CLEVELAND — The Celtics look like one of the best teams in the NBA this season but they can’t shake some of their old bad habits. The team saw an 11-game winning streak come to a halt disastrously on Tuesday night in a 105-104 loss, surrendering a 22-point lead in the final nine minutes of the game against an undermanned Cavs squad missing three starters. There will be plenty of areas to pick apart from Boston’s fourth quarter that produced a 32-6 run after the team looked to be cruising to their 12th straight win. However, the finish brings back questions about long-standing concerns about this team during crunch time.
Boston took possession of the ball down one with 19.1 seconds in regulation after Dean Wade’s putback dunk gave Cleveland a 105-104 lead. From there, Jayson Tatum held onto the ball for the next 18 seconds, failing to attempt a shot until 0.7 seconds left in regulation. The Cavs ended up challenging a foul call against Darius Garland, effectively giving the Cavs the win after the reversal led to a jump ball at midcourt with no time left on the clock.
The sequence marked yet another occasion under Joe Mazzulla where Boston has limited their opportunities to erase a deficit with a large chunk of time left in regulation.
“We gotta go faster there,” Mazzulla said. “I thought D-White got the matchup we wanted into it. We just gotta play a little bit faster. Down one in that situation, you try to get a couple more possessions. We just gotta get into it faster, go faster and try to extend the game.”
Mazzulla’s admission is a sign of progress but there are a host of issues that need to be addressed here as Boston’s bad habits resurfaced in a variety of forms.
Joe Mazzulla and the timeout question
This is an age old debate but it’s still worth getting into during this instance. Mazzulla has every right to let them play but he needs to put a stop to that plan if he isn’t seeing the team execute. Jayson Tatum wasted half of the clock walking the ball up the floor after the ball was inbounded with 19 seconds left. Once he sees that happening, he needs to either get his team to speed things up or simply call timeout. Watching helplessly from the sidelines is not a good option there particularly when Boston has the best scoring rate in the NBA after timeouts this season according to Second Spectrum.
Mazzulla said he tried to call a timeout with 4.6 seconds remaining but that’s not necessarily a good thing either. It’s much easier to defend an inbounds play with five seconds on the clock as opposed to 10 or 15 seconds. At that point in the play, Tatum had Garland on him for an isolation sequence but it was evident the Cavs were sending help Garland’s way, something that should have been predictable with Boston looking to take advantage with cutting or using Tatum as a decoy. Instead, the All-Star settled for a contested, low percentage shot.
Jayson Tatum and clock awareness
Tatum is a very high IQ player. He makes the right play, has strong reads and is one of the best passers on Boston’s roster. With that said, his awareness of certain late-game sequences, particularly when facing a deficit remains troubling.
It’s a math equation. If you are losing in a late game situation, you want to have as many chances to erase that deficit as possible. Holding for one shot makes all the sense in the world in a tie game. Doing so while trailing leaves you no margin for effort.
Despite this universal outstanding, Tuesday’s loss marked the third time in the last two seasons that Tatum has made this mistake. Boston has lost all three of those games (Knicks last March, 76ers in playoffs, Cleveland Tuesday night).
“I mean, obviously I know how much time is on the clock but, you know, probably just should have went a little faster just in case some s*** like that happened,” Tatum said. “Maybe we have more time, maybe we would have another opportunity.”
It’s the same response as he had a couple of times last year but obviously no progress has been made on the court. At this point, it’s on Mazzulla to make some kind of change in these trailing sequences. He needs to show more accountability either with himself or Tatum in these spots. Have a quick trigger on a timeout or have someone besides Tatum initiate these sequences. Boston has plenty of ball handlers who can play with urgency in these spots. It’s time for them to start using them rather than settling for diminishing returns with Tatum’s decision making in these spots.
