As the Celtics walked again into the halftime locker room, boos following them after they dug themselves right into a 28-point gap of their worst half of the season, Joe Mazzulla had a easy message. Rather, a query.
“You have to decide what team you want to be,” Mazzulla stated. “The team that played that way, or a team that is going to play a much better version of basketball on both ends.”
The Celtics responded because the latter, a staff that resembled the one which torched the NBA for the primary six weeks of the season. But their destiny was finally sealed at halftime. The Celtics – even after their worst stretch of the season, after back-to-back losses to the Magic and after an additional day of relaxation – someway nonetheless got here out too flat, too torpid. Jayson Tatum led a livid second-half rally through which he scored 28 of his game-high 41 factors however it proved to be too little, too late because the bid got here up painfully brief in a 117-112 loss to the Pacers.
The Celtics have now misplaced 5 of their final six video games – with Wednesday’s defeat clinching their first three-game dropping streak of the season. It often is the wake-up name they wanted, even when they insisted after their newest loss that there’s no concern contained in the locker room.
“There’s disappointment,” stated Malcolm Brogdon. “There’s a lot of disappointment. I think us, as a team, we’re disappointed in ourselves, but I don’t think there’s concern. I think we need a sense of urgency, and I think we’re starting to get that. I think that second half shows us we can have and play with a sense of urgency, and I think we will.”
Added Tatum: “We need to discover ways to win once more. …
“I think it’s not as simple as that, but we gotta get back to having fun. I think we’re playing a little timid, a little tight. Basketball is supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be loose, it’s supposed to be competitive. But I get a sense of, like, everybody wants to make every shot, myself included. Our body language when we miss shots and things like that is contagious. And that’s just part of it. We’re not going to make every shot, we’re going to turn the ball over, it’s all about how we respond. And as a group, we can’t let it snowball.”
They wanted such a valiant comeback bid after their worst begin to a sport of the season, an embarrassing effort on each ends.
The Celtics truly acquired off to a superb begin, no less than on the defensive finish because the Pacers made simply one in all their first 9 pictures of the sport, which pressured Indiana coach Rick Carlisle to burn an early timeout.
After that? It was all Pacers.
The Pacers merely steamrolled the Celtics for the remainder of the primary half. The Celtics’ offensive woes continued, and although that hadn’t negatively impacted their protection over current video games, they couldn’t cease the Pacers. After their 1-for-9 begin, the Celtics allowed the guests to make 14 of their subsequent 16 pictures – which included a 28-5 run at one level – in a shocking turnaround as they fell behind by 20 after the opening interval.
It didn’t get any higher within the second quarter – the truth is, the Celtics’ struggles soared to embarrassing ranges, sufficient for them to listen to it from their house crowd for the primary time this season. Their pictures wouldn’t fall, and their laziness mounted with turnovers, unhealthy protection and an absence of effort on the glass. When previous good friend Aaron Nesmith discovered himself huge open down the baseline for a straightforward dunk to place the Pacers up 25, boos began raining down on the Celtics.
About a minute later, because the Celtics’ deficit elevated to 29 – forcing Mazzulla to name a timeout – the boos grew even louder.
The timeouts didn’t appear to matter, although. The Celtics’ deficit grew to as giant as 30, and whilst Rob Williams threw down a buzzer-beating dunk earlier than halftime, the boos adopted them as they walked down the tunnel to the locker room.
“I think we got down on ourselves a little bit, didn’t play hard enough,” Brogdon stated. “That’s a young, energetic team that plays well together over there, so they put out the effort.”
Why?
“I don’t know,” Mazzulla stated. “We’ll have to figure that out, just through film and talking to the guys. I don’t know why we would come out in the first half like that, but we did.”
The Celtics almost overcame all of it after popping out within the second half with higher vitality and higher defensive effort as they introduced the Garden again to life. Tatum nearly seemed offended as he tried to gas the comeback, particularly after he threw down a vicious dunk over Nesmith.
But the younger Pacers – led by Tyrese Haliburton’s 33 factors – had the composure to thwart each Celtics punch. When Tatum hit a 3 to trim the deficit to 11, Chris Duarte hit back-to-back triples. When Jaylen Brown lower it to 5 with 3:06 left, Haliburton hit a 3 and Myles Turner adopted with a three-point play.
Tatum went on a 6-0 run as a part of a final gasp, and after Al Horford’s steal, Tatum was fouled and seemed to have created a four-point play likelihood when he hit a 3. That would have made it a one-point sport. But the shot didn’t rely, and Mazzulla was unable to problem the decision.
“It doesn’t really matter what I saw since you can’t challenge it,” he stated.
Tatum missed the following 3, and that secured the loss.
“Concerned? I don’t get concerned,” Mazzulla stated. “we’re the place we’re. You need to depend on who’re guys are as individuals and it’s a must to depend on the method of what we’re making an attempt to construct. So a half like this, I might be extra involved if it was two halves. But it was one. We’re not taking part in properly. …
“In moments like this, it’s important to trust your guys cause they’ve been through a lot and they’ve had games like this and they’ve had bounce back and we’ve proven to be a really good team. You have to trust the relationships that we’ve built to just have a conversation. But I’m not concerned that I’m not gonna know what team is coming in. I’m fulfilled and I’m OK with the fact that I know our guys as people and I know their character and I know we’re going through a little bit of a hard stage. And that’s part of the NBA. It’s also hard when you play the way you did at the beginning of the year and you set such a high standard. It’s hard to play to that all the time. So we have to learn how to make that standard a habit.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com