I’ll tell you what, for a 32-15 team, the Boston Celtics have an awful lot of disappointing losses. Maybe that has a bit to do with the expectations surrounding the reigning champs, but some of these would be frustrating for any team.
Monday’s game looked like it would be the Celtics’ fourth win in five games. They led the visiting Houston Rockets by 12 with 8:38 remaining in the fourth quarter. From that point on, they were outscored 25-11 en route to another letdown.
A defensive breakdown to seal defeat was the cherry on top of Boston’s sundae of ice-cold late-game execution. Rockets guard Amen Thompson finished off a drive to the cup, after a comedy of errors from the Cs.
First off, Jaylen Brown and Luke Kornet were in absolute shambles before the ball was even inbounded. Head coach Joe Mazzulla took accountability for the confusion during his postgame availability when asked about how he can respond going forward.
“Just take ownership of the guys,” said Mazzulla. “They’re the ones out there battling and they put you in a position to win and you don’t help that, it’s a tough one. That’s something I gotta get better at.”
Mazzulla is right, the players are the ones out there battling — most of the time. There wasn’t much battle once things went astray on the final defensive possession.
As Brown tried to relocate to guard Thompson, he fell a step behind and was out of position guarding the drive.
“So, I guess we — I should have sniffed it out earlier,” JB said of the lapse. “But, you know, we tried to communicate the switch to get move off of Thompson, because he had it going, and they were going to go to him, and the timing was miscue, and they scored at the end.”
Once he was beaten, literally no one cared to try and help and the second-year Rocket sank an open floater.
Kornet was nowhere to be found on the strong side and Jayson Tatum just stood right next to Thompson instead of trying to contest the shot.
It’s easy to brush off a sloppy stand like this if it’s a one-off.
It was not.
On the previous possession, the Cs gave up a wide-open dunk due to another defensive lapse.
Of course, they didn’t lose a 12-point lead over the course of those two possessions. They spent eight minutes struggling to put the ball in the basket and get stops on the opposite end of the floor.
Boston shot 33% from the field during that span, while Houston sank 60% of their looks.
The execution just wasn’t good enough on Monday, much like many of the Cs’ recent outings.
Boston has been putrid in the fourth quarter for quite some time now. Over their last 15 games, they’ve got a net rating of -5.7, which has them in the bottom third of the NBA. They’ve watched wins become losses to middling teams like the Sacramento Kings and Atlanta Hawks.
This was the ninth time that Boston has lost a fourth-quarter lead this season — the same total as the entirety of last year.
When the playoffs come around, the Celtics aren’t going to afford to let go of the rope in tight games. If they were playing this type of basketball last spring, they probably would’ve been knocked out by the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals. Their execution and poise were night and day compared to what they’ve been doing since December.
