Here we are again.
The Celtics have once again lost a Game 2 at home to an inferior opponent thanks to a poor defensive effort and even worse shooting from 3.
Sigh.
This isn’t hell, because it’s not that serious yet. They did this against Miami and then blew the doors off them three straight times for what amounted to an easy series win.
This is more like Groundhog Day, but not the reliving the same day over and over again. I’m not sure we’re at full Groundhog Day with these Celtics just yet. This, right now, is just the part where he keeps stepping into the pothole of freezing water over and over.
It’s really annoying and man it sucks to keep stepping in it. Yet there it is, in the same spot, and it just keeps happening.
“I think when you lose a game like that, it could be a combination of tactics, combination of effort, combination of a little bit of all those things at times,” Joe Mazzulla said of his team’s Game 2 loss. “Not to say it was one thing the entire time, but it’s probably a combination of those.”
The Celtics stepped in it again Thursday night at TD Garden. It took 46 regular season games for Boston to lose two at home this season, but they’ve accomplished that in just seven postseason games. No one can explain why homecourt seems to be less of an advantage, but it’s hard to argue with the numbers. They're 15-15 over their last 30 home playoff games.
“In both of the games we lost here at home we shot the ball incredibly bad,” Jaylen Brown said. “They shot the ball incredibly well, and then we didn’t play defense to our level tonight, and that’s all I can say.”
There isn’t much else that can be said to explain the nuts and bolts of the loss. We can very easily chalk it up to make/miss stuff and be done here. The Celtics lost the second half by 24, which is exactly how many more points the Cavs scored at the 3-point line. They were 10-18 in the second half while Boston was 2-18.
But that's not really how things played out. Donovan Mitchell put up 23 points on 5-6 shooting in the second half, scoring five more points than Brown and Jayson Tatum combined and as much as all the Celtics starters. He put up another superstar performance, and this time it was supported by Caris LeVert, Darius Garland, and Max Strus, who combined for 27 points while the rest of the Celtics combined for 17.
Role players are supposed to play better at home. Teams are supposed to defend better at home. Shooters are supposed to shoot better at home.
“You got to play defense, you got to rebound, get them off the glass and those are two things that we didn't do tonight,” Brown said. “We didn't rebound very well and we also didn't defend at a high enough level. They were close to 50 percent from 3, they shot the ball pretty pretty good. But we also can do a lot better on defense.”
We tend to separate defense and offense as if this was the NFL where everything stops when possession changes, each side sends a new team out, and they battle each other with different groups of guys. Defense is tied to offense and vice versa. It’s much more chicken and egg in basketball when trying to determine if the bad defense is because of the bad offense, or if it leads to the bad offense.
“When we’re not hitting shots, they’re getting the ball out in transition, it kind of opens things up for them,” Tatum said. “When you make shots, they’ve got to take the ball out, just naturally it forces a team to play slower … it does play a part when you’re not hitting shots and they’re leaking out or they’re pushing the ball in transition. It makes it a little tougher.”
Tougher shouldn’t be impossible, though, and this is where one of the biggest criticisms of the Celtics comes into play. They're great when things are going their way, when shots are falling, and they can set their defense. When they play the right way and things are going well, they are an absolute buzzsaw.
When the shots aren’t falling? Well …
It’s tough to win when you don’t hit shots. But Joe Mazzulla started the season explicitly saying they needed to find ways to win when shots aren’t falling. That was a stated goal. How does the team win when 3-pointers don’t fall
“We have to eliminate the luck of the percentage at times with our shooting and we have to create easy baskets, whether it’s with offensive rebounding or forcing turnovers and deflections,” Mazzulla said back in October. “If you saw 80 percent of our box scores, we won the 3-point margin but we lost the shot margin … that’s not a recipe for long term in the playoffs and on nights when it’s not going well.”
In Game 2, the Celtics won the 3-pointers attempted margin by seven, but lost shot margin by six. That's a combination of not getting stops and not getting offensive rebounds. That's not doing the little things to figure out how to win games where they're out-shot.
This is some of the “same ol’ Celtics” that causes so much fun conversation in Boston. The fears after a game like this are that these habits might come back to haunt the Celtics, even if it’s not necessarily in this series. And no matter how much people like me counter with the “this is different” argument, it’s undeniable that this is always going to linger somewhere under the surface. The question is whether it makes a big, grand return or if just peeks its head out every once in a while and retreats back into its hole.
Bill Murray eventually stopped stepping into the frozen water, eventually learning his lesson. The Celtics need to do the same before this gets bigger and they're re-living last year’s movie all over again.