Celtics’ late-game struggles continue in second straight loss to Hawks: 7 takeaways
The Celtics leave Atlanta 0-2 after falling 123-122 to the Hawks in overtime.
The Celtics dropped an overtime loss on Thursday to the Hawks in Atlanta three days after blowing a 30-point lead to … the Hawks in Atlanta.
Here are the takeaways.
1. Let’s start with the thing that seemed to make fans the angriest after the game.
The Celtics’ crunchtime offense was a rough watch again. With a little over a minute left, Jayson Tatum tried to isolate against Dejounte Murray and he created a makeable shot for himself, but he left it short. After Jaylen Brown knocked down a mid-range jumper to put the Celtics up three, Bogdan Bogdanovic buried a 3-pointer that tied the game and forced the Celtics to try to win a tied game in the closing seconds.
This is where things got uncomfortably familiar for the Celtics. They walked the clock down, and Tatum started to attack the basket with seven seconds remaining. Wes Matthews gave a foul, and the Celtics had seven seconds to create something for themselves. Tatum got the ball again and, after running an inverted pick-and-roll with Jrue Holiday, ended up with a brutally difficult last-second 3-pointer that had no real chance of going in.
On the one hand, the Celtics will be eviscerated – not entirely unfairly – for not coming up with a more creative option in the closing seconds. On the other, it’s worth remembering that when the game is tied in the closing seconds, the goal is usually to get the last shot of regulation, which generally means allowing your best player to try to create something.
The alternative is what happened in overtime. Trailing by one with 14 seconds remaining, the Celtics needed to try to get a 2-for-1. They made the most of a somewhat scrambled play that utilized a more creative look with Kristaps Porzingis operating out of the post.
That left 6.2 seconds on the clock, which was more than enough time for Murray to win the game.
Again, that’s the concern when the game is tied and the shot clock is off: If you go too early, you give the opposing team a chance. But it’s also fair to have questions about the Celtics’ last-second offense.
“Sometimes I think we have settled, and we can get to the basket and things like that. But I think we’ll be ready when it’s time,” Jaylen Brown told reporters. “We just have to make sure we execute, we have our spacing, and we’re not settling.”
2. How worried is Joe Mazzulla about this two-game slip to a team that could face the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs? A reporter used the word “demoralizing” in a question (the question, it’s important to note, was about an offensive rebound, not the loss) and Mazzulla laughed.
“[The loss] is not demoralizing,” he said.
Again, the Celtics are in a bizarre position. They have more than enough runway to try things out before the postseason, and they also don’t have a lot of reason to go all out for every single win. Presumably, they don’t want to (and won’t) go into the postseason on a three-week losing streak, but if there was ever a time to value process over results, this is it.
It remains to be seen whether Celtics fans can stomach the results, however.
3. Murray had an absurd game in every sense of the word. He was very good: 44 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. He cooked Porzingis repeatedly (more on this in a minute), and he dragged the Hawks to a win.
Murray also attempted 44 shots, which was a stat so ridiculous, even he was amused.
“I still feel like I played awful,” Murray said in a post-game interview. “I don’t want to take that many shots, but I know Kobe would be proud of me.”
Murray was far from awful, of course, but he was inefficient: 18-for-44 (40.9 percent) from the floor and 6-for-19 (31.6 percent) from three.
On the other hand, with Trae Young still injured and on the bench, somebody has to take those shots. Murray made just enough of them to pull out the win.
4. Porzingis had a tough game: 8-for-20 from the field and 2-for-7 from three, and the optics of his defense against Murray weren’t great.
Mazzulla, however, told reporters that the Celtics wanted to give Porzingis an opportunity to try to defend guards 1-on-1.
“Those are good reps for us,” he said. “We went to those on purpose. We have an opportunity to practice stuff that we’re going to need to get to, and we haven’t done a lot of 1-5 switching with KP on the floor, so I thought that was a good opportunity for us to just work on that and get reps on that and get it on film.”
Coming into the season, Porzingis’ inability to switch was a concern for the Celtics, although they’ve masked it pretty effectively throughout the year. Having players like Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Tatum and Brown around helps, of course.
5. Jrue Holiday returned to the floor after missing five games with a shoulder injury. He said he felt more comfortable than he expected, and he shot 3-for-6 from the 3-point line en route to 13 points, seven rebounds and five assists.
6. The Celtics wasted a pristine shooting performance by Derrick White, who was 8-for-11 from the floor and 5-for-6 from behind the arc.
White was 6-for-7 from behind the arc if you count his inbounds pass with 0:00.1 remaining, which swished through without touching anyone’s hand – an unfortunate result for the Celtics, since if anyone had touched it on its way down, they could have stolen a win.
White finished with 22 points.
7. The Celtics return to the floor on Saturday in New Orleans to close out the month of March with a game against the Pelicans at 5 p.m. ET. They have two games remaining on their current road trip.
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