Something was off, and while it felt like getting things right was something that could be figured out quickly, it just never could quite get right. For 40 minutes, they struggled to get things straightened out but no matter what they tried, the damage had been done. All they could do was start over and hope for the best.
That both describes Boston’s night against the Denver Nuggets, and the delay caused by Robert Williams' big alley oop, which both came almost exactly at the 40-minute mark, causing a 40-minute stoppage while Denver’s maintenance tried to get things level.
Right away, Boston tried something it hadn’t really done, that teams generally don’t do, in trying to double Nikola Jokic. It’s almost as if their LA Clippers game plan got mixed into the Nuggets strategy, because they went at Jokic as hard as they went after Kawhi Leonard.
The problem is that Jokic shrugs double teams off with ease. He’s tall enough to not be bothered by guards blitzing him, and he’s such a wizard with the ball that he can will it to any open man. And once that open man has been blessed by Jokic’s magic touch, there's a chance he could get verrrrrry comfortable.
“They shot the hell out of the ball,” Jaylen Brown said after the loss. “17-30 from 3, that's an anomaly … the guys what was shooting the ball like that don’t usually shoot the ball like that. So they definitely came out and were ready to play. We took one of their better shots. We just gotta do more and not let them get too comfortable. I think that's more on us than it is on them. If you want someone to stop doing something, you gotta take it away.”
Anomaly might be the word of the night for Boston.
Marcus Smart and Malcolm Brogdon shooting a combined 3-18?
The Nuggets shooting 63% from 3 at the point of the game delay?
A rim being broken beyond repair, forcing a backup rim to be installed?
Anomalies all, and things that can get brushed off in the grand game of “stuff happens in sports.” When Bones Hyland is making deep step-back 3-pointers after dribbling out the entire shot clock, it might not be your night. Take the L with you on the way out, pack your toothbrush, and hope the luck changes in Oklahoma City.
However one aspect of this game that has been chalked up as a similar outlier is starting to become more of a constant.
Boston’s 3-point shooting dipped below 30% for the sixth time in 10 games. It’s a small sample size, for sure, but it’s happened often enough, recently enough that the trend line is concerning.
At least it is for us.
“What do we do when the shots aren’t falling?” Joe Mazzulla said after the game. “We offensive rebounded, we got to the free throw line, we got out of transition, we shot 50% from two. We probably didn't shoot enough threes. We should have shot a little bit more.”
Whew, that's a tough one to hear, but Mazzulla does nothing if not challenge conventional thinking. We will watch a game like this and say the answer is to attack more, but Mazzulla really believes in Boston’s shooting ability.
Some of what he says might just be more of an attempt to keep confidence high. After all, this is just one game with one team getting a bunch of positive outlier performances while the other dealt with negative outliers, so there's no need to hammer guys for it. The message is to keep taking the good ones because eventually those will fall.
The Celtics haven't had a lot of practice figuring out ways to win when they're shooting this poorly. They seemed to be taking steps forward in recent games, but progress isn’t a straight line. Sometimes, circumstances don’t let teams focus quite as much as they need to get past the bad stretches.
“Human nature kind of lets that affect the defensive end,” Jayson Tatum admitted. “Really good teams can counter that. Just figure out a way to win and you know, 26 and 11, more often than not, we have.”
They have, and they're learning to do it better and more often. Maybe it was the altitude, maybe it was a New Year’s hangover, but they didn’t have the focus they needed to work their way out of the funk.
“On the defensive end we just have to stay poised,” Mazzulla said. “Understand that they're hitting those shots and try to string along three or four stops in a row to get some easy baskets.”
It’s very simple. Do that, and we won’t have to sit through 40 minutes of trying to figure things out. Recognize the solution as fast as possible, get to that solution, and get back to business.