BOSTON -- For 24 minutes, the Boston Celtics looked unstoppable. Shots were falling, the defense was forcing turnovers, and everything was running smoothly. Then, the second half came around.
All of that success quickly took a turn. If the Chicago Bulls weren't one of the worst teams in the NBA, they may have posed a real threat to Boston in the second half. And even they did some damage.
Chicago completely switched up its game plan. In the first half, the Bulls shot just 4-of-21 (19.0%) from 3-point land. They doubled down on that approach in the second half, shooting 11-of-29 (37.9%).
"They made a huge commitment to shooting 50 threes," Joe Mazzulla said post-game. "They made a huge commitment to shooting more threes in the second half, and I think a lot of those went in. And I think, naturally, in the third quarter, I thought we managed to run really well. Kind of the stuff that we talked about a few games ago about managing. Lose the quarter by four, that's fine. That's going to happen."
To a degree, that's right. The Bulls may be on their way to fighting for lottery balls, but they still have talent. Every team does. And to the Celtics' credit, they did manage the runs.
The Bulls came out swinging in the second half, upping their ball pressure and shooting a ton of threes. They also had the natural, subconscious advantage.
On one side of the fence, you had the Celtics: Up by 29 points and settling into that lead. On the other, the Bulls: Nothing to lose.
"It's just hard to hold a team to 30 points. They're NBA players at the end of the day," Payton Pritchard said. "They hit some tough ones, and it's like, they're playing with a sense of freedom. Like, 'Oh, we're down 30, so we can just shoot away at it, crash the boards.' But I think we did a good job in the third quarter of controlling it somewhat. We lost the quarter by four points. But obviously, in the fourth quarter we got to do a better job."
The fourth quarter was definitely rough. But the third quarter wasn't ideal either. Sure, the Celtics managed the run, and that's a positive, but the way they came out of the half was far too scattered.
Less than a minute into the third, Jayson Tatum missed a layup. It put him behind the play, and the Celtics paid the price. Their defense got completely scrambled.
Caleb Wilson ended up getting an open three in the corner because Boston's defense was all out of sorts, trying to cover for Tatum, who was still recovering.
Chicago's energy completely changed in the third. Wilson led the charge, and the rest of the Bulls followed. That additional ball pressure and defensive intensity shook up Boston's offense.
"Credit to them," Neemias Queta said. "I think they did a lot of different coverages on us. Made it a little harder for us getting offensive looks. I think they just [got better] defensively. Their rotations were crispier. Their ball pressure, upped it as well. We weren't getting as clean of looks on the offensive side, and I think we got to watch up on that and get better, because there's stuff that we could get better at in this game and learn from."
Right here, the Celtics were recovering from a broken offensive possession. Wilson is on the ground, trying to find his footing, and he ends up nabbing the steal anyway.
Paul George throws it right into Wilson's hands, and the Bulls get off and running. The rookie walks into an open pull-up 3-point attempt. It misses, but since the Celtics got beat in transition, Jalen Smith gets an easy put-back.
Then, perhaps the most damning couple of possessions of the third quarter, poor rebounding and bad defensive execution caught up to the Celtics. And the Bulls capitalized.
For the first 10 seconds of the first possession, the Celtics play great defense. Guys help over, others cover for them, and then everyone gets back into position. Then, things go awry.
Tatum, George, and Queta end up in the paint, putting pressure on the Bulls' inside game. That leaves Pritchard to cover two guys. His job is to guard both of them, see the pass, and close out to prevent an easy shot.
Norman Powell throws a great pass baseline to Isaac Okoro in the corner, and Pritchard doesn't contest in time. Okoro misses the shot, but then Powell rips the rebound out of Queta's hands, drawing a foul. That has to be a Boston rebound.
Then, on the very next possession (in the same video clip), Boston forces Wilson into a tough mid-range shot in the dying embers of the shot clock. But Queta fails to get the rebound once again.
Smith tips it to himself through Queta's fingers. He finds Josh Giddey under the hoop, and the ball swings its way out to the corner, finding Okoro once again. This time, he makes it.
The rebounding wasn't good enough. Chicago grabbed 20 offensive rebounds on Friday night (though it's easy to rack up offensive boards when you miss a ton of shots).
"If you shoot 30%, there's going to be a ton of them," Mazzulla said. "So, they're going to get some of those. But yeah, we got to be better. We can't give up 20 offensive rebounds. I can't calculate now, what the offensive rebound percentage was. It was 42% at the half. But at half, they only had 22 points in the half-court and 27 off offensive rebounds and transition."
Queta didn't