Celtics blow 30-point lead, fall to Hawks to snap winning streak: 7 takeaways
A lot of Celtics fans are going to be upset about the loss. Should they be?
The Celtics tripped and dropped their nine-game winning streak despite taking a 30-point lead in the first half against the Hawks on Monday, falling 120-118.
Here are the takeaways.
1. A lot of Celtics fans are going to be upset about that loss (which was the Celtics’ biggest blown lead since 1996). A lot of Celtics fans are going to try to write that loss off as nothing. A lot of NBA fans are going to want to make jokes at the Celtics’ expense.
So we’ll try to be as measured as possible in this space, partly out of respect for Joe Mazzulla’s comments earlier this year in which he (quite fairly, in our estimation) called reporters and fans out for saying the Celtics should be “embarrassed.”
The Celtics should not be embarrassed for losing a late-March game to the Hawks. Not when they have a 11-game lead in the standings, and not when they clinched the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs before any other team in the conference clinched a (non-play-in) playoff berth. Even given the Celtics’ history with big leads, everyone who watches the team on a consistent basis has seen them handle their business in a large enough sample size this season to step back from the ledge. “Is any lead safe?!!” is a silly question to ask because the Celtics had big leads against the Trail Blazers, Jazz, Suns, Wizards and Pistons twice in the last two weeks, and all of those leads proved very safe in the end.
That said, the loss does look bad in light of the Celtics’ reputation, especially given their late-game struggles offensively. They went stagnant down the stretch, and both Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown ran unsuccessful your-turn-my-turn iso sets. The Celtics will take their lumps on social media, which they deserve. If you can’t hold off the Hawks – who are 31-39 – and you lose once every three weeks, you have to hold the occasional L and all the concern trolling about the team that comes with it.
Perhaps the best way we can sum up Monday’s game is that the Celtics lost a game they should have won which will have absolutely no bearing on their future.
2. What will have a bearing on the Celtics’ future is whether or not they make their 3-pointers.
The Hawks, to steal Mazzulla’s terminology, won the margins significantly on Monday – most notably from the 3-point arc where they hit 18-for-36 (50 percent) to the Celtics’ 11-for-38 (28.9) percent. The second half was particularly brutal – Svi Mykhailiuk hit the only triple of the half as the Celtics went 1-for-15 while the Hawks hit 11-for-19 as they stormed back.
On an individual level, the Celtics’ shooting numbers are pretty rough. Sam Hauser finished 2-for-10 from deep. Kristaps Porzingis was 1-for-4. Tatum and Brown were both 2-for-7. Payton Pritchard was 1-for-5.
Meanwhile, the Hawks outscored the Celtics 15-6 in points off turnovers, which was notable because they actually turned the ball over slightly more than the Celtics (7-5).
Mazzulla noted to reporters afterward that the Hawks challenged the Celtics in the postseason last year the same way: 3-pointers, points off turnovers and offensive rebounds.
“That’s the weapon of the 3-pointer,” Mazzulla said. “When they shoot 50 percent from 3, it changes everything. We shot 28 percent. We only had nine turnovers, usually they don’t lead to 20 points. We don’t usually have that many live ball ones.”
3. De’Andre Hunter nearly gifted the Celtics an opportunity to win the game in the closing seconds with one of the worst process-over-results shots of the season. With the Hawks leading by a point, Dejounte Murray isolated against Kristaps Porzingis and missed a mid-range jumper. The ball was tapped out by Clint Capela, and it found its way to Hunter, who inexplicably raised up for a 3-pointer with the shot clock off … buried it.
If Hunter missed, he would have breathed new life into the Celtics for absolutely no reason. Instead, he stuck the dagger. Basketball is a funny game sometimes.
4. The Celtics admitted afterward that they let down their guard.
“We relaxed, which is natural,” Porzingis said. “You go up 30, you feel like everything’s just smooth and you relax. That type of team, if you relax too much and give them some open looks, those guys can make shots. … We just don’t want to make this a habit. And it hasn’t been a habit for us. Just, we slipped one game, we did relax a little bit, and we paid the price.”
Tatum said the Celtics “f—ed the game up.”
“We’re all adults and professionals, and we know we didn’t do the things necessary to win, and I think that’s sometimes easier to fix,” he said. “You know if you do the right things and play the right way, how we’re supposed to, we know usually what the outcome is going to be. … Take it on the chin, and get ready for Thursday.”
5. In mild defense of Tatum’s 1-on-1 tendencies: He forced a switch with 3:25 remaining and Clint Capela guarding him, then burned the Hawks center for a monstrous one-handed slam.
A minute later, he got the much-smaller Murray isolated, then stepped back and buried an elbow jumper that briefly re-gained a one-point lead for the Celtics.
The isolations work sometimes – often when Tatum gets a mismatch and takes the ball aggressively to the basket. When they don’t, it’s pretty stark.
6. The Celtics were without Jrue Holiday and Eastern Conference Player of the Week winner Derrick White (hand sprain), which was part of the issue. White in particular has become utterly integral to the team’s pace and probably could have single-handedly fixed the stagnation issues in the final two minutes.
But, again, the Celtics are no longer focused on the regular season, for better or worse. This is a team with bigger goals in mind, and keeping their most important players healthy for the postseason will take precedence until the regular-season finale on April 14. Whether that dynamic creates more results like Monday remains to be seen.
If it does, remember that the next games that truly matter tip off after April 14.
7. The Hawks and Celtics have a strange little back-and-forth this week: The Hawks play the Trail Blazers in Atlanta on Wednesday, followed by … the Celtics, who do not have another game before they play the Hawks again.
The Celtics close the month of March in New Orleans on Saturday.
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