The Celtics Went Into Philly Last Night And Got Their Asses Completely Handed To Them

Tim Nwachukwu. Getty Images.

When the Celtics beat the Pacers in overtime, there was a part of that win where if you looked at it, I'm fairly certain we all said the same thing. To see that they finished with 20 TOs and still won a basketball game, my guess is you were somewhere in the range of

"If you turn the ball over like that against a good team, the Celtics get killed"

This is basically common knowledge in the game of basketball. Giving the ball repeatedly to the other team is usually not how you win. Some have even said it's a bad thing to do. There are times you might win in certain situations against bad teams, but against anyone with a pulse, that's going to result in losing basketball. How do I know this? May I present the performance of the Boston Celtics on January 14th, 2022. 

There have been a lot of famous quests throughout history. We're still looking for the Lock Ness Monster, Bigfoot, the Holy Grail, 2Pac, the list goes on and on. Yet somehow, deep in my bones, I feel like we may have a better chance at finally achieving any of those before we see this Celtics team win 4 games in a row. If you can believe it, even last year's team won 4 in a row on three separate occasions. Isn't that a fun fact we all just learned together. The Celts played about 120 seconds of good basketball in this game, which as you can imagine is a little problematic considering NBA games are 48 minutes long. On a night where they had an opportunity to progress forward, their stars and everyone along with them laid an egg. They were careless. They were undisciplined. They were reactionary. There was no imposing of any will. No playing with aggression. When you play like that, last night's result is what you get. It wasn't as close as that score says. Ime waived the flag with about 9 minutes to go in the fourth quarter. The Celts never got closer than 14 when everyone was trying. To put it simply, they got their ass kicked. Plain and simple. 

They do get a chance to even things out tonight against the Bulls, but before we focus on that we first need to go through the hell that was lasts night.

The Good

- Slim pickin's here folks, I dunno what you want me to tell you. Just not a whole lot of good thing to take away from a game like this. If I wanted to scramble, find any sliver of light and positivity I'd probably go with how Payton Pritchard continues to look with his opportunities

I don't really care who it comes against or what the situation is, what I care about is if when Payton Pritchard shoots the basketball, he sees it going in. He's a rhythm shooter, and that skillset is something this roster desperately needs. If him seeing the ball drop in garbage time is what helps that rhythm, then great. Payton has been fairly solid in his reserve role over the last month

11.5/3.6/2.6 on 45.8/43.6% splits with 2.4 3PM

Now that he's out of protocols, Pritchard needs to be consistently in that 18-25 minute range. It's time to reward players who are making the most of their opportunity with real minutes, especially when they are outperforming similar rotation players at the same position over this timeframe. If everything is supposed to be about maximizing the Jays, I really don't understand the idea behind not having  them around legit floor spacers as much as possible. You have an option on your bench who is a proven shooter. You need shooting. Seems like there should be some sort of move there.

- We also saw Rob do some cool shit

Defensively Embiid gave him hell, but I thought Rob played with great energy, was solid on the glass and played like he actually gave a shit. 

But outside of that? Everything else was pretty much dogshit. We can now proceed to the real meat of this blog.

The Bad

- How about we begin with where the game was lost, because you don't have to look very far. All you have to do is go to the 4:51 mark of the first quarter. At this time, the Celts were down 14-12. They had blown their early 8-2 lead and were currently battling a 10-6 Sixers run. Momentum was starting to shift. We then had this sequence.

Just like that, the game was over. If you don't remember those missing point blank opportunities, they look just as bad as they read. 

Deep down when every Celtics fan saw that sequence, we knew. We knew what type of game this was about to be. Following that missed Horford layup, the rest of the quarter played out as follows: a missed three, a missed three, a missed three, a Dennis foul, a missed Tatum 20 footer, a Tatum turnover, a Freedom travel, a missed three, a Tatum turnover, a Grant foul, a Tatum turnover, a JRich flagrant, a Pritchard made runner. 

Look at what the fuck you just read.

All in all, from that moment when it was 14-12 with 4:51 left, the quarter closed on an 18-2 Sixers run. It got as bad as 25-2 in that first quarter. That was it. Game over. Thanks for coming. The Celtics finished that first quarter shooting 33/28% with 8 TOs and 6 FGM. You will not win with that. Just like we said at the top of the blog, if the Celtics play careless like they did in the IND win, a good team blows them out. Tell me that isn't exactly what happened?

- Everything you need to know about how opposing teams view stopping the Celtics offense was said by Joel Embiid

There is not a lie anywhere in that statement. First, the facts back it up. The Hornets are 3rd in the NBA in assists at 27.2 a game. The Celtics? They rank 24th at 22.6. In terms of isolation frequency, the Celtics are 4th in the NBA at 9.2%. They are only 0.1% behind the 2nd ranked teams. So factually speaking, you can't argue with what Embiid is saying. You also would tend to agree if you didn't know the numbers and you just watched each team play. The Celtics are predictable. Marcus Smart told everyone this in October and fans lost their mind. Then like two weeks ago Jaylen Brown said the same thing. Now here's an opposing player, telling the world that team know when they play the Celtics that they don't really have an offense. You pack the paint, you win more often than not. 

It's pretty obvious to know which teams realize this and which don't. The Sixers have seen the Celts enough to know, and it's evident when you look at how they position themselves defensively. Looks like this

Literally 3 different Sixers could not give less of a shit about their man. They play the percentages. If JRich or Grant or Dennis make a three, so be it. It's more important to stop Tatum. These guys are not what you would call spacers. They may make a three when open, but they don't have any real gravity. True shooters have gravity. Look at how much everyone is able to cheat up and take away either driving lane. The Niang is there for the weakside help if Embiid goes to challenge. He can do this because the Sixers don't give a shit about Grant. 

So how did that possession end? You guessed it, a missed Tatum pullup over two guys. This is an example of what Embiid means when he says you can load up against Boston. You see the same shit when Jaylen has the ball and goes iso

Every Sixer outside of Embiid has a foot basically in the paint. When you hear opposing players tell you how predictable you are offensively, maybe take that as a sign that you are extremely predictable offensively. Especially to a team that knows how to defend. 

- Really rough night for Grant on both ends. From airballing wide open threes to having so resistance whatsoever whenever someone drove on him. I'm talking it was like he wasn't even there, and Ime rightfully pulled him for it. What's bizarre was he was very good at this against guys like Brogdon/LeVert/Sabonis who are actual NBA players, yet he couldn't stay in front of shit last night. Grant's role is to come in, play solid defense and make your open threes. When you do neither of those, that's not great. 

- I don't know what happened after those first two minutes, maybe it's because the game got out of hand, but this ended up being a rough 17 minutes for Al. He had those two buckets early and that was it. Defensively he wasn't quite as successful as we've seen in previous matchups against Embiid, and he once again struggled to make his wide open threes. He finished with just 2 rebounds in his minutes. It felt like the team went away from him early, things started to slide, and they never were able to get back to what gave them the early lead in the first place. 

- Romeo's 3PA that went 85% of the way down which would have cut things to 11 with 5 minutes left only for Seth Curry to make his three to push it back to 17 was such a gut punch. You at least have a chance if that Romeo three goes down, but that was your classic example of the Basketball Gods showing you that you did not deserve to win. Seen it a thousand times.

- This postgame quote kinda bothered me. 

No. We're not going to do this. I know Ime is trying to cover for his players, but no. When it comes to preparing the team to play, I expect Ime to handle the strategy, rotations, etc. That's it. Playing hard? Not on a coach. Wasn't the case with Brad, isn't the case with Ime. These are grown ass men. They are paid professionals. They know it's a big game against a division rival. They know how the last game went. If they can't get up and be ready to roll, that is on THEM. Not Ime. This roster is filled with NBA veterans for crying out loud. Nothing gets under my skin more than this shit. 

"The coach didn't motivate his players"

makes me want to put my head in the oven. I just can't can't understand that logic. So NBA players are only capable of playing hard if they get a pump up speech from their coach? You want to kill Ime for his approach or his rotations? Have at it! It's deserved! But I'm sorry, not playing hard is on the players and will always be on the players. Period.

The Ugly

- OK, now for the truly painful stuff. As we know, given how this team is constructed, their path to success heavily relies on theplay of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. You could make the case that regardless of whatever else the roster looks like, this team will only go as far as Tatum and Brown will carry them. So, when your two best players play like absolute shit, chances are this team is going to get demolished.

Unfortunately, scoring 67 against the Pacers doesn't really mean shit when you both lay big time eggs against the better team. Jaylen shot 7-18 (2-9) with 5 TOs and Tatum had a beautiful 7-17 (2-7) performance with 7 TOs. That's right, 12 combined TOs and 14 combined FGM. You're dead before you even know what happened when those two do shit like that. All of the sudden they decided to go back to playing the exact way we all know they shouldn't. Every time we see that settling, lazy, careless approach we know the Celts are most likely going to lose. You can almost tell right away. All you have to do is look at the shot chart of both in that first half

What is that! It's like they have amnesia or something and totally forgot how to play. Let's tell the truth of the situation for a second. Matisse Thybulle had Jayson Tatum in jail. No other way to say it. He held him to 0 points on 24 possessions on 0-3 shooting and 1 TO. If any Celtic did that defensively, we would say they put their matchup in jail. Of Tatum's 17 FGA, 10 of them were in "tight" coverage. That was Thybulle. We even heard Tatum admit that to start this game they settled and weren't aggressive

which concerns me on a few levels. First, why? What can change from game to game to where you suddenly forget everything that makes you successful as a scorer? That's not great. Second, this is where I look to Ime or the assistant coaches. Could nobody tell that Jayson wasn't being aggressive? Was there any instruction or play calling to maybe change that outside of a high screen? No post ups? No nothing? You could tell there was a clear adjustment at the half, because look at the Brown/Tatum shot chart over the course of the second half

By then, it was too late. The damage was already done. 

It doesn't matter who they trade for or what lineup combination Ime puts out there if Tatum and Brown are going to have no shows like this. It's not just the inefficient scoring, it's the turnovers. They handle the ball the most, they cannot have 12 combined TOs in a single game. They can't have nights where they finish with the same amount of TOs as FGM. 

With Tatum, it's really starting to get concerning when you look at his high turnover games and who they are coming against. The Celts are now 3-14 when he has 4 or more, here's the list

A very concerning trend in all of these big games against good teams. That goes back to Embiid's point. This team is predictable offensively, doesn't have the proper floor spacing and that increases the chance of Tatum turning it over against a good team. The same size is there, the proof is in the pudding. He needs to be MUCH better against this type of competition, because without it the Celts don't have enough to overcome a 7 TO performance.

- Brutal night for Dennis. In a game like this on the road, you basically need all your best players to overachieve. Instead, all the Celts best players had some of the worst performances of their season. Not ideal. For Dennis that meant just 1 point and 2 assists with 2 TOs while shooting 0-6 from the field. I mean yikes. Quite the come down from his 7-11 performance against the Pacers I'd say. Bad time to no show in a game when they desperately needed points to stop the bleeding.

For whatever reason Dennis decided to not be aggressive, there was no real use of his speed to get to the rim or anything. He basically caught the ball, held the ball, maybe dribbled it a little bit, and then either passed it back to someone at the end of a shot clock. It's very infuriating to watch him repeatedly do that. 

But none of that compares to his flagrant. First off, he turned the ball over because he held it too long and then tried to give it to Tatum with like 2 seconds on the shot clock, only for Thybulle to steal it. So that was bad. To them compound it by even coming close to a player in the air let alone actually putting a hand on the guy is a big time asshole move. It just is. Be consistent there. If someone did that to Smart or something, Celtics fans would be bullshit over it. Thankfully Thybulle was OK after that scary fall, but that doesn't excuse the decision by Dennis. Probably should have tossed him for it, you can't fuck with people when they are in the air like that. 

So let's see if they are able to bounce back tonight against a Bulls team without LaVine. A split would be OK even if a win over PHI would have done more good than a win over CHI given the standings, but whatever. A win tonight would go a long way to helping me forget what the hell I had to watch last night.