BOSTON — The Sacramento Kings are playing better basketball since dismissing Mike Brown but no one would confuse them for a defensive juggernant. Still, they came on the road Friday night and held a rested Celtics squad to 42 points at TD Garden in the second half of a 114-97 win. It was just the third time all year Boston had a fully healthy rotation and it didn’t matter as the hosts delivered their second worst offensive performance of the year.
After the loss, Jaylen Brown spoke candidly about where the Celtics stand amid a 8-7 stretch that’s produced some of their most inconsistent basketball of the Joe Mazzulla era.
“We’re halfway through, we’re close approaching the middle of the year,” Brown said. “What is this game 40? And teams have adjusted to how we kind of played early in the season and we’re making adjustments back. We’ve gotta be better at protecting the basket and we gotta figure out how to win games in different ways.
“I think that we’ve been injured for a good majority part of the year. Now a lot of our guys are all healthy all on the same floor at the same time, so just figuring that rhythm out. So, like I said, I believe in this group. We’re going to figure it out.”
The Celtics brought back nearly their entire roster from last year’s championship team but the success from last year hasn’t translated well of late. Boston has a tough time integrating Kristaps Porzingis back into the fold and Brown’s concerns tonight likely stem in part from his integration. Jayson Tatum and Porzingis tend to play slower basketball and that has not served Boston well of late on certain nights.
Despite Boston’s struggles, he remains adamant that this group will figure things out
“We’re fighting,” Brown said. “We’re definitely making — playing some good basketball. We’re just figuring it out. … Last year is over. We gotta figure it out this year and we gotta do whatever it takes. We got a new unit. We’ve had guys out. We’ve had guys injured. So we just gotta treat it as such. It’s a new year. Last year is over with.”
The Celtics will have a friendly schedule stretch to try to help them get back on track in the coming days, with games against the two of the worst teams in the league in New Orleans and Toronto before a brutal stretch of five games in seven nights.
“It’s basketball at the end of the day and we got a bunch of talented and intelligent basketball minds,” Brown said. “We just have to think the game and I think just our pace has a lot to do with it, just get into our spacing, I think we posted a lot tonight and it kind of slowed things down. It kinda gets guys out of rhythm. We gotta keep the pace and keep everybody engaged, and I think how we get the ball up the floor, how we get to get to the corners and all that stuff has an effect on our offense.”
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