Joe Mazzulla, Celtics stars pick up technicals late in contentious loss to Bulls: 7 takeaways
The Celtics were called for three technical fouls in the final six minutes of Thursday's loss against the Bulls
The Celtics fell apart late and dropped a rare loss of composure to the Bulls in their return to the court on Thursday, falling 117-108.
Here are the takeaways.
1. Joe Mazzulla, Jaylen Brown, and Jayson Tatum picked up technicals in rapid succession
With 5:12 remaining and the Celtics trailing by three, Payton Pritchard and Bulls guard Ayo Dosunmu got tangled up going for a jump ball, and Jaylen Brown tried to get his hand into the play as well.
The jump appeared as though it should have been between Dosunmu and Pritchard, and official Justin Van Duyne whistled it as such.
The Celtics protested that Brown should be taking the jump ball, and Joe Mazzulla walked out onto the floor to add his voice to the mix. That proved to be a bridge too far for Van Duyne, who whistled Mazzulla for a quick technical.
A livid Mazzulla had to be restrained by assistant coaches Sam Cassell and Tony Dobbins, and after the Bulls made a technical free throw, Brown continued to chirp at Van Duyne, who whistled another technical on the Celtics star.
Less than two minutes later, Jayson Tatum was whistled for a foul defending on the perimeter. Upset by the call, Tatum waved his hand at Tony Brothers and Brothers obligingly gave Tatum a technical as well.
The sequence essentially took the Celtics out of the game. Zach LaVine, who had a huge 36-point performance, made both of the initial technical free throws, and after the Celtics failed to secure the tap with Pritchard up against Dosunmu, LaVine buried a deep 3-pointer that pushed the lead to eight. The Celtics never really challenged again, and after the game, Mazzulla had to be pulled off the floor again by Cassell and Dobbins. Mazzulla’s message to Van Duyne didn’t exactly require expert lip reading, and he appeared to be beckoning Van Duyne over to fight him (Van Duyne, probably wisely, did not).
“I just hadn’t seen them in a while, so just [wished them] a Merry Christmas, happy holidays,” Mazzulla deadpanned after the game. “I wasn’t sure I was going to see them before the holiday, and I just can’t let a moment go by to where you wish someone just the best to them and theirs and their families.”
For his part, Brown was not in a joking mood (and we’ll get to the very understandable reason why in a minute).
“Here’s the thing,” Brown said. “You get fined – I got fined a couple weeks ago for inadvertent gestures that were determined not a part of the game, which was fine. I took the fine.”
The gesture Brown referenced, incidentally, was a throat slash after dunking on Isaiah Stewart.
“But what part of the game is the ref calling an inadvertent technical foul?” Brown continued. “And then I said to him, ‘You called a tech for no reason.’ He said, ‘If you say it to me again, I’m going to call another tech.’ And then he called a tech.
“Man, get out of here. You can’t threaten guys with a technical foul. That’s not part of the game either. You want to fine people for gestures and all this stuff, fine that. This is some [expletive]. We were down three at the time at the jump ball and that led to us being down eight and that affects the game. That could have been avoided. Joe didn’t say anything to deserve a tech.”
2. The Celtics’ defense struggled.
The Bulls aren’t a bad offensive team (13th entering Thursday’s game), but they overperformed considerably against the Celtics, especially during a nasty stretch at the start of the fourth quarter during which the Celtics’ defense went to pieces.
The Bulls started the quarter on a 17-4 run, spurred by the kind of offense on which the Celtics pride themselves – 3-pointers and layups. Dosunmu in particular ran right around Celtics defenders, driving into the paint for easy layups and dishing out to corner 3-pointers. Dosumnu scored nine of his 17 points during a five-minute stretch in which the Bulls turned a four-point Celtics lead into a nine-point Bulls lead.
“Your individual defense is important,” Mazzulla said. “I thought our first half, we executed the details offensively well, and I thought the second half, we just kind of have to be better at the individual tendencies, what they like to do, and then just what we want to take away from them.”
The Celtics never really recovered, which was something of an extension of one of Mazzulla’s larger points: Sometimes defense flows from offense. The Celtics never really got a rhythm offensively, and their defense suffered tremendously as a result.
The Bulls scored 117 points, which isn’t an outrageous number, but the Celtics’ defense has slipped a bit this year – 109.7 in rating entering Thursday’s game. That’s more than enough to win on most nights (and the eye test suggests that they can be much better when they hit the gas as hard as they can), but on nights when the offense can’t pick up the slack, the whole machine starts to tremble.
3. This is what happens when the 3-pointers don’t fall.
On a very related note, the Celtics shot 14-for-56 from behind the arc – just 25 percent.
No single player was particularly good (Payton Pritchard shot 4-for-10, Jayson Tatum shot 4-for-11), and no single player was outlier bad (Jaylen Brown was 1-for-8, Jrue Holiday was 0-for-4).
Thursday’s game was just the kind of game that a high-volume 3-point shooting team has from time to time during the year, and it looked particularly pronounced coming from a team as high-volume as the Celtics.
The technicals at the end may have stymied any chance of a Celtics comeback, which clearly matters, but the missed 3-pointers and the defensive breakdowns dug the Celtics into the hole that frustrated them in the first place.
“I think it’s just one of those nights,” Mazzulla said. “Again, I think when you shoot 25 percent but you’re fighting for great looks, and you have a team that shoots 37 percent, it’s just kind of wearing a little bit. So like I said, I thought our attention to detail was good in the first half. I thought second half, it waned a little bit. And the good thing is we got the same team coming up, so we just find the 15 to 20 possessions that we got to be better at.”
4. Jaden Springer got rotation playing time.
Springer, a defensive-minded guard who showed a lot of promise in Philadelphia, has largely been benched for the Celtics, but he played 13 minutes on Thursday with stints in both the first and fourth quarters. Springer shot 0-for-2 from the field, but he did grab four rebounds.
“I thought he does a good job on the offensive glass and his individual defense and just kind of wanted to match the speed there,” Mazzulla said. “I thought he played well.”
5. Jayson Tatum hit the Bulls with a nasty crossover.
Hidden in the wreckage of the Celtics’ 3-point shooting percentage, Tatum had a really nice performance that included this in-and-out-into-a-crossover combo that looked so much easier in his hands than it would in anyone else’s.
Tatum led the Celtics with 31 points (10-for-22), 10 rebounds, four assists and a pair of steals.
6. Brown has had “a tough week.”
On Sunday, Brown’s mother’s house in Wellesley was the target of a break-in, while both his mother and his nephew were inside. Celtics assistant coach Amile Jefferson’s house was also targeted.
Brown, sounding exhausted, told reporters after the game that the last week has been “tough.”
“Obviously, my mother’s security is of the utmost importance to me, and that’s been compromised,” Brown said.
Brown didn’t go into deep detail, but he did acknowledge that several other break-ins have happened at the houses of prominent athletes around the country recently.
“Anybody who it hasn’t happened to yet, just make sure you’ve got things in place and that it doesn’t,” Brown said. “Obviously, to go through that experience and people still in the crib and stuff like that is – it just means you think about some things differently.”
Jayson Tatum added that Brown’s experience “really puts things into perspective.”
“I can only imagine how tough that is to have that on your mind and still go out here and try to do your job at a high level,” Tatum said. “So just being there for him in any way we can and knowing we’re kind of all in this together.”
7. Another shot at Chicago.
The Celtics have a chance to bounce back against the team that frustrated them when they travel to Chicago on Saturday.
“It’s like a mini-playoff series for us,” Kristaps Porzingis said. “So it’s going to be a good challenge for us going there now.”
After that, the Celtics have an interesting week with games against the Magic and Pacers on Monday and Friday, and a home game in between against the 76ers on Christmas Day.
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