Celtics quickly turning the page on a forgettable night against the Rockets

It’s probably a good thing that this Celtics' game was played during Game 7 of the World Series. It was already pretty forgettable, but the Jays and Dodgers' epic battle made it pretty easy to erase this game from sports rundowns everywhere. 

Echoes of the baseball game wafted through the arena as the cleaning crew did its work. Many of the Rockets were still filtering out of the building after their 128-101 thrashing of the Celtics. They were in no real hurry. 

The Celtics cleared out much more quickly. 

“I don't even know if there is a takeaway for this game,” Payton Pritchard admitted. “Kind of turned the page. They kind of punked us. We gotta get ready for the next one."

The Rockets made it look easy against the Celtics. They shot so well that they didn’t even unleash one of their biggest weapons, offensive rebounding. They only missed 35 shots, so they didn’t need the 15 second-chance points off just 12 offensive rebounds. It still would have been a 12-point win without any of those. 

“In the first quarter, we only had one offensive rebound, but we shot 70%,” Ime Udoka said. “We’ll take that straight up every time.”

The Rockets and Celtics are both figuring themselves out, albeit in much different situations. The Rockets are among the championship favorites, with a superstar acquisition, but also a major injury throwing a wrench into their plans. 

The Celtics understand a thing or two about that. They're no longer a championship-caliber team. Every once in a while, one of the Celtics will slip in a low-key admission of that fact. 

"Sometimes, even when we had a championship-level team, you got popped on some nights like this and you just turn the page, get ready for the next one,” Pritchard said. “It's 82 games. It's a lot of traveling, a lot of back-to-backs at times. So it can be tiring. I think they came off two nights' rest. They showed it tonight and killed us."

Even if it’s obvious, it’s still odd to hear a Celtics player talk in the past tense about how good they were. They are now a team that has to rely on hope as much as it does skill. Their defense relies on a lot of help and taking chances. They suck in from the weak side to pack the paint, prevent layups, and try to grab rebounds. That tends to allow open shots if the opponent knows where to look. 

Some teams will miss those shots, and the Celtics will have a chance to win. Some teams won’t, and the Celtics will get wrecked. 

"They were sitting wide open,” Pritchard said. “When you do that and they're hitting, bounces just keep flowing, and then they were getting fouls all game, too. They were getting to the free-throw line or open 3s, so it just was a bad combination."

The Celtics are also hoping to get steals with this defensive philosophy, which worked well to some degree. They scored 23 points off turnovers, which is one of Joe Mazzulla’s stated goals. But they gave 22 of those points back at the free-throw line because they fouled so much. 

“The free-throw rate is going to be correlated to your turnover percentage,” Mazzulla said. “So we forced 20 turnovers, right? So I think it's a combination of coaching the ones that you have to get better at, whether it's taking away an individual tendency, whether it's a bonus foul at the end of a quarter, whether it's because we had a breakdown in our individual defense, and we're going to protect the rim, you have to define those.”

This is all part of the learning curve for Boston. They lost three to start the season, figured some things out, and then won a few games. It helped that the Cavs played a terrible game and that the Sixers were missing their best offensive rebounder. The Celtics are good enough to take advantage of those opportunities. 

The Rockets were a different beast. They were not letting Boston off the hook for any of their choices or mistakes. Every punch the Celtics threw was blocked and countered with a flurry. The Celtics tried, but they were horribly overmatched. 

The Celtics all probably made it home in time to pour themselves a glass of wine and watch the Dodgers celebrate their second-straight championship. Sometimes the best thing to do is quickly move on and enjoy the extra hour of sleep. Dwelling on what happened at TD Garden Saturday night won’t do anyone any good.