Celtics Biggest Issues in Games 3 and 4 Against Wizards
Boston was beat down in their two road games against the Wizards.
After dropping their second straight road game in their series against Washington, the Celtics are now tied with the Wizards heading back to Boston.
A lot has gone wrong in the past two games for Boston. Washington has managed to go on ridiculous runs in both Games 3 and 4, and have fed off of their home crowd to keep the Celtics from coming back. It’s very difficult to see any positives from the past two games, after Boston played well to start the series off.
We knew that the Wizards were great at home and somewhat lousy on the road, so I guess you could say that things have gone as planned. However, the Celtics need to get things in order or else they might suffer the same fate as the Bulls.
Turnovers
The reason the Wizards have been able to go on these crazy runs is because of the fact that Boston keeps giving the ball away. Washington is one of the best fast break teams in the NBA, so it is extremely important to take care of the basketball on offense.
The Celtics had 16 turnovers in Game 3, and 18 in Game 4. That is unacceptable. The Wizards have been the more physical team, and they have been very active with their hands on defense.
The Celtics’ main area of improvement in Game 5 will have to be taking care of the ball. If they keep handing the Wizards the ball, they’ll just keep going on runs and put games away. The Celtics get very tight when they don’t hit shots on offense, which is where the turnovers happen.
Boston was eighth in the NBA in turnovers per game this season, so it shouldn’t be much of an issue to fix. Washington’s main adjustment wasn’t anything complex, they just played harder and got the Celtics to turn the ball over.
Consistency
Maybe this comes with being on the road against a physical team, but the Celtics have been maddeningly inconsistent on both ends of the floor.
The Wizards have made it a point to make Isaiah Thomas work more on defense, but that hasn’t been the main issue. Jae Crowder has had to cover bigger players for most of the series, but he hasn’t been giving a ton of effort the past two games.
Players Crowder has been defending have been blowing by him and getting to the rim. He’ll need to fix that for the next game, as Boston’s defense hinges on his versatility and ability to get stops.
On offense, there are certain trips down where the Celtics move the ball with purpose and dictate the flow of the game. Then there are times where it looks like they are begging the Wizards to take the ball from them.
Thomas was unstoppable in the first two games, and now Washington has thrown as many as three defenders at him. The supporting cast has to hit shots and make plays on offense if they are going to free things up for Thomas again.
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The past two games have looked similar to what happened last year against the Hawks. The players around Thomas have been ineffective, so the defense just closes in on him completely. This was supposed to be different this year, and if the Celtics are going to move on to the eastern conference finals, they need to make some serious adjustments.