After the Celtics’ 110-97 loss in Toronto, Kristaps Porzingis took questions in a black Celtics cut-off hoodie. He looked like the Grim Reaper at a basketball funeral.
It dropped Boston to 7-7 in the last fourteen games that have included a crushing blow from the 76ers on Christmas Day, a strong showing out on the road against some of the Western Conference’s best, and now disappointing losses to the 20-20 Sacramento Kings and 10-31 Raptors.
“We played with no spirit, with no personality. It’s just a weak performance from us honestly. We just played with no personality,” Porzingis deadpanned after the game.
“It’s not the end of the world. Every team has its ups and downs. It’s just tonight, it felt like $#&* right now. We played some bad basketball.”
Here’s CelticsBlog’s Daniel Poarch from the game recap:
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown struggled to find their marks tonight. The star duo combined to shoot just 9-of-31 from the field, tallying just 26 points. Kristaps Porzingis was the best player on the court for Boston tonight, scoring 18 points and shooting 7-of-11 from the field (4-of-5 from three). Payton Pritchard added 20 in an efficient night off the bench, but no other Celtic managed to find much consistency as a scorer.
To Porzingis’ credit, he’s found a groove since the west coast trip, averaging 19points and nine rebounds and hitting 45.5% from behind the arc. Unfortunately, that hasn’t exactly resulted in wins. After a championship season that featured him as the ultimate complementary player, it’s been a bit of a struggle in his return from offseason surgery. The Celtics are 9-8 with him and a surprising 19-4 without their starting center.
Porzingis assured that the team isn’t worried just yet and that there hasn’t been any tension behind the scenes. There has been “some more non-verbal stuff,” but he’s confident things will change.
“If we were panicking, I wouldn’t tell you, but we are not. We are in a bad moment right now, for sure. We have to be realistic and look in the mirror,” Porzingis said.
“We’re not playing the best basketball. We’re not executing. We’re not doing this this this. There’s a lot of things that we’re not doing well and we have to be honest with ourselves. Otherwise, we’ll just keep going like this: get some wins, get some losses, get some wins. And then we’ll develop some bad habits. We just have to be honest, look at ourselves individually, and go from there.”
After this quick trip across the border, the Celtics host an Orlando Magic team that’s always given them trouble and getting healthy and the Atlanta Hawks who took a game off the champs without Trae Young earlier in the season. That’s followed by a four-game trip to California (Warriors, Clippers, Lakers) and Dallas.
Defending the title was never going to be easy. Head coach Joe Mazzulla has stressed the importance of finding different ways to win. The three-point hasn’t been there since December and the defense has slipped. However, the front office brought back virtually the same roster that took the league by storm and while some of the numbers have changed, the players remain the same.
“Just know who these guys are. We have high personality, high character people. Nobody is pointing fingers,” Porzingis said of his confidence in his teammates. “We know we will get passed this. I know it. We know it, but we have to start. We have to start playing better. We can’t just keep cruising.”