DALLAS -- The Celtics came to the podium with their talking point: This was the Mavericks win, not Boston’s loss.
Joe Mazzulla was asked eight questions after the game. He praised Dallas in every answer.
“I thought Dallas played great. Give a lot of credit to them.”
“They did a great job flying around.”
“You have to give Dallas credit. They played well.”
“I thought Dallas outplayed us. They just played harder.”
All of that was true. The Mavs outplayed Boston and handed them one of the worst butt-whoopin’s in NBA Finals history.
At the same time, Boston had chances to prevent the avalanche. Dallas went on a 10-0 run in the first quarter that included misses from Jaylen Brown and Jrue Holiday in the middle of the lane. Holiday turned it over twice after that, getting stripped by Luka Doncic and then firing a cross-court fastball at Brown that should have been caught.
The Celtics went on a four-minute scoreless drought in the second quarter as a manageable 14-point deficit grew to 25. When Doncic sat at the 4:00 mark, giving Boston a glimmer of an opening to cut that lead down, they immediately committed a 24-second violation.
No bother. Down 26 at halftime is not ideal, but the Celtics’ high-powered offense still had plenty of time. Dallas had just erased most of a 21-point deficit in less than a quarter, so 24 minutes should have been more than enough for the Celtics to shake off a rough first half.
Al Horford hit a 3-pointer and Boston’s defense forced Doncic to flip a ridiculous near-half court shot at the shot clock buzzer. Tatum gathered the rebound and had Horford all alone for a touchdown pass.
Sheesh.
“We've got to learn from it,” Holiday said. “See the things that we should have controlled and done better doing that … they came out desperate and I think they punched us in the mouth, and we couldn't kind of recover the way we wanted to.”
The Celtics weren’t just bad in this game, they were uncharacteristically bad. They did almost none of what they had done right in the first three games of this series. They ball-watched instead of boxing out, leading to 13 Dallas offensive rebounds and a 16-2 disadvantage in second-chance points. They allowed 37 3-pointers after 27, 26, and 25 in the first three games. Dallas’ 15 made 3-pointers in Game 4 matched their total from Games 2 and 3 combined.
For the first time in this series, nothing was working
“It's a playoff series. Teams are going back and forth,” Horford said. “Usually by the second game, you're making adjustments. Third game, you're making another adjustment, and that's kind of how it is.
“And for us, we've had the first three games, we didn't really make any adjustments. So today, they did something. We have to see what we can -- how we can be better and prepare for it. That's kind of where we're at right now.”
The discipline and poise Boston had shown on their way to a 3-0 lead disappeared. As Dallas made their runs, the Celtics got frustrated, forced the issue, and simply made poor decisions. The offensive execution they relied on to help them set their stifling defense disappeared.
“I think this is the most stagnant that we've been this series and the worst job of owning our space on the offensive end and doing what we wanted to do instead of what they were forcing us to do,” Tatum said. “We did a great job of that the first three games, and this one, we didn't.
There generally isn’t much to take from 40-point losses. Most of the time, one team is just struggling, the other is playing its best, and things spiral out of control. But for Boston, it spiraled of control because they didn't do the things they normally controlled. In one way, it’s discouraging because there was a lot of free champagne waiting for them if they’d just played normally.
However, it’s also encouraging because buried in the blowout was a very clear way for Boston to figure things out.
“We have to take some things that we can be better at and try to fix them,” Horford said. “And then others kind of throw them out and just kind of do that and make sure that we come out and we play Celtics basketball.
“I think ultimately that's what it comes down to for us, and there's a lot of things that we can control and that I expect us to be much better on Monday.”