There's a good chance you’re sick of hearing this, but there is nothing meaningful to be taken from this Celtics loss to the Bucks. That was made pretty clear when the TNT mic’d up segment included Jayson Tatum telling Derrick White “the next time we get on a plane, it means business.” The implication is that this time didn’t.
It’s the closest we’re ever going to get to a player saying ‘we didn't really care about this game. Any effort was purely out of ego, stats, and trying to look good on national TV.’
But there was one thing buried in this game, one thing Joe Mazzulla tried to capitalize on but couldn't.
What happens when the other team gets impossibly hot from 3 and the Celtics are cooler than being cool?
The Bucks started out 8-10 from deep, opening up an early 19-point lead that Boston could never close. The Celtics started out 5-14 in first quarter, 35.7%, from 3, and dropped to 31.6% over the final three quarters. Milwaukee only shot 34.6% the rest of the game, and actually hit three fewer 3-pointers after the first quarter, but the ones they hit were run-stopping answers.
Mazzulla saw an opportunity in those numbers and hoped starting the fourth quarter with Tatum and Jaylen Brown could give them some good minutes in a bad situation.
“That was the first time where the game wasn't going our way since I don't remember when,” Mazzulla said. “It's a good opportunity to just kind of play through that, find different ways to create runs, find different ways to just build stuff on either end of the floor, and I thought it was a good situation for us to be in because we haven't seen it in a while.”
It might have been good to be in that situation, but nothing was going to pull the Celtics into the type of mindset needed to actually take advantage of the moment. They didn’t just punt this game, the Bucks were waving for the fair catch at the start of the fourth when Mazzulla was hoping for a Hail Mary.
Okay, fine. I’m not going to get worked up about it. But I am going to wonder what happens when someone goes Caleb Martin on them during this postseason run.
Mazzulla loves the numbers and he will argue with anyone about what the data shows over the course of a season. He’s not wrong about his arguments, either. Over the long haul, sticking to certain principles will generally yield great results.
Just like in the NFL, where the numbers are showing that going for it on fourth down can lead to a lot more success than always kicking it away on third-and-short yardage, the reliance on a 3-point-heavy offense can ultimately lead to a lot of regular season wins.
But like Dan Campbell learned against the 49ers, the playoffs don’t always provide a big enough sample size for the gambles to pay off.
Unlike the NFL, the NBA gives a team seven chances to win four games, so a one-off game like the one we saw in Milwaukee might not matter much over the long run of a series. If the Celtics find themselves in a situation where Brook Lopez opens up hot and hits four of five 3-pointers to start the game, it might end up just being a loss and part of the ebb and flow of a series. There won’t be many nights where Lopez and Patrick Beverley combine for 9-16 shooting from beyond the arc.
There will be some, though. And those some might come in a row. What happens then?
Maybe the full-strength Celtics actually avoid these situations altogether. Maybe a team with Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford, who didn’t play in this game, change the dynamic so greatly that there won’t be four outlier games all strung together like we saw last year against Miami. Maybe this lingering “what if” is simply answered by Boston’s ridiculous talent what wasn’t on display on Tuesday night in Milwaukee.
Xavier Tillman might be a contributor to the playoff run, but not in the situations he was in against Milwaukee. One of the answers I’m wondering about in this piece could simply be that Boston’s offense got too bogged down because Milwaukee could play off a non-shooter and shut the offense down. That won’t happen with Porzingis or Horford on the floor along with a fully-engaged C’s team that isn’t missing defensive rotations and throwing the ball out of bounds.
Under normal circumstances, a lot of the layups they allowed against Milwaukee could have been transition opportunities for Boston. And when the Celtics get out into space and can force the defense to scramble to find matchups, they can start piling up points themselves. This is why there isn’t much to take from a game like this. Not only was Boston’s energy off, so were their rotations.
But still, a game like this makes you wonder how the Celtics will get out of games where they can’t hit a thing and the other team can’t miss. How do they shut that water off and start generating the kinds of looks they need to come all the way back?
I'm not asking the question because I’m worried. I’m asking it because we really haven't seen it much this season, and we saw it a little too much in the playoffs last season.
Weird things happen in the playoffs. Mazzulla knows that his numbers can lead to success, and he understands that the smaller sample size in the playoffs means those numbers might not matter. It’s too bad the Celtics couldn't muster the energy to take full advantage of this opportunity. They’ve had a season full of answers to questions like these. And even though I’m pretty comfortable that we’ll like the answer to this question too, I would like to still know for sure.