BSJ Game Report: Pistons 119, Celtics 113 - More horrible rebounding kills a Celtics comeback

Everything you need to know about the Celtics' loss to the Pistons, with BSJ insight and analysis

IN A NUTSHELL

Jaylen Brown came out hot and Hugo Gonzalez provided a defensive spark to fuel a big run. The Pistons closed the lead to nine after 12 minutes, and turned things around to take a halftime lead. Detroit lived at the line in the third to extend the lead to 13 heading into the fourth, but Boston went on a run to get within three. But once again, they couldn't keep Detroit off the boards, and could get no closer. 

Box Score

HEADLINES

- 0-3 start: The Celtics haven't had a three-game losing streak since 2003. 

“Everybody starts the year off (talking) about togetherness and getting through difficult times, but no one anticipates it happening (immediately),” Joe Mazzulla told reporters in Detroit. “They always think it's gonna happen later, but it happened now. So we just gotta chip away at it.”

They’ll have a chance against New Orleans, but that's a tough back-to-back even with the earlier start in Detroit. 

- Rebounding … again: They gave up nine offensive rebounds in the fourth quarter alone. Detroit’s last four baskets were on second chances, and all of them were killers. One putback came with Boston down three, one with Boston down four, and two down five. It’s impossible to come back against that.  

- Hugo Gonzalez starts: A surprise, but also a message from Joe Mazzulla that energy and effort will be rewarded. Gonzalez made an immediate defensive impact, matching minutes with Cade Cunningham for most of the first half. 

“I like Hugo,” Brown said. “I like Hugo's mentality. I like how he comes out. He's ready to go.”

Mazzulla went away from Gonzalez later in the game, opting for more Josh Minott instead. But Sam Cassell told Abby Chin that they're going to be using Gonzalez against the other team’s best player, which means he’ll get more chances moving forward. 

TURNING POINT 

I’ll go all the way back to the first quarter when Detroit closed it out on a 12-4 run over the final 3:13. Boston had a 17-point lead and they looked very much like the team we’d been expecting to see. But they never really got back to that same level of play after that Detroit run, and the Pistons spent the second slowly walking the lead down. 

THINGS I LIKED

- Hugo Gonzalez: The best thing he brings is the ability to put another strong defender on a perimeter threat. 

“He can kind of give D White and Payton and Jaylen a little break on the on-ball stuff,” Mazzulla said. “It was good that he was able to do that. He’s just gotta continue to develop that mentality.” 

I don’t expect him to start regularly, but it’s becoming more clear that he’s probably not going to spend a lot of time in Maine this year. 

- Jaylen Brown: He scored 41 on 12-25 shooting, including a blistering 5-9 from 3 and 12-15 from the free throw line. He had six rebounds and four assists as well for a line that looks incredibly dominant. 

The problem is that Boston needs him to do so many things that a dominant scoring night isn’t always enough. He had a couple of tough turnovers that were, as is often the case, the result of him trying to do too much. I can’t fault him, though. The Celtics were struggling to score. 

- Payton Pritchard. 21 points and 10 rebounds is an incredible night for him, even with the slump-extending 2-8 from 3. He went at Duncan Robinson every chance he got and it paid off. 

He still needs those shots to fall, though. 

- Josh Minott: This sequence was almost the turning point of this game. 

He finished with 10 points and three steals in 14 minutes. That's a spark off the bench. 

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE

- The rebounding: I can’t even say any more about it, honestly. But I didn't like it, and this section demands I express what I didn’t like. 

- The shooting: The Celtics were 15-45 from 3, just 33.3%, but they were just 10-36 without Jaylen Brown. They have now shot 33.3%, 34.1%, and 25.6% from 3 in their first three games.

“If we shoot it how I know we can shoot it, then there's probably two games now that we win,” Pritchard said. “Everybody would be acting a lot different if we were 2-1 right now. So it will come. We're great shooters, and we've shown that, so I’m not really stressing over a three-game stretch of not shooting it how we're capable of.”

- The fouls: The third quarter was an interminable stretch of delays and fouls. It felt like Boston went half a dozen straight possessions with a foul on a shooter. I can live with fouls on aggressive defense. But these were a bunch of reaches after being caught out of position. 

- Closing quarters: They gave up a 12-4 run to end the first, a 17-4 run to end the second, and 20-11 extended over the final 6:40 of the third quarter. 

- The delays: There's no reason a game should go three hours. But with the reviews, a net issue, and the million fouls, this game dragged on forever. 

HIGHLIGHTS

TAKES KARALIS WILL REGRET LATER

- The defense is actually good

Lost in all of these second-chance points is that Boston is, in fact, forcing a lot of misses. Defensive rebound can’t be as big a problem as it is without a lot of misses and opportunities to follow those up. 

The Celtics are getting stops … well, 98% of the stops. The last 2% of that is the part where they box out, clear the board, and go the other way. 

It is, obviously, the most critical part of the play. I keep hearing Doc Rivers making the case for big rebounders like DeAndre Jordan as Defensive Player of the Year because “rebounding is defense.” You can only get actual stops by forcing turnovers or rebounding, and Boston just isn’t doing the last part. 

It’s kind of sad, because it’s erasing a lot of effort on the defensive end. Which brings me to …

- These kinds of losses are demoralizing

I’ve been saying for a long time that an 0-7 start is possible for the Celtics. And while long losing streaks can be demoralizing on their own, the way Boston is losing right now is especially bad. 

The Celtics can very easily argue that they had multiple chances to win all of these games. If they cleared those late misses, the Celtics could have gotten out into transition and who knows how things would have closed out. 

Watching the defense force misses only to lose guys on the boards, though? Shoulders slump, heads drop, and the pressure to come down and score climbs a little bit. 

It’s too early for it to become a problem, but there's a cumulative effect if they're not able to fix this problem. Right now, they're all still in a decent state of mind, but at some point, someone will get mad about a teammate not figuring things out. 

Let’s hope they can stabilize things before it gets to that point.

Next Up: They are in New Orleans tomorrow night to face the Pelicans on a back-to-back.