"Losing Still Sucks" - After Just Their Second Loss In A Month, The Celtics Were Given A Valuable Reminder Of What Can Happen When You Play Like Assholes

Adam Glanzman. Getty Images.

And just like that, the streak is over. It was a good run, 9 in a row is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and it's not all that surprising that it ended with the Celts playing a stinker and getting their shit absolutely rocked by an inferior team. That's pretty much how these things go in the NBA. 

In fact, it was technically the Celts' worst loss of the year, which doesn't really mean anything but is still pretty annoying. Losing stinks. The good news is that you can use this outcome in a positive way, which seems to be how the team is approaching it

and that's all fine and good, but it still doesn't change the fact that even missing KP/Jrue/Horford this team still had more than enough available talent to win this game. We all know the results over the final 6 games mean nothing, but that still doesn't excuse playing losing basketball. It doesn't excuse poor execution on both ends of the floor. The game may not count, but those things still happened. I can't imagine anyone would be even remotely panicked seeing as how the Celts have lost 4 games in the last 2 months, and to me, this was more of a 

"eh, that's annoying"

type of loss. One that honestly shouldn't be that surprising when you realize the Celts have been horrendous in their first game back at home following a long road trip. I'm not even exaggerating, they've been legitimately terrible in this spot all season long

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What a weird quirk to their season, but it's something that's not all that uncommon in the NBA. Historically, that's a tough game to win, it's just a little shocking that the Celts continue to be so bad with it. Unless they plan on sweeping every playoff series they play in, there will be a Game 5 at the Garden after a 2 game road trip, so I'm going to need that shit to be figured out in a few weeks. 

At the end of the day, the biggest focus is obviously keeping everyone healthy and playing good basketball to end the year. One stinker after ripping off 9 straight doesn't really change that. Joe says it all the time: winning can be just as dangerous as losing if you don't handle it the right way. Sometimes you need a game like this to reset the focus and be reminded that wins are not given, they are earned. 

With that said, let's dive in.

The Good

- On a night where the majority of the roster stunk out loud, that was absolutely not the case with Luke Kornet. With the main frontcourt getting the night off, that meant it was time to let this dog off the leash and let him do his thing. To no surprise, Luke was great. His P&R chemistry with everyone is what handled most of the scoring early, as Kornet led all scorers with 10 points on 5-6 shooting in the first quarter. 

and I'm not even remotely joking when I say that for the early portion of this game, this entire team was essentially a Luke Kornet merchant. I mean, he ended a +3 in his 21 minutes in a game the Celtics lost by 21 points. You do the math. The second he stepped off the floor, everything pretty much cratered. The defensive rebounding disappeared, the offense stalled, the defense got much worse, it really cannot be understated how important of a player Luke Kornet actually is, especially when Al/KP aren't playing.

This is not a gimmick player. This is arguably the best back up center in the entire league. If he's not the best, he's on a short list that's for damn sure. A solid 14/6/2 on 7-9 shooting and the only player on the roster with a positive +/-, if anyone is exempt from criticism after this stinker, it's Luke.

The P&R numbers (and the OREBs) are where most of the attention lives, given the fact that the Tatum/Kornet P&R produces the 2nd best points per possession of any 2 man game in the entire NBA, trailing only Jokic/Murray. And while that stuff is awesome, what I also really love about Kornet is how good of a screener he is. I could make the case that he's the best screening big man on the entire roster. You should never, ever, overlook the importance of setting good screens. Especially for a team like the Celtics who are looking to get downhill with their drives in order to kick out to shooters. In my opinion, that all starts with a solid screen, and Luke has been great in this area all year.

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- It's clear he's not exactly 100%, but this was the best I thought Jaylen has looked in his last few games. His minutes were still relatively low (28) which was good as he's making his way back, and he led the team in scoring, rebounding, and was 3rd in assists

24/9/4 on 50/40% splits with a fucked up knee is good enough for me, and there were a few aspects of his game that I think make sense to monitor as we approach the playoffs.

The first is his pull up 3. When Jaylen's feeling confident in his shot, not only does he start to take these 3s with more frequency, he also buries them at a high clip. The dribble pull up 3 is an extremely important shot for both of the Jays, and we just saw last playoffs how big of a shot it is, especially for Jaylen. 

Seeing him take and make that shot with confidence last night is a good thing, because that's how he's going to help create a driving advantage for himself. It's why everyone from Jaylen to Tatum to Derrick have to keep taking these type of shots. Not only are they momentum shifters, they open everything else up.

The next part is the midrange. This is the Jaylen bread and butter. We saw multiple midrange/paint jumpers in this game, with Jaylen finishing 4-7 from the paint (non-RA). This is a shot he struggled with early in the year, and he has now been at 50% from that zone over the last 15 games. 

You obviously don't love to hear that he was playing through some pain last night, so my guess is the team will be smart and give him the right amount of rest and recovery before the playoffs, because they're going to need him. A performance like last night is encouraging given he hadn't really played all that well recently, so now the only thing to worry about is that knee getting right.

- This sequence was cool I guess, shame it was wasted

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- I'll say this about Derrick White. It took him a little while to get going, but he was another guy who snapped out of his funk in the second half and actually showed some life

What I love about Derrick is that any time he makes a mistake with a bad turnover, he IMMEDIATELY makes up for it. That sequence above is a great example of what I mean. He doesn't turn the ball and give up on the play. He turns the ball over and sprints like hell to get back and correct his mistake. I respect that. It makes it hard to stay mad at him if we're being honest, and it's a great way to show respect to the Basketball Gods. 

We're still working on the entry passes, but when the Celts started to make their push to get back into this game, a lot of it was off the offense of both Jaylen and Derrick.

- OK, that's enough, time to move onto the meat of this game

The Bad

- I'm not sure about anyone else, but this game gave me an extreme case of PTSD. We watched the Celts play right into the Miami Heat Dark Magic formula. By now, you should all know this well. When you play a Coach Spo team, you cannot do a series of things

1. Be careless with the ball / allow high points off TOs

2. Miss all your 3s

3. Be unable to defend without fouling

Do we want to guess what the Celtics did in this loss?

They turned it over 13 times, which led to a 17-3 points off turnover difference

They shot just 12-43 (27.9%) from deep

They committed 17 fouls, creating a 27-16 FTA difference

As you can see, they failed in all three areas. It should then be no surprise that the Celts got down by as many as 22 points and lost a game to an inferior Heat team. We see this exact formula in every single loss to MIA. It's why they lost in the Bubble, it's why they got down 0-3 and lost the 2023 ECF etc. 

Jaylen had dribbling/ball security issues at times, Derrick had 4 (!!!!!!!!!) turnovers, Tatum had 2 himself. Those 3 combined for 9 of the 13 turnovers, and considering those were the 3 best players in the game, that wasn't great.

- Just how bad were things defensively? Last night, you watched the worst defensive performance in the last 30+ years. I know that might seem like I'm being dramatic, but I'm not

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As poor as the offense was for stretches (and it was gross), the defensive execution was by far the biggest issue in this game. It felt like the Celts had zero resistance on the perimeter which was odd given that all of their perimeter defenders played outside of Jrue. 

Over the course of this game, it just never felt like the Celts were able to string together consecutive stops, especially when momentum was BEGGING to swing. They'd give up a 3, or a play at the rim which allowed the Heat to keep them at arms length, and their performance on that end of the floor is what was really shocking to me. We've seen the Celts go cold shooting, but they're still able to lock in defensively. Last night, there was none of that. Just poor execution on both ends of the floor.

In no world should the Celts be giving up 29, 30, 32, and 33 point quarters to this Heat offense. I don't care if they're rolling right now, that type of defensive execution, at home, is inexcusable. Just compare it to every other game against MIA this season

Gross doesn't even begin to describe how bad this team was defensively in this loss. 

- Classic Tyler Ford experience. Zero consistency when it came to the physicality allowed on both sides, uneven foul totals, an extremely bullshit tech on Tatum when things were starting to swing, it's all just so annoying.

Would you believe who worked the last time the Celtics lost a game? The OKC game at home? Ah that's right, Tyler Ford. What was the story of that game? Inconsistent physicality being allowed, uneven foul totals, and a bullshit Tatum tech. Imagine that!

I also found it very funny that the NBA's official video for Tatum's tech is this

Not only was Tatum right, as Davion Mitchell raised his leg into Tatum while he drove, but all he did was clap. That's right, Tatum was once again given a tech for clapping. I'll remind you, after a foul earlier in the game Tyler Herro clapped and jumped around complaining about it, to no tech. 

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Someone, please make this make sense to me. 

- If there's one trend that continues to be slightly concerning, it's the fact that Payton Pritchard/Sam Hauser continue to really struggle against tough, physical defenses. In a game down 3 rotation players those two guys need to elevate their production on both ends of the floor, and instead we got the opposite.

Hauser only finished 2-5, had 4 fouls and was a -12 in his minutes. Pritchard finished 2-6 from deep, only had 2 assists, was a -7 in his minutes and was repeatedly attacked defensively by bigger players, unable to really get any sort of stop.

Add in the fact that the Heat's bench completely outplayed the Celts reserves at home, and that was a huge factor in this outcome. Torrey Craig was a disaster in his 19 minutes, finishing 1-5 (0-3) and a team worst -23. Queta couldn't get a defensive rebound to save his life in his minutes while being the only big, and he was a -15.

Meanwhile. Kyle Anderson had his highest scoring game of the season. The Heat reserves as a group finished with 45 points while shooting well over 50%. As poor as some of the starters may have played, the bench production difference is what put the Celts in this position in the first place. 

It's fair to say that in the playoffs, guys like Craig and Queta won't be playing much, so that's whatever. But Pritchard and Hauser? Those are two very important rotation pieces, and all year long it's felt like both really struggle against tough, physical defenses who really put a focus on ball pressure. 

- The Celts had been much better as of late in the 4th quarter, so you could make the case that it was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped and they got back to their late game struggles. Remember, the larger sample of this season has been the fact that the Celts are one of the worst 4th quarter teams on Earth. This is what that looks like

Zero stops on one end, zero buckets on the other. 

The Celts had multiple chances to take this game over, with the lead getting down to 4-5 on numerous occasions. Instead of capitalizing on that, things went the other way. The Heat closed this game on a 17-5 run to kill any sort of comeback attempt, and that's the stuff that annoys me. You're at home, you climbed all the way back from 22, and your execution wenrt sideways in the biggest moments. Poor defense, some bad offense/shot selection and that was that.

The Ugly

- He basically hasn't had a stinker in months, but that's exactly what we saw from Tatum in this game. He started something brutal like 1-11 from the floor, and he finished with just 16 points on 4-17 (2-9) and was a -11 in his minutes. The fact that he only had 3 rebounds in 31 minutes with the Celts only playing 1 big was bizarre. That also sort of tells you where his engagement level was in this game. Just compare it to his previous performances and it's night and day. 

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This was also one of the few games all year where the Tatum + bench lineups got rocked in their minutes, and I just really didn't understand Tatum's decision-making in this game.

Settling for things offensively, the weird decision to take the final shot for the half WAY too early only to miss the layup and leave enough time on the clock for the Heat to make a buzzer-beating 3 entering the break, it was all very un-Jayson Tatum like. Especially with the quality of basketball he's been playing lately, which has been sensational.

Down 3 rotation players, also getting a Tatum no show on both ends of the floor is always going to be too much to overcome, but the good news is this isn't exactly the norm with him. We haven't seen him play this poorly in months, so take it on the chin and turn the page. 

At the end of the day, the Celts learned a valuable lesson. Play like shit and you can get your ass rocked. Make no mistake, this was an ass whooping in pretty much every facet of the game. A performance that gave us a result they deserved. The good news is nobody in the NBA is better at bouncing back after losses, so my guess is things will look a lot better tomorrow night. Use this frustration as fuel, and make sure you don't do it again.