a tough time to have a November/December callback.
“I think we just kind of got a little stagnant,” Derrick White said of Boston’s late-game scoring woes. “Everybody just kind of standing around looking at whoever had the ball, no player movement, no ball movement. We just got to do a better job executing down the stretch. I mean, that's the difference in the game right there.”
Boston is built on defense, but their offense can really help that defense out a lot in games like this.
The more the Celtics just stand around, the less the Warriors have to move. The less they move on defense, the more energy they have to run out off Boston misses. When they can run off misses or turnovers, they can get easier baskets, which means they can set their defense again, and the cycle continues.
“We just have to stay organized,” Jaylen Brown said. “That's on our veteran players to get us organized in those moments. At times we get unorganized and kind of get on top of each other. The spacing kind of closes down. That's where some of those turnovers come from. We have to do a better job.”
This is the part where we all say “yeah? Well, go do it!” We all recognize that the Warriors are a really good team that is also on the verge of a championship, so they have something to say about all this, but just like the other areas where Boston struggles, there is a lot the Celtics can do to help themselves before the Warriors are in a position to make plays. The Celtics can lean on the basics, of which they are very well aware.
“If the ball gets stuck and you see it, go screen somebody,” Marcus Smart said. “But we have to move. We cannot let the ball get stagnant and let them load up on us.”
I don’t know if it’s fatigue, old habit, or a reliance on the notion that crunch time is when stars bring a team home, but the late-game offense too often becomes finding an advantageous matchup for Tatum and hope he can exploit it.
He hasn’t done that enough.
“Any time I hold it too long, they load up,” Tatum admitted. “I think just quick decisions, don't turn down any open looks, any daylight that I have, just continue to try to make the right pass. I had too many turnovers tonight. I think just make quicker decisions.”
Again, we know Tatum is telling the truth here, but it’s hard to believe that he’s getting the message because it continues to happen. The Celtics love slowing it down and isolating down the stretch. We should all be so lucky to find anyone who loves us as much as the Celtics love isolating late in games.
Chances are they’ll do a better job in Game 5, because that's who they are as well. They are tough enough mentally to stand up in crucial moments and play good basketball. They have proven that. They have short memories when it comes to losses, and they tend to bounce back very well.
The problem is that they also have short memories after wins, too, so they don’t seem to be able to handle a little prosperity very well.
When we did have a five-, six-point lead, it felt like we didn't have our best possessions, and kind of let them back in the game, whether it was turnovers or poor offense,” Ime Udoka said. “That's gone along with our season, especially this postseason. We had to do it the difficult way. We have been battle-tested throughout some series, Milwaukee, Miami. We have to do it again.”
Yeah, they do. It’s their ability to do it over and over that's both heartening and infuriating. Because we know they know how to do it. And while they're not trying to lose, it doesn’t always feel like they're trying to win, either.
“It could have been an easier road, obviously, if you get the win tonight. But it is what it is,” Udoka said. “We're 2-2 now. We know we can do it. We've done it before. Keep your head up and let's go get one on the road.”