On Thursday night, the Celtics sent another warning to the NBA with one of their best nights of a season. Jayson Tatum was named an All-Star starter again as the C’s produced a record-breaking offensive performance in a rout of the Heat. The vibes were high as they left Miami to come home for a long homestand.
Two nights later, Tatum had to resort to sitting the entire fourth quarter at the end of the bench with a towel draped over his back. It was not for a good reason.
The Celtics followed up arguably their best performance of the season with their worst. For the first time this season, the C’s looked completely inept. They looked lost in a brutal 115-96 loss to the Clippers at TD Garden that wasn’t even that close.
Tatum scored 21 points to lead the Celtics, who put up enough bricks to build a few new buildings in downtown Boston. After lighting up the nets in Miami, they came back to earth emphatically. They shot 35.6 percent from the field and went 10-for-40 from distance. They missed a bunch of layups. Joe Mazzulla couldn’t use up his timeouts quickly enough. They were booed on their home court. It was their largest margin of defeat this season.
“A good old-fashioned ass-whooping,” Jrue Holiday said.
Kawhi Leonard scored 26 points, Paul George had 17 points and old friend Daniel Theis had 18 points off the bench – more than any Celtic not named Tatum – for the Clippers, who were on the second leg of a back-to-back. You’d be forgiven if you thought it was the Celtics who were on the back-to-back.
Holiday thought the Clippers did everything better, from rebounding to 50/50 to transition. It was a rare dud, especially for these Celtics who have taken pride in their consistent efforts this year.
“They were a step ahead,” Holiday said.
The C’s didn’t have Kristaps Porzingis, who missed Saturday’s game with a sprained ankle, but that was little excuse. No one really showed up. Derrick White and Al Horford combined to go 0-for-13 from the field. Jaylen Brown had eight points on 3-for-13 shooting. Holiday had seven points on 2-for-11 shooting. The Celtics, who started 20-0 at home, have dropped two straight games at the Garden to potential NBA Finals opponents after their loss to the Nuggets last Friday. Both losses were defined by offensive struggles.
Without Porzingis, the Celtics didn’t have any solutions to combat the Clippers’ size and athleticism. Unlike most of their opponents, the Clippers didn’t have any obvious mismatches to take advantage of. Holiday liked the most of the shots the Celtics took, especially in the first half. But they missed most of them. And then there were too many times when their possessions just went nowhere. They never got into a rhythm. They were out of sync all night.
“We play a little different when he’s not out there,” Tatum said of Porzingis. “But we still have answers and we still feel like we have enough to win. We still have to have a certain identity of how we want to play and how we want to attack. But tonight, we just didn’t shoot the ball nearly as well as we would like to.”
The Celtics opened the game 0-for-10 from three but only trailed by five after the first quarter thanks to good defense. But the shots just never caught up. They scored 39 points in the first half, one more than their season-low when they posted 38 in Milwaukee two weeks ago. On that night, they were on the second night of a back-to-back during a grueling schedule. They had no such excuse this time.
The offensive struggles that ensued in the third quarter were shocking, as the Celtics went on a scoring drought of six minutes, 34 seconds. After the Celtics cut their deficit to 12, the Clippers went on a 21-0 run. Boos rained down on them. In that span, Mazzulla called two timeouts. Nothing could help them. Bricks piled up. Turnovers led to easy baskets. Holiday had one turnover in which he passed out of bounds to nobody. Tatum, after a couple of misses, was called for a technical foul complaining for a foul. Frustration was apparent.
It all unraveled as the Celtics went down by as many as 36 and never recovered. They scored just 60 points through three quarters before the starters were pulled to begin the fourth. Mazzulla thought their inefficient offense waned on their defense, especially in transition. They couldn’t produce second-chance points off their misses – a calling card of this team on poor shooting nights – and the Clippers took advantage by roasting them for 26 fast-break points.
“I thought they did a good job of messing up the timing of every one of our passes with their active hands, and so what looked like a guy open, we missed it a half a second because of their activity and their active hands, and it kind of messed up the timing and rhythm of our offense, especially when we got into the paint,” Mazzulla said. “But yeah, I just thought we missed shots, and I thought they forced us to execute, and they played well.”
If Thursday night showed how dangerous the Celtics can be, Saturday proved they are not quite invincible. They still have flaws, and they were exposed in painful fashion.
”Definitely humbling, I think, to be able to kind of come home and get your butt kicked,” Holiday said. “But we know it’s a long season. We know we can learn from this and just kind of hold it in our back pocket. It’ll always be in the back of our head when we have a good game the game before.”
