The Time Has Come For The Celtics To Cut The Shit And Stop Playing Horrific Basketball

Boston Globe. Getty Images.

Well, it was bound to happen eventually I guess. For the first time this season and for the first time since April of last year, the Celtics finally lost back to back games. Both in equally embarrassing fashion, we may as well rip the bandaid right off.

Not only have they lost 2 in a row, the Celts have lost 3 of 4 and 4 of 7. They're 6-5 in the month of December (with IND/IND/TOR left) and by the very definition, are playing some extremely mediocre basketball. The 13th ranked offense, 13th ranked defense, 13th ranked net rating with the 30th ranked AST% and 23rd ranked TS% over these last 4 games (3 losses), it's mostly dogshit everywhere you look. That's just the honest truth of the product the defending champs are putting onto the floor right now.

It's been objectively awful basketball.

The response to this down stretch has been pretty much what you would expect. Playing under the "can't lose a game" tax is a privilege, and when you run into a stretch where you start to lose more than you win, that's obviously going to cause an overreaction. People will overlook the bigger picture and declare what's happening in the now who the Celts really are, how this stretch confirms they won't repeat as champs, blah blah blah.

You know, just like the reaction we saw after the ATL losses last year in March. Remember when those were played up as confirmation that the Celts would flame out in the postseason? That they weren't ready to win a title?

All that stuff is bullshit. 

But what isn't bullshit is the reality that this team is currently not playing up to an acceptable standard, let alone a championship standard. We know what that looks like, and it is NOT what the Celts have put onto the court this month and more specifically these last 4 games. There will be some that chalk it all up to coasting and "waiting for the playoffs" and as I said after the ORL blog, I can't rock with that mindset either. Every single possession matters. Playing bozo basketball, being lazy with the ball, and not defending at all, those are not things that I believe only require the playoffs to be good at. So what, the Celts don't need attention to detail just because it's December? Fuck that. 

You can't just live off of "the idea" of who you are as a team. What makes you that devastating force is actually doing those things on a basketball court. Winning games. For the majority of the season, that's what the Celtics had done and their record reflected it. That's what makes this current stretch so annoying. We know this is not their standard, so wake the hell up and get back to your standard because once you do, you'll be surprised at how many Ws come along with it. 

With that said, let's begin.

The Good

- You're out of your mind if you for even a second thought that there would be anything or anyone else mentioned in this section other than Jayson Tatum (I sneaky did also like Al's night and Kornet's 2nd half minutes but I'm trying to be dramatic to prove a point). Of the laundry list of issues on both ends of the floor consisting of pretty much the entire roster, one name you will not find is Tatum. On Christmas, as the best player, he did his part

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A slow start in the first few minutes, but outside of that? Zero complaints about Tatum's performance. He was efficient (11-20, 4-8) he was aggressive on the glass, and despite finishing with just 4 AST, that's primarily because his teammates bricked a fair amount of their looks seeing as how Tatum led the Celts with 12 potential assists. 

You could make the case that they should have played through him even more, but he did play every second of the second half and apparently, he spent the night shitting his pants due to some sort of bug so really this performance is even more impressive when you think about it. 32/15/4 on bubble guts is basically a Celtics right of passage.

- OK, time to get serious

The Bad

- I think I initially said it in my very first blog, which by now is over 8,000 so it goes back a ways, nearly 10 years.

If you don't defend, you die. Period. 

Nothing else matters if you cannot consistently get stops. It's not the only thing you need to do to reach the top of the mountain, we learned that lesson in 2022. That is why this current team exists. Offense is important. But the foundation of every single champion and potential dynasty is one constant. A terrifying, elite, physical defense. It's that defense that sparks everything. When you have to keep taking the ball out of the basket, it limits you. Resistance, physicality, turnovers, things that spark transition, that's how you blow a game wide open and become overwhelming for the opponent. But if you can't get stops and teams are scoring on you at will, you're not going to have the same result regardless of what you do offensively.

How do we know this?

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Offense was no problem. 20 3PM on 40% shooting, a solid points per possession, and a decent enough eFG%. That should be a cakewalk to a win right? They had literally never lost when making at least 20 3PM.

Wrong. Because when it came time to execute on the other end of the floor, the Celtics were a disaster. The worst part? They were at their worst when the game required them to be at their best. This is an issue that has now cost the Celtics back to back games, and it is the root of all 3 of their most recent losses (CHI/ORL/PHI)

This is their last 6 quarters of defense starting in the second half against the Magic through last night: 36, 16, 36, 30, 29, 36. 

Is anyone surprised they lost both of those games? That is beyond awful. In those 3 losses, the Celts opponents are shooting 45.3/39% while getting up 41.7 3PA/making 16.3 3PM and scoring 114 points a night. The Celts aren't only giving up high percentage looks from the floor, they also aren't guarding the 3pt line along the way. 

If we move this to just the 4th quarter where the Celts blew all 3 games? It's even worse.

Opponents are shooting 57/53% with 5.3 3PM scoring an average of 33.3 points. 

I'm sorry, but I reject the whole premise that the Celtics are "coasting until the playoffs" and that means that suddenly once a game goes to the 4th quarter in an effort to increase their chances of staying healthy they decide to immediately give up defensively and lose a game. That is complete horseshit and why I hate that line of thinking. What we're seeing in the 4th quarter defensively isn't coasting, it's just dogshit basketball that the team simply needs to stop playing

It showed up everywhere from multiple places last night. How would you describe the staying in front of Tyrese Maxey? Pretty awful I'd say. No moment bigger than the final minute of the game with the Celts desperately trying to make a comeback. What do we get?

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Multiple breakdowns, first with Pritchard at the top of the key, and then again on the back line with Jaylen Brown. With 1.1 seconds left on the clock, you have to be early with your help in that situation the second you see Maxey start to get down hill. Right here

There's not enough time for any sort of touch pass and shot to George in that spot, so rotating early shouldn't hurt you. Him being that step late is sort of what allowed Maxey to have the space and time to recover his fumble and put it back up. At that point, Jaylen is too far behind the play to really contest it (Maxey would prob get the whistle) and in the end it was another disastrous end of shot clock defensive mistake that simply cannot happen. 

Not too different from the other end of shot clock play where we got this bullshit

I understand that you live with Martin 3s, but Neemy is ball watching a little bit to start that possession which puts him slightly out of position. Knowing it's the end of the clock and Martin has to get it up, I don't love such a lazy closeout. I get you don't want to foul, but there has to be a balance between fouling on a contest and then whatever that was. 

In a game you lost by 4, there's 5 points that should never happen that did happen because of defensive breakdowns in the 4th quarter.

- Everyone should know by now the one way you keep bad teams in games is by being careless with the basketball. Not only does it get them out in transition for easy baskets, but they are possessions you're not even getting a shot up yourself. So what do the Celts do? They turn it over 6 times in the first quarter which led to 9 early points off TOs, and the Celts found themselves down 5 after giving up another 30 point quarter.

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It was a pick your poison of suck when it came to these turnovers. Lazy with the ball off a jump? Check!

Driving into traffic and immediately losing the ball? Check!

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Lazy entry passing? Check!

This is the stuff that annoys the hell out of me. I'm not sure what has gotten into Derrick White when it comes to his ball security, but something that has always been a strength has been a bit of a disaster these last two games. 9 TOs in 2 games? He's way too good of a player to be doing shit like that, but his decision making, especially in these 4th quarters has been poor. Something tells me it's the exception and not the rule, but that doesn't mean we pretend it's not happening.

With Jaylen's TOs (he had 5), it was more of the same type of shit we saw in the 2023 ECF series. Head down, driving into traffic, and struggling when 3 or 4 defenders all reach in. We saw those same exact TOs against the Heat in that series loss which was probably Jaylen's worst basketball of his life. 

- Disaster minutes for both Pritchard and Hauser off the bench, and for different reasons. With Pritchard, I can't ever remember him having a slump like this. Another 1-9 (0-8) off the bench in his 33 minutes, this was coming off his 3-7 (1-5) against the Magic and his 2-7 (2-6) against the Bulls before that. You never get 2 bad Pritchard nights in a row let alone 3 straight, and there are no other real bench scorers other than him, so his struggles really do hurt you.

Add in that the Sixers had no problems attacking him defensively, and you can see the limitations. When teams an be physical and blitz Pritchard like the Magic it removes him from the game. Yesterday the Sixers got a prayer in terms of bricking open looks, but with no Jrue available the Celts had to ride with an off shooting night Pritchard and live with the defense, which was an issue. Normally, you'd sub Jrue in if Pritchard's shot isn't falling like that.

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With Hauser, this is now back to back games for him where he's done nothing but cardio for the most part. He's taken just 1 shot which didn't look close, and it makes you wonder about his back injury. He looks like a guy that is still nursing that or at the very least is thinking about it while he's on the floor. We aren't getting the same aggressive off ball movement/quick trigger from Hauser in these minutes, he's just sort of out there.

This is why I'm starting to get back into the line of thinking that come the deadline, it's time to look for a bench wing, primarily a scorer. I don't know who that is, but I think that's what they need more than more big depth. 

- In the ORL loss, the Celts missed 5 FTs, the Magic went a perfect 21-21 and the Celtics lost by 4.

In the PHI loss the Celts missed 5 FTs, the Sixers went a perfect 19-19 and the Celtics lost by 4.

These are the margins that matter and why FTs are so important. Jaylen missing 3, 2 of which came at a big moment in the 4th quarter are things that simply cannot happen. 61.5% from the FT line? Is that a joke?\

The turnovers, the lack of defense, the poor 4th quarter execution, the missed FTs, eventually it all adds up. 

The Ugly

- Even with Jaylen coming to life in the 3rd quarter, that wasn't nearly enough for me to outweigh the rest of his performance, which in my opinion was a disaster. His first half was probably his worst of the season, and it was every bit of how he should never play. There's a difference between being aggressive and putting pressure on the defense and forcing things. The challenge is finding the balance of how to do both, especially when you miss early. But when you add in his defensive performance and the turnovers, I think it's fair to say Jaylen was actively hurting them in that first half.

The second half was obviously much better (9-15, 3-5) with only 1 TO, but his missed FTs in the 4th were big. If we are to hold him to the standard he deserves, then this was a performance that were nowhere near good enough. Very different from how he played in the ORL loss, that version you can live with.

What we got in that first half yesterday? It was the opposite of how I want Jaylen to play and how he needs to play for this team to play to their standard. 

- As I said at the time, until the Celtics figure their shit out in the 4th quarter, especially defensively, they will remain in this inconsistent rut.

The fact that they began the 4th quarter allowing an 8-2 run all with Tatum/Brown on the floor and Embiid/George off the floor is beyond inexcusable. It wasn't even like Joe screwed them by taking Tatum out to start the 4th and that's how the Sixers went on their run. He had both his guys out there! And for the second straight game the Celts were punched in the mouth first to open the quarter and they never quite recovered. A bad 2-3 minute stretch is all it takes, and for that to come with no Embiid on the floor should never, ever, happen. 

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- The Caleb Martin bullshit is just so fucking fake. I'm sorry. Open or not, 7-9 from deep is fake as hell. Guy is shooting 18% on open 3PA all season. It was the same exact shit as the 2023 ECF which proved to be fake, and while you tip your cap to the guy for making his looks, that doesn't mean it's any less fake

Look, with the Pacers up next for a 2 game set, there's no time for the defense to continue to perform at this level. The Pacers can put 125+ on you with ease, as the Celts already saw this season (in a loss). Everyone was saying all the right things about locking in defensively after the game and all that which is nice, but I need to see it. We have barely seen it in the month of December and haven't seen it at all over the last 4 games. 

Keep fucking around on that end and you will continue to have embarrassing losses like this was. It's really that simple.