Jaylen Brown scores season-high, but sloppy Celtics fall to Hawks: 9 takeaways
“They outplayed us,” Joe Mazzulla said. “Every facet of the game. Beat us on all the margins. They deserved to win.”
Jaylen Brown scored 37 points, but the Celtics didn’t deserve to beat the Hawks on Tuesday, and in the end, they didn’t: Atlanta claimed a hard-fought 117-116 win in Game 1 of the Emirates NBA Cup’s group play.
Here are the takeaways.
The Celtics played sloppy, ugly basketball.
The Celtics lost Tuesday’s game in the most appropriate way possible: By giving up an offensive rebound to Onyeka Okongwu for a layup, which put the Hawks up by one, and by turning the ball over on the other end.
20 turnovers, 16 of which were live-ball turnovers.
20 offensive rebounds for their opponent.
“They outplayed us,” a clipped Joe Mazzulla said afterward. “Every facet of the game. Beat us on all the margins. They deserved to win.”
And still, the Celtics had plenty of opportunities to pull away. They led by double-digits for much of the third quarter. They led by four with 1:24 remaining, and by three with 0:54 left. Even after Jrue Holiday’s pass sailed past Jayson Tatum untouched and out-of-bounds with five seconds remaining, a bizarre inadvertent whistle handed the ball back to the Celtics with the least-deserving chance to win of all time, but Jaylen Brown couldn’t create a clean look, and the Hawks pulled out a shocking win.
That’s the price you pay for not taking an opponent seriously.
“We expected to win,” Brown said. “Too careless and it showed. I think the No. 1 category it showed in is our turnovers. Uncharacteristic of us to have 20 turnovers in any circumstance. I think that just displayed that we weren’t in sync like we normally are, so we’ve got to be better at that, and I’ve got to be better at that.”
The Celtics are one of the better teams we’ve seen in recent memory, and they are (of course) much better than the Hawks (although without Trae Young, the Hawks play the Celtics a lot tougher).
But you don’t get to screw around in the NBA – the rest of the league is too good, and you will get punished. Turnovers lead to easy points, which leads to more confidence, which leads to more easy points.
The Celtics threw away (in multiple senses of the phrase) a potential win against a team when both wins and point differential might matter down the road in the in-season tournament, and they threw away an opportunity to get their starters some rest on the front end of a tough back-to-back with a scrappy Nets team looming.
Joe Mazzulla’s displeasure was certainly warranted.
“They played hard, and they played more physical than we did, and they got 20 offensive rebounds and forced us into 20 turnovers,” Mazzulla said.
“You let a team outshoot you by a shot margin like that, and you’re not going to win.”
Teams are catching on to Payton Pritchard (but Mazzulla adjusted).
With 1.1 seconds remaining in the second quarter, the Celtics had a chance to inbound the ball, but Payton Pritchard was on the bench.
Quickly, Pritchard hopped up and ripped off his warmups to get himself into the game, and the crowd erupted, hoping (of course) to see Pritchard’s patented half-court heave.
The Hawks, however, were well aware and focused on stopping Pritchard, so instead, Al Horford heaved the ball down the floor. Jaylen Brown caught it, turned and was fouled on a jumper.
Pritchard’s reputation as an end-of-quarter assassin is actually paying dividends for his team even when he’s just a decoy.
The all-green court was cool, and we won’t apologize.
Some people on social media expressed distaste for the Celtics’ NBA Cup court, which was admittedly extremely green.
But our take is that it looked kind of cool, and it’s fun to have a different look every once in a while during the season. The court also might have some appeal for younger viewers – one of the fun things about playing sports video games is that you can customize and change the look of the court and see your favorite players on an unfamiliar surface.
So sure, you could complain that it looks a little different, and sure, the colorway made watching the game a little more difficult (although if you were paying attention, your eyes get used to it after a while).
But as a little change-of-pace, the court looked kind of cool, and the little change-of-pace is maybe the best thing about the entire in-season tournament as a concept from the fan perspective, and according to Mazzulla, none of the players complained about it.
Derrick White’s All-Star campaign continues.
If any Celtics player can wash his hands clean of Tuesday’s debacle, Derrick White might be the lone candidate. He finished with 31 points, six rebounds and five assists, shooting a sparkling 10-for-15 from the floor and 7-for-12 from three.
A mixed bag for Jaylen Brown
Jaylen Brown scored a season-high 37 points on 14-for-22 shooting, but he missed three free-throws in the fourth quarter including two in a row which, in tandem with a White 3-pointer on the next possession, would have pushed the Celtics’ lead to five instead of three. Brown also had six of the Celtics’ 20 turnovers, although he gets a little bit of a pass since his usage was highest on the team at 39.8 percent and everyone else was turning it over too.
Still, it’s not the look you necessarily want when you are the team’s offensive focal point and your team finishes with 20 turnovers.
“Me and JT need to be better,” Brown said. “We had 20 turnovers as a team and me and him both had 11 combined. Some of them was offensive fouls and whatever. But still, just we’ve got to be better securing the ball and getting to our spacing. And we didn’t do that tonight and it cost our team.”
Jayson Tatum tweaked his ankle again.
Tatum was questionable prior to the game, but he ended up playing, only to tweak his ankle again on Larry Nance’s foot in the second half.
Might the Celtics rest Tatum on the second night of a back-to-back, with two days of rest looming?
“Yeah, I’m gonna play tomorrow,” Tatum said. “I mean, it’s a little tender. And it was like two minutes left in the game, so just had to push through.”
Tatum had a rough evening, finishing 5-for-16 from the floor. After a dunk with 9:07 remaining in the third quarter, he went the rest of the way without a field goal, although he did finish with eight assists.
The Celtics are scuffling a bit lately.
In their last two games prior to Tuesday, the Celtics went down 16-2. While they didn’t go down big against the Hawks, they didn’t get off to a particularly inspiring start.
Per Cleaning The Glass, the starters (Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and Al Horford) have a point differential of +18.7 this season in 204 possessions, which is (of course) fantastic. But per the NBA’s stats, that group is +7.1 over the last two weeks.
“Our starts have been pretty bad, so that’s on us as the starting five,” White said. “It’s not really like us to come out and have to question our, like, readiness, especially like the group we have. So we have to start games better for sure.”
Mazzulla, meanwhile, was asked if the Celtics need to defend the rim better.
“Yeah absolutely. We can get better at that,” he said. “Yes. Absolutely.”
Mazzulla added that individual defense is the most important aspect of the Celtics’ rim protection without adding much more detail.
Brown, however, noted that since the Celtics switch often, they need to fight.
“Some of those bigs, they got a lot of seals tonight, Okongwu and [Clint] Capela did a good job offensive rebounding and sealing some of our switches and made us pay for it,” Brown said. “We’ve just got to fight better. We didn’t fight how we normally do tonight.”
“I’ve just got to be better,” White added. “There’s going to be cross-matches every game. Just got to be better personally. I just got to be better.”
The young, Young-less Hawks have some players.
Jalen Johnson finished with an 18-13-10 triple-double.
Dyson Daniels recorded 28 points, seven assists and six (!) steals.
Zaccharie Risacher grabbed five offensive rebounds and three steals.
Okongwu recorded 15 points and six rebounds off the bench.
The Hawks have some young infrastructure, with size and intriguing talent. Trae Young might be the driving force behind their offense, but there are building blocks in place behind him.
A back-to-back, then a break.
The Celtics face the Nets in Brooklyn at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday – their third game in four nights, and their second in as many nights. They take on the Raptors at 8 p.m. on Saturday.
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