In an emotional night at the TD Garden, the Boston Celtics couldn’t get out of their own way as they fell to the Denver Nuggets 114-105.
The Boston Celtics did about everything in their power to lose Monday night against the Nuggets. That’s the story from this one. I don’t think effort was an issue, there wasn’t anything deep-seeded about this loss. The world doesn’t have to end every time the Celtics don’t win.
The Nuggets are a good team and the Celtics didn’t play well enough to win. That’s about it. I’ll dive deeper into it from a basketball perspective, but if you’re looking for a post that will make it seem like the Celtics are still suffering from the same issues from losing streaks earlier in the year, this won’t be it.
Learning lessons
The Celtics seem to be over their chemistry issues that plagued them all season, so as frustrating as losses these can be, they can move forward and take lessons from them. This game had plenty of lessons to learn from.
Defensively, the Celtics weren’t great, but they did enough against a terrific offensive unit to put themselves in position to win. The offense was pretty good too. Shots weren’t falling for anyone outside of Al Horford and Kyrie Irving (specifically in the second half), but it’s a make or miss league. You take the positives from generating open looks over the results when you know players like Jayson Tatum, Marcus Morris and Jaylen Brown are capable of knocking down shots.
The main lessons came from the sloppy play. The Celtics played decently well, but their sloppiness in critical moments cost them in this one. You can criticize Brad Stevens for calling a timeout with 1.1 seconds left in the third quarter, but it was the execution that made the call look questionable.
Morris threw a god awful pass out of bounds to give the Nuggets the ball back under their own basket, and Brown fell asleep and let his man get a wide open dunk.
Then there are plays in like Aron Baynes coming up with a big steal down four and Marcus Smart taking an ill-advised layup in traffic instead of bringing it back out. The Nuggets scored on the following play.
And then here, where Tatum is slow on his close out and Malik Beasley extends a six point lead into a nine point lead for Denver. Brad Stevens is noticeably upset at Tatum for this play.
Against good teams the Celtics can’t make these kind of mistakes. They know that too, but they were reminded Monday night that they can’t lose focus. Great teams capitilize on every slip up, and the Nuggets did exactly that.
Terry Rozier
Two weeks ago I raised the question about whether it was time to take Terry Rozier out of the rotation. He is still getting regular bench minutes and continues to derail the Celtics’ offense when he’s on the floor as the lead ball handler.
Irving played basically all of the third quarter, leading the Celtics to a five point lead before the debacle we detailed above. Rozier was the lead ball handler to start the fourth quarter with the score tied at 80-80. When Irving returned to the game with about six minutes left, the Nuggets were ahead 98-90.
The Celtics can’t have their lead dissapear of deficit balloon every time Irving subs out of the game. Boston was missing Gordon Hayward for sure, but last night just makes it clear how bad Rozier has been in these spots. The ball doesn’t move as well, and he looks for his shot far too often instead of playing within the flow of the offense.
Rozier had a team-low -26.6 NET rating in the loss.
I see the agrument for keeping him in there for the upside of how good the bench will be once he figures things out, but it’s too late for that. Rozier is best when the offense needs him to take shots, and on this team there are too many talented scorers for that to happen. Take hime out of the rotation, Brad. Please.
Jaylen Brown falling asleep
We already saw the clip of Brown falling asleep on a cutter towards the end of the third quarter, but he had far too many instances of that Monday night. He’s been playing great as of late, but the lack of focus on the defensive end limited him to 20 minutes of playing time. It’s hard to get in a rythym offensively in short spurts because you keep getting yanked for defensive miscues.
Brown is a terrifc on-ball defender but struggles with staying focused off the ball. His struggled Monday highlighted the Celtics issues as well. They just weren’t focused enough to beat a good team like the Nuggets. It’s nothing to panic over, but it’s something they’ll have to improve on quickly before their game in Philadelphia.