The Celtics took the night off from being the surprising second seed we’ve gotten to know. The unflappable and precise Celtics led by a hyperefficient MVP candidate wiped off their stage makeup, stepped out of their costumes, and finished their Wednesday night loss to Denver looking more like the team we saw struggle in October.
“I think we were on top of each other a little bit,” Jaylen Brown said after the game. “Our spacing wasn’t great. Stuff that we just got to clean up.”
You can easily file this game under the umbrella of ‘stuff happens.’ No team is going to be perfect for 82 games, especially a team in Boston’s situation. They have been great so far this season, but they are still a team that needs most things to go right in order to win.
And they were getting that for most of the game. Denver was certainly hitting a ton of shots, But the Celtics were keeping pace themselves. Boston led by three heading into the fourth quarter because they were getting into the paint, giving themselves second chances, and the turnovers were almost even.
But then …
“We had some empty possessions on offense,” Joe Mazzulla said, referencing Boston’s 9-26 shooting in the final quarter, which included a nearly five-minute scoreless stretch. “They did a good job vs. our aggressive pick-and-roll coverages finding the 2-on-1, whether it was knocking down the threes or hitting the roll man. They did a good job executing on the offensive end.”
The Celtics did not match that execution. They turned the ball over five times over the final eight minutes of the game, three of them by Brown when Boston needed him to take over the game. With the Nuggets up 99-90, he committed an offensive foul. At 103-93, he got stripped on his way to the basket. At 109-98, he rose up for a jump shot, was challenged, and threw the ball out of bounds hoping to find a teammate to bail him out.
For Brown, it was a return to bad habits that generally arise when he loses focus.
“I normally get to my spots and go up and be physical and go to the basket, and I draw a lot of contact,” Brown said, admitting that the officiating got to him in this game. “I'm one of the more aggressive players in the league. I drive a lot. And the whistle didn't equate to that. Maybe they wanted to make an emphasis, I don't know. But I'll adjust for the next game and kind of see how the game is being called. Because if you don't get some of those calls, and they look like bad shots, and it kind of snowballs on defense.”
Brown has been especially vocal this season when it comes to the officiating. He may have a point on some nights, especially on one where he took 23 2-point shots, 12 in the restricted area, and four more in his sweet spot around the free throw line, but only took three free throws. There's a good chance the officials missed a couple of fouls along the way.
At the same time, the “it kind of snowballs on defense” portion of his quote can’t be as true as it was on Wednesday night. Calls or not, the frustration can’t lead to easy opportunities for the other team.
“They went on a little stretch in the fourth quarter when I got in the game where they kind of extended it,” Brown said. “But for me, every time I get the ball, I'm looking to be aggressive. If I feel contact, I'm gonna go through it. I'm gonna go strong. But tonight, I was just getting blank faces when I was asking officials. They just decided, the last 10 games has been free throws; tonight, it wasn’t. So it is what it is.”
Unfortunately for the Celtics, losses in focus tend to become losses in the standings. Every time Boston turned it over in the fourth quarter, the Nuggets found a way to make Boston pay. Every time the Celtics missed at the rim, Denver took off and capitalized.
The Celtics got sloppy and lost their shooting touch, while Denver protected the ball and hit just about everything. They punished Boston’s blitzing defense by making the right reads, while the Celtics felt rushed by Denver’s defensive game plan. The Nuggets got contributions from everybody in the fourth quarter while Boston played Sam Hauser for 8:29 and couldn't get him a shot when they were watching the Nuggets build a 13-point lead.
“It was probably just that type of game where they hit every shot off our mistakes,” Payton Pritchard said. “So we’ve got to tighten that up. I feel like we’ve done a really good job of not turning it over and making bad reads so maybe today we made a couple of those. But we’ve been on a good stretch. Tough game, they played well, so tip the cap but probably move on from this, learn and grow.”
