A lot went wrong for the Celtics in Game 1 of the Conference Finals against Miami.
“We came out too cool. It was just almost like we were just playing a regular-season game,” Jaylen Brown said after the loss. “It's the Eastern Conference Finals. Like, come on.”
The playoffs are about adjustments, but some adjustments are easier than others. The script for Boston, as usual, is to follow up a tough loss by just doing what they were supposed to do, just better. The problems the Celtics faced in Game 1, as usual, were often self-inflicted wounds.
“It looked exactly like it looked last night. Long film session,” Robert Williams said on Thursday. “A lot of stuff you don’t want to see. A lot of hurtful things.”
Let’s start with one of those things.
1. Defensive intensity
What on earth is Williams doing here?
The last thing the Celtics need is someone letting Jimmy Butler walk into easy shots, but that's what Williams and the Celtics did way too often last night. Williams was an uncharacteristic defensive negative, and it probably stemmed from a directive to stay on his feet.
“Most people I play against, they try to get me in the air, they try to pump-fake me so really just put an emphasis on staying down on the pump-fakes,” he said. “Definitely we could’ve contested shots a little more.”
Yeah.
And he’s not alone.
All those examples come from very early in the game for a reason. That's when the Heat get into rhythm. That's when they start feeling good about themselves. The early shots that fell against nothing defense like that fueled the big run later.
“Everything’s connected,” Derrick White said. “You let someone see the ball go in on easy ones and the confidence is high, so everything’s connected from the first half to second half and we just have to manage the game better.”
I’m just floored when it comes to plays like this in the Eastern Conference Finals. There are a maximum of 14 games left in the season and this is the effort they get in the first game?
The only --- ONLY --- excuse that's even remotely acceptable is that they were still playing in Philly mode with their slower pace and worse shooters. And even that's a stretch.
2. Just … try harder in general
“There's no doubt in my mind that we'll come out ready to play in Game 2 but the problem is we can't keep relying on that,” Williams said. “We can't rely on our backs being against the wall … We have to fix it.”
Rob’s honesty is always refreshing. He’s the only guy who can’t resist being honest about things.
The Celtics are playing the claw game, stuffing money into a machine hoping to grab a win in the most ridiculous way possible. Eventually, they can just use their money to get a win like a normal team, but they can’t resist that claw machine and trying to mess around.
Eventually they’ll run out of money. It doesn’t have to be this way. There are 13 games left in the season at most. If they do this right, there could be less.
How is it possible that even players in the locker room know it’s a problem and it’s not being fixed??
3. Get back on defense
I’m sorry, but where is Jaylen Brown going here?
Why didn’t he just run to Kevin Love? Why did he go from the left baseline to the right block to take someone Jayson Tatum was already covering?
And what’s Tatum doing here?
It’s not the shooter’s job to get back. It’s the weakside guy’s job. That's Tatum.
I can keep going.
My greatest accomplishment here at BSJ is writing about games like this without cursing, because my office is R-rated right now.
The third quarter was full of some of the laziest basketball you’ll see. I just don’t understand how a group of guys who said they learned their lesson from last year’s Finals loss can’t put in the effort to get back in Game 1 of the Conference Finals.
I’m sure you’ve also noticed a pattern here with the first three points. All of it is effort-based. There's not a single adjustment mentioned. There's no test of anyone’s basketball knowledge. There's no magic bullet here. All of this is effort. All of it. Grow up and be professionals.
4. Generate more 3-pointers
Hi, this is Joe Mazzulla. I’ve chloroformed John and am taking over this section of the piece.
The Celtics took 29 3-pointers in Game 1, not enough for this team to win. This is a team built to take and make 3-pointers, and when they aren’t getting enough of them, it’s harder to win.
“When we get stops and are able to get out in transition we’re able to get those,” I … errr … Mazzulla said Thursday. “They switched defenses and switched more in the second half, and switching defenses slow you down and you have to fight for your spacing, fight for advantages. You have to fight to create separation, and so being able to make the adjustment on how we play versus one defense versus a switching defense is important. So we just have to fight for that and we can generate those threes by creating separation, by creating advantages.”
The 15 turnovers were killers. Boston has to protect the ball and turn those possessions into good looks from deep. The defensive issues I mentioned at the top can be flipped into transition 3-pointers. You want Boston to win easily, that's the formula.
I don’t know if the Celtics will do anything differently in Game 2 other than try harder, and honestly, that's all they need to do.
If these guys had just tried harder in the third quarter alone, gotten back defensively, and cleaned up some of the turnovers, they would have won this game. There isn’t some big formula for success here other than play good basketball.
I wish there was, because figuring that stuff out is fun. Writing pieces like this sucks because there's nothing to it. Watch the game again, notice all the ways they were just plain lazy and bad, and tell you they need to try harder with clips of them being lazy and bad. You think this isn’t a fun team to watch, try having to figure out new ways to write “try harder” pieces followed up by pieces that say “see what happens when you try harder?”
"We’re looking for a great response," Robert Williams said. "For us teammates and coaches wise, that shouldn’t be the only time that we respond. That’s what we’re trying to get out of the habit of. Like I said, it’s all effort, man. Effort and purpose, starting the game right, playing the game right the whole way. We’re trying to shake that bad habit."