The Boston Celtics have an Orlando Magic problem.
They’ve won on their floor and at the Garden (twice).
How do I know this?
The truth is, until we see evidence of the contrary, the Orlando Magic are a bad matchup.
Let’s also not try and make it seem like these are the Magic of old.
At 11-5, winnners of 6 straight and 2nd in the East, they’ve already taken down MIL/DEN/BOS.
The Magic have the 2nd ranked defense in the NBA.
Nothing we’re seeing doesn’t look sustainable for them.
There are obviously two ways to look at this.
On one hand, there’s no shame in losing to a good team on the road.
It’s also true that against elite defenses, they’ve crumbled.
All these things can exist at once.
With that said, let’s dive in.
The Good
- What do we even put in this section when essentially the entire roster was ass cheeks?
Maybe Jaylen in the first quarter only?
Maybe Sam Hauser’s shooting?
Maybe Derrick White’s first quarter?
The point is, we don’t have to make shit up just to have a Good section.
Let’s move on.
The Bad
- OK, where to start.
I don’t care that the box score says Jayson Tatum scored 26 points.
Anyone with eyes who watched this game knows he mailed in about 97.9% of this game.
Not just from a production standpoint, but for an energy and effort standpoint.
I don’t really give a shit about the 7-16 (0-3).
What I care more about was how disengaged Tatum played with.
He hasn’t had that few rebounds in about 2 weeks.
Heading into this game, Tatum had a 20% DREB.
Not bad for a wing.
Offensively, I just didn’t understand Tatum’s approach.
There were no attacking mismatches for about 90% of his minutes.
He had one or two plays against Suggs and then never exploited a mismatch again.
I’m going to go ahead and say pretty much never.
This is the thing that’s sometimes frustrating about Tatum.
Take the shooting out of it.
Just focus on the energy and effort parts.
It’s nights like this that ultimately represent the last hurdle that Tatum needs to overcome as THE GUY.
The best of the best, the true top 3 guys of the league show up every single night.
In fact, we’ve seen this exact same stretch before, just last season.
With everyone back, what may have changed during that stretch?
Essentially, the Celts started to play losing basketball.
Being that bad in all of those areas are how you lose to good teams.
That was the real problem of that skid.
Now compare that to 2023-24.
Since that Grizzlies game?
The OREB/2nd chance points being the most glaring.
When you’re careless with the basketball, that catches up to you.
When you leave points at the FT line, that catches up to you.
The formula for the Celtics has never changed.
Rebound, take care of the ball, move the ball.
Currently, the Celts aren’t doing any of those things.
The Celtics offense has been complete dogshit against the elite defenses in the NBA.
That would be a 30th ranked offense in losses if you were still confused.
Of the Celts 4 losses on the season, 3 of them have come against a top 11 defense.
You may not like those facts, but those are the facts.
- Here’s also something that’s a concerning early trend.
The Celtics early season passing.
That is…not good.
Again, these are not an opinion, these are the facts of their start.
In fact, they were demolished on the glass as a whole 48-31.
They lost the AST battle 28-17.
They lost the 3PT battle and got crushed in the paint 60-40.
Basically everywhere you looked, the Magic outplayed the Celts.
- Then of course there was the 3rd quarter run.
Everyone losing their mind that Joe didn’t call a timeout.
You’ll hear a lot of 17-0 run and no timeout????
What is Joe doing!!!
That of course is not entirely true.
The Celtics then came out of that timeout and immediately gave up another 5-0 run.
Imagine that, the players actually have to execute!
Timeouts aren’t magical fixes!
The point is this.
Different situations call for different actions.
Then even with a timeout they still came out and played losing basketball.
- Speaking of 3rd quarters, this is another early season trend that is very concerning.
This is now no longer a one or two time thing.
This is a consistent issue.
You absolutely cannot fuck around with that thing, so who knows when we’ll see him again.
I believe he missed 12 straight or something?
This is what I mean when I say things start and stop with the two best players.
In one corner we had Jayson Tatum who decided to sleepwalk through this entire game.
- Then of course there’s also my biggest pet peeve, the FT line.
Since 2021-22, the Boston Celtics have had ONE game in which they missed at least 10 FTA.
They have now done so twice in 6 days.
They lost both games!
Grow the fuck up.
Practice it for me one time!
27th in the NBA in FT shooting?
Am I being trolled?
You need a strong homestand because GS/SAC/LAC/LAL are on the horizon.
