And just like that, the undefeated streak is over.
No Celtics fan, in the history of their existence, experienced what we just lived through.
That’s pretty awesome.
21-0 would have been much cooler, but…ya know.
….
……..
……………
Amen.
Now that we’ve made our peace, we can move right into what was yet another gut punch.
Love that for us.
That’s the Celts I love.
Like everyone else, I couldn’t wait to see this matchup.
Everyone healthy, and everyone rested, let’s go.
As true of a measuring stick game as you could possibly have in mid January.
The Celts want to be the best, the Nuggets are the best until someone knocks them out.
That’s how being the champ works in my opinion.
If anything, I walked away with it being more of a confirmation than anything else.
Not only that, they are right there even on nights when their two stars get massively outplayed.
Not just in the final two minutes, all throughout the game.
At the end of the day, it confirmed what we already knew.
The little things matter.
If they don’t, you’re cooked.
For that, I blame everyone from Joe down to the players.
Figure it out, the dude is 7'3 and was getting whatever he wanted.
- I don’t want to jinx it, but we may be out of the Derrick White slump.
I know DWhite is going to show up.
For the Celtics to reach their ceiling, it is very important that Derrick White remains aggressive offensively.
The sample is big enough, to me he has the ultimate green light.
- Honestly that’s pretty much it for this section.
I’d rather move on if that’s OK with everyone.
So what does that even mean?
Let’s go down the list.
Especially when Nikola Jokic is off the floor.
Instead, they couldn’t stop Jamal Murray, and Jokic entered a 43-40 game.
Missed opportunity #1.
Welcome to opportunity #2.
They didn’t score again, and ended the quarter up just 1.
Let’s continue on.
Health, three point shooting, Joe’s brain, end of game offense etc.
The Celtics rank just 16th in the NBA in DREB% in the clutch at 66.7%.
In their losses, that number drops to 18th and 62.8%.
What was the common theme?
Opponent OREB, especially late.
So when I say the margins, I’m talking about plays like this
That’s losing basketball.
Their two stars came into the toughest building in the league and competely dominated.
It didn’t matter what the Celts tried, it was buckets either way.
Way too big for anyone but also agile and smart enough to keep a defense honest.
I mean what even is this
At home, rested mind you.
That’s #1.
That’s #2.
The 3-7 from the FT line, I mean what the fuck.
- Getting virtually nothing from the bench unit certainly wasn’t helpful either.
A 3-10 (3-7) showing isn’t going to cut it.
- Something else worth monitoring is what we’re seeing from Jrue in these big time matchups.
He was pretty much nonexistent in this game which I would say is a bit of an issue.
It’s never a good thing when you say to yourself “Is Jrue even playing?”
you know what I mean?
That’s not exactly what I think Brad had in mind when he made that trade.
That seems impossible to do and yet here we are.
There’s no need to sugarcoat it, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum shit the bed.
The Jays weren’t good enough.
Credit the Nuggets defense, but also what the hell.
Figure that shit out.
Then in the 2nd ATO we got this
There are those margins again.
Those are the small things that kill you.
Everything starts and stops with them.
That’s just factually inaccurate.
They’re 13-8 in the clutch and have the 5th best clutch time ORTG in the NBA.
We’ve seen them execute in big spots against good teams all year.
Unless this team executes down the stretch in a playoff series, they won’t win.
All last night did was confirm that.
If you gave Tatum a do-over on that play, he’s 100% driving to the rim there.
Unfortunately, that’s not what happened.
The thing is, it wasn’t just how the stars played at the end that cooked the Celts.
Think of what it took from the Nuggets stars just to win by 2.
Now imagine if both Jokic and Murray laid eggs.
