BOSTON — The Celtics will be playing for their in-season tournament lives on Tuesday night when they host the Bulls at TD Garden. Boston needs to win and get some help from other teams in the mix to have a chance to advance to the quarterfinals after dropping to 2-1 in pool play on Friday in Orlando with a 113-96 defeat. That loss in particular left a sour taste in the mouth of Jayson Tatum after the Celtics All-Star saw the Magic run up the score later in the win despite most of the team’s starters being pullout.
Orlando trying to win by more comes as no surprise as the NBA has incentivized bigger point differentials for in-season tournament games by using that category as a tiebreaker for pool play. However, Tatum does like this aspect of the format.
“The point differential thing, I’m not the biggest fan of it because there were certain instances, I guess last Friday, where the game is already over and guys are still trying to score,” Tatum said Sunday night after beating the Hawks. “It’s all about respecting the game and respecting your opponents so that part I’m really not a fan of because if you were on the opposite end of that you would feel some kind of way. So I understand. So just try to win the game however we can.”
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Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla admitted to weighing this part of the tournament rules in his decision making process as the game fell out of reach on Friday. Boston’s 17-point loss dropped the team’s point differential to zero and dramatically hurt the team’s odds of advance past the group stage.
“I mean, I thought about it but at the end of the day, Jrue was out, we had lost Porzingis,” Mazzulla said. “I wasn’t willing to risk a point differential for the sake of the long-term health of our team. That was kind of the decision that I made there. It’s obviously something that you process and go through. I think Dalano tried to go in for a layup and may have missed, so we were aware of it.”
Despite those concerns, Tatum is still a fan of the event that could come to a close for Boston on Tuesday night unless the team can blow out the Bulls and get some other favorable results across pool play.
“It’s cool,” Tatum said of the tournament. “I know that the fans enjoy the court. The court is cool. The different courts that each home team has. I know Tuesday is complicated. There’s a million things that can happen so that s*** is a little tricky but I think it’s been great. It gives guys something to look forward to early in the season.”
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