The Celtics didn’t look like themselves at TD Garden after a successful road trip.
Joe Mazzulla loves soccer. His favorite coach is Man City’s Pep Guardiola and his team’s constant-movement gameplay. Mazzulla has implemented many of those concepts into the Celtics’ style, synergizing how what happens on defense affects the offense and vice versa.
In Boston’s disappointing 114-97 loss to the visiting Kings on Saturday night, that relationship between both sides of the ball couldn’t have been more evident. After playing Sacramento virtually even in the first half, the Celtics jumped out to a nine-point lead with some active defense (including back-to-back blocks from Kristaps Porzingis and Derrick White) and hitting 4-of-6 from behind the arc.
And then the wheels fell off.
“I would say when you’re having inefficient offense, it puts pressure on your defense,” Mazzulla said after his team gave up a 13-4 run to close the third. “I don’t think it’s a long-term effort thing. You hold a team like that to a 19-point quarter and a 23-point quarter and you have two 21-point quarters, it just wears on you. Whether it’s shotmaking, whether it’s execution, whether it’s spacing, I think that takes a toll on you. Again, if you’re going to shoot 28% from 3, you’re going to have to do a bunch of things really really really well and it puts pressure on your defense throughout the game. We have to be better.”
The Celtics would give up eight turnovers and six offensive rebounds in the final 19 minutes of the game. In total, Domantas Sabonis grabbed 28 rebounds — eight off the offensive glass — and the Kings shot twenty more field goal attempts.
To make matters worse, Boston had another poor shooting night from 3 with another sub-30% performance (11-of-41). It’s their sixth time in fifteen games and all have resulted in losses.
For most of the early part of the year, the slump has been described as somewhat of a statistical anomaly; last night, Mazzulla tied missed shots to effort level.
“If you’re having empty possession after empty possession and they’re scoring, that takes a toll on you. It’s not a long-term effort thing,” Mazzulla said.
“In the short-term, our inefficient offense put pressure on our defense and they were able to take advantage of that with effort plays, whether that’s offensive rebounding or open threes. When you’re going down missing them and they’re coming down making them, that’s going to take a toll on you. It’s definitely a short-term [problem], without a doubt.”
The players echoed those sentiments, but despite bringing back nearly the same roster as their championship team, they admit that this is a new year, that injuries have played a part, and that they’re going throw some growing pains in their title defense.
“We had some turnovers, took some ill-advised shots, spacing, rhythm — that’s a part of it,” Jaylen Brown said after scoring a team-high 28 points with five assists. “Everybody’s back, everybody has healthy today, so it’s something we gotta fight for and figure it out. Today wasn’t the best example of that.”
But again, Brown acknowledged how their difficulties on offense correlated to ineptitude on defense. If the pacing and spacing is off and shots don’t go down, everybody’s less engaged and when everybody’s less engaged, that carries over on D.
Offensively, we struggled, so that puts a lot of pressure on our defense. Tonight, you seen we had some collapses,” Brown said. “Part of that is first game back from a long road trip, but to be honest, it’s really no excuse. We’re going to look at it and we’re going to figure it out. It’s a long journey and I believe in this team. We got a great group of guys. We’re going to figure things out.”
Jayson Tatum was equally optimistic that the Celtics would work their way out of this 6-6 funk.
“Just don’t get discouraged. I’ve played this game for a very very long time. You just gotta stick with it. Some nights are tougher than others…Just gotta stick with it and move on to the next play.”