Forsberg: Smart's shots weren't the issue in Celtics' ugly loss

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Obsess, if you must, about the final moments of the Boston Celtics’ head-shaking loss to the Blake Griffin-less Detroit Pistons on Friday night, but the bigger issue was the start.

The Celtics are simply not good enough to just show up and expect to win games this season, at least not early in the year while playing without Kemba Walker.

Boston still nearly stole Friday’s game because Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum caught fire and rallied Boston out of a 21-point hole. But that low-energy start left Boston needing a big bucket in crunch time that never came.

Or, as Celtics coach Brad Stevens put it in the aftermath, "That might have been the basketball gods' way of saying that we didn't deserve to win the game.”

The two teams meet again on Sunday afternoon to close out the NBA’s new same-city series. Here are four more thoughts after Friday’s debacle, starting with the starters:

TIME TO END THE TWO-BIG EXPERIMENT

Stevens loves to experiment with lineups early in the season. But the two-big starting lineup featuring Tristan Thompson and Daniel Theis is simply not working and it’s time for a change.

Through six games, the Celtics have a first-quarter offensive rating of 97.4. That spikes to a robust 126.4 in the second quarter. On paper, a starting lineup anchored by Thompson and Theis should be very good defensively. Instead, they’re allowing 113.7 points per 100 possessions. That’s made even worse by the fact that, in 56 minutes of floor time, that starting lineup has an offensive rating of 94.4. Theis hasn’t made a 3-pointer since opening night.

Stevens would be better off going back to small ball and adding a shooter to the floor. Maybe the two-big look is something the team can revisit down the road, especially when a healthy Walker could aid spacing, but it’s just not working with the personnel that they have.

Remember, too, the starting five isn’t worth sweating too much right now. A healthy Walker and maybe a midseason addition with the Gordon Hayward traded player exception could have Boston’s starting five looking a lot different by midseason.

Stevens has a lot of experimentation ahead, too. 

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SMART WASN’T THE PROBLEM IN THIS ONE

Marcus Smart missed both a transition 3-point attempt and a little floater in the final minute of Friday’s loss and naturally will draw the ire of fans who fret every time his shot total reaches double digits.

Smart wasn’t the problem Friday. His defensive tenacity and his shooting were big reasons why Boston was able to at least hang around. More importantly, his shots didn’t come at the expense of playmaking, as he still totaled nearly half (nine) of Boston’s 20 total assists. He finished with three steals.

If you would have preferred Smart attack the basket when he missed the deep 3-pointer with 27 seconds to go, that’s fair. But getting up a quick shot and not eating up the clock isn’t the worst thing in that situation. The floater just missed and that happens. The Celtics as a team missed their final 11 shots, so Smart wasn’t alone.

ONE THAT GOT A-BEY?

Faithful readers know we were riding the Saddiq Bey train in the ramp up to the 2020 NBA Draft. So it was hard to ignore Bey’s solid night against Boston.

Bey finished with 17 points on 5-of-11 shooting, all his makes from behind the 3-point arc. He added seven rebounds and two steals over 30 minutes. Bey was part of Detroit’s crunch-time lineups, all while Celtics top rookie Aaron Nesmith logged his fourth DNP of the season.

The jury will not render a verdict on the Nesmith vs. Bey debate for quite some time and we’re pretty bullish on what Nesmith can be. It should be noted, too, that the Pistons have an ability to trot out younger players and live with any struggles. This was Bey’s best game of his pro career and he’s going to get every chance to build off of it.

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Celtics fans got an extended look at Nesmith in the Grizzlies game and it’s clear that it’s going to take him time to earn Stevens’ trust on the defensive end. But we’d be lying if we said we didn’t wonder how beneficial it could be to just having Nesmith’s threat of shooting on the court, especially if he got small bits of run with players like Tatum and Brown. 

Payton Pritchard is proving that Stevens will lean on rookies in the right situations, though there’s an obvious void at point guard with Walker out. But every game like this that slips away while leaning heavy on the core group makes us wonder if the Celtics could be accelerating the progress of Nesmith by playing him in these sort of games.

NEED BETTER EFFORT

The Pistons snagged eight fourth-quarter offensive rebounds, including a quintet from Mason Plumlee over the final six minutes of the frame. One time the Celtics got caught with Jeff Teague trying to box Plumlee out. Another time Plumlee just muscled his way between Thompson and Tatum and tipped a miss in. With 2:57 to go, Plumlee outdueled Thompson to keep a possession alive.

The Pistons rarely made Boston pay for those second chances, but at a time when the Celtics couldn’t buy a basket of their own, the inability to get defensive rebounds only accentuated their offensive woes.

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