BOSTON -- The Boston Celtics sure are set in their ways. For better or worse.
Keeping with familiar postseason trends, the Celtics made their lives difficult on Wednesday night by fumbling away a double-digit lead with an abysmal second-half effort that allowed the Miami Heat to take Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals at TD Garden.
Stop us if you’ve heard any of these before: Joe Mazzulla stashed his timeouts as Boston’s lead slipped away. The Celtics downshifted with a chance to take control. Boston crumbled in crunch time with turnover-plagued offense. The Celtics fumbled away a game inside the once-invincible Garden.
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The Green Kool-Aid spin would be that Boston has bounced back from these sort of maddening nights with some of their best basketball. Despite all their missteps this postseason, the team still has a prime opportunity to punch its pass back to the NBA Finals.
None of that makes Wednesday’s effort any less frustrating. And if you’re hungry to assign blame, well, there’s plenty to go around. If you’re surprised that the Celtics put themselves in this position, you simply haven’t been paying attention.
Boston Celtics
Wednesday’s failure does not land on the lap of one single individual. In fact, we’d make the case that Boston’s key personnel — Mazzulla and stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown — deserve the brunt of the wrath as each failed in their own way to settle this team at a time it needed someone to carry them.
And therein lies our biggest concern with the Celtics. Too often, this team loses its mind when things get bumpy. Sometimes it happens for a possession. On Wednesday night, it was an entire quarter. Even then the Celtics still had a chance to make a final charge, only to revert to a host of bad habits in crunch time. The same bad habits that ultimately spelled their demise in the Finals a year ago.
That’s the part that gnaws at you. The Celtics have routinely been able to survive their mistakes. But, at some point, the totality of those miscues adds up and bites them. Last year, it happened at the worst possible moment.
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Miami absolutely deserves credit for the way it bounced back in the third quarter, how it stiff-armed Boston’s initial charge early in the fourth frame, and how it turned up the defense to get to the finish line of a gritty road win. But so much of what ails the Celtics always seems to trace back to an inability to get out of their own way.
And much of that centers around being too stubborn to change their ways.
Put him in timeout
Mazzulla is in for a long 48 hours. Already in the spotlight for some notable missteps in the Sixers series, and sharing some of the blame for Boston’s variable intensity throughout these playoffs, the first-year coach elected to let his team play through its defensive lapses in the third quarter on Wednesday night. Mazzulla did not call a single timeout to stem any of Miami’s momentum in a quarter in which Boston was outscored 46-25.
On one hand, we get it: Mazzulla doesn’t believe in timeouts. He’s spent the entire season trying to prepare his team for these sort of high-pressure moments when they’d have to figure things out on the fly. We yearn for coaches to be authentic and, to his credit, Mazzulla has been largely consistent in his approach with stoppages.
Alas, it’s painfully clear to anyone that watches this team that they cannot play through stretches of adversity. His players desperately need Mazzulla to save them from themselves. But he often refuses.
Look, we have no idea if a timeout would have changed anything on Wednesday night. But we wish we could have found out. Maybe the Celtics would have just kept making bad defensive decisions. But as Miami got rolling, Mazzulla has to at least try to do something to rally his team.
It doesn’t help, either, that Miami called a lightning-fast timeout 90 seconds into the fourth quarter as Boston started playing with some mojo again, and it was enough to stiff arm that charge.
Al Horford likes to playfully signal for timeouts as Boston is embarking on huge runs that force opponents to demand a stoppage. He did it in the second quarter on Wednesday as Boston was building its lead. Maybe Horford needs to show his coach the same hand gestures in critical moments.
Mazzulla also made a curious decision to go with Payton Pritchard as a bench option, playing the fourth-string point guard nearly 12 minutes (he was scoreless and a minus-3 overall in plus/minus). This while Grant Williams — a key body in last year’s playoff run — remains on the side of a milk carton this postseason.
It’s easy for us to second guess these moves in the aftermath. With the Celtics up at halftime, Mazzulla looked smart for getting his team to play with intensity out of the gates. But when it went sideways, Mazzulla didn’t do enough to get the team back on track.
Turning over an old leaf
The Celtics have done a good job this postseason limiting the turnovers that plagued them throughout much of last year’s run to the Finals. But giveaways came in bunches in the second half on Wednesday night and ensured the team would not have a chance to rally back.
Brown turned the ball over six times. Tatum had four more, including three in the final three minutes with two of those being traveling violations.
The Heat do a good job using their size and physicality to create turnovers. Jimmy Butler always seems to anticipate the right spot to be in, including two thefts in crunch time against Boston in Game 1.
But Boston’s decision-making was just plain poor in the second half. They had multiple opportunities to bite into a five-point deficit with under five minutes to play and just could not stop giving away the basketball.
Humbly, an underwhelming fourth quarter from a superstar
Tatum was the toast of the basketball world for his ridiculous 51-point Game 7 against the Sixers. But the fourth quarter of Game 1 against the Heat was not his finest moment.
Tatum did not attempt a single field goal over the final 8:06 of game action. He had three turnovers and just one rebound over that stretch. Tatum did get to the line for six free throws but he simply has to be the one steadying the team, particularly in a crunch-time scenario.
It’s somewhat maddening to watch Tatum be as great as he was at the end of Game 6, and the totality of Game 7 against the Sixers, then get bottled up late in Game 1.
So much of what ailed the Celtics could have been prevented. If Miami’s run is muted earlier then Boston isn’t fighting out of such a large hole. If Tatum and Brown are better in the fourth quarter, maybe Boston isn’t trying to rally in crunch time.
Yes, we know: If it was easy, it wouldn’t be the Celtics. This team is set in its way, and it’s going to take years off the lives of their fanbase.