Celtics
Boston narrowly lost a battle of two genuine contenders.
The Celtics finally lost at home on Friday, falling to the Nuggets 102-100 in a battle of genuine contenders.
Here are the takeaways.
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Kristaps Porzingis kisses Derrick White on forehead after and-one play
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Watch: Jayson Tatum receives technical foul for hanging on rim after dunk
1. A lot will be made of the Celtics’ struggles down the stretch in games, and that’s understandable after Friday’s loss. The Celtics’ offense doesn’t always look pretty when they are trailing in the closing seconds. especially after watching Jayson Tatum try to take on three defenders and miss at the rim, or after watching yet another ugly jumper fall off the rim harmlessly.
“I think I kind of rushed it, and that’s on me,” Tatum said afterward.
But the stats don’t back up concerns about the Celtics in the clutch. They have the fourth-most wins in clutch situations, per the NBA’s stats site with a record of 13-8, and they are tied with the Bucks for the second-best net rating in clutch situations at 21.4. From a basic counting stats perspective, they score 10.6 points per game in clutch opportunities, which is seventh-best in the league.
A more accurate way to describe the Celtics’ struggles might be to say that they don’t always perform well when looking for the tying or go-ahead shot, which could prove to be a concern at some point down the line, but the Celtics have been pretty good at avoiding those situations this season, which is more important anyway. After all, you don’t want a team to rely on tying or go-ahead shots, because they are always more difficult for a myriad reasons (refs swallowing their whistles down the stretch, physical defenses are more locked in, etc.).
“I mean, your best player has the ball and an opportunity, and whether it was on two or three guys, you got a layup and he just missed it,” Joe Mazzulla said. “So the balance is you trust your best player to make a play, and he just didn’t make it.”
2. If there’s a big takeaway from Friday’s loss, it’s that the Nuggets looked like the defending champions, and the Celtics looked like genuine challengers to the throne. With all due respect to the Timberwolves (whose defense makes them a legitimate challenger as well) and the Thunder (who have an electric superstar but a lot of unproven youth), the Nuggets looked every bit like the best team in the Western Conference – the final video-game boss complete with a giant Bowser-sized superstar who stands in the way of a Celtics team in search of a title. The Celtics opted not to double Jokic, and he posted an obscene 34-12-9 stat line on 14-for-22 shooting. They let Jamal Murray get going, and he burned them for 35-8-5 on an even-more-efficient 15-for-21.
“They put you in a tough spot,” Mazzulla said. “And I thought we did a good job of just continuing to fight and chipping away – off rhythm here, off rhythm there – and it literally came down to the last possession.”
3. Denver has some answers for Jayson Tatum, but Friday’s game felt like one of the nights where his struggles have more to do with his own misses than the defense. He got a number of decent looks but finished with 22 points on 9-for-24 shooting. Jaylen Brown was worse: 13 points on 6-for-19 shooting. They combined to shoot 2-for-17 from 3-point range. This year’s team is much better equipped to both weather those types of shooting nights and create enough spacing to prevent them.
Still, if you want to be concerned about something, worry less about last-second offense and more about what happens if Tatum and Brown go cold together at an inopportune time. As genuinely great as both players are, there’s history of that happening.
4. The game started with a duel between Jokic and Porzingis, who played 1-on-1 for much of the first quarter and were both singularly unable to guard each other. Jokic couldn’t get out to the 3-point line, and Porzingis poured in 15 points while shooting 3-for-4 from deep. Porzingis couldn’t keep Jokic out of the post, and Jokic scored 15 points on 7-for-9 shooting.
The Nuggets later put smaller players on Porzingis and used their bigs to crowd the paint, while the Celtics opted for single coverage in an effort to force Jokic to beat them (and with plenty of help from Murray, he did).
Mazzulla, meanwhile, wanted the Celtics to get Porzingis more post ups.
“We didn’t force it,” Porzingis said diplomatically. “I had like two or three opportunities, I think two post-ups I had. Missed both that are good looks for me. It’s probably different if I make just one of those. Maybe we go back to it more times. I’m there ready. I love punishing these guys. … If they put a guard on me, I want to make them pay. I want to make them pay and rebound and post-up and get those fouls. Probably there were situations where I could’ve done a better job finding that moment to duck in and just be aggressive.”
5. One complaint: What viewer watches the NBA and thinks “we need more hanging-on-the-rim technicals”? What demographic is served by whistling Tatum for a technical here?
Tatum pulled himself up on the rim, so the official was within his rights. But part of the reason Tatum hung on the rim was to protect himself from a fall, and in those scenarios, our two cents here would be that the NBA should offer much more leeway.
6. The Celtics were gifted a second lease on life after Jokic baited them into a lane violation late in the fourth quarter with a twitch that would have earned him a false start if he were on an NFL offensive line. Instead, officials called it a jump ball, asserting that Jokic went into the lane as well.
That was a pretty tough call for the Nuggets, as you can see here.
7. The Celtics out-rebounded the Nuggets 12-10 on the offensive glass but were outscored 15-12 in second-chance points.
8. On a more positive note, if the Nuggets can’t force the Celtics into more than two turnovers in a playoff scenario, the Celtics have a great shot at winning a series.
9. The Celtics feel like they can learn from Friday’s loss.
“I love it even though we lost,” Porzingis said. “It’s a great game for us. There are many things I think that we’re going to look at, and we can study those things because this is a real team. This is last year’s champs, and that’s what we want to be.”
10. Next up: The Celtics travel to Houston for a rematch of last weekend’s game against the Rockets. That contest tips off Sunday at 7 p.m.
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