The Boston Celtics fell victim to Luka magic on Saturday night, losing at the buzzer to Doncic’s patented stepback three. The Cs never managed to take a substantial lead after fighting back from a 17 point deficit to start the second half.
Boston managed to once again be on the wrong side of Luka Doncic’s greatness, as only last year did he hit a similar buzzer-beater to hand Dallas the win. Even with astute defender Josh Richardson getting a challenging contest on the superstar, it didn’t matter as Doncic hit the shot surrounded by three defenders.
The Boston Celtics lost by a final score of 107-104 but managed to find themselves in the second half after a rough 24 minutes.
Without Jaylen Brown, coach Ime Udoka had to look to others to contribute offense to his squad. Ultimately, they got enough production when it mattered, but failed to put away the Mavs in key possessions down the stretch.
Despite an extremely encouraging game — one where the Cs showed tremendous fight and effort in the second half — they still managed to make a frustrating late-game decision, leading to a crushing defeat.
Although that’s easy to focus on, let’s try to tackle the positives first as they were there for the majority of the game.
Boston Celtics takeaway No. 1) Jayson Tatum is Jayson Tatum again
After an extremely difficult stretch to open the year, averaging 22.7 points on only 37.3 percent shooting from the field and 27.1 percent from beyond the arc, Jayson Tatum seems to have found himself again.
In this one, the Boston Celtics superstar finished with 32 points on 12-of-19 shooting and six-of-eight from long range.
Tatum kept his team in the game through three quarters, hitting five of the team’s six triples all together. Besides him, the Celtics hit only one of their 17 attempts from 3-point land. Considering that statistic, it was pretty remarkable that the Boston Celtics were in this game until the very end.
Tatum was both rising up over smaller defenders on the perimeter, as well as taking them off the dribble for easy looks at the basket. Once he gets his first few looks to fall, he goes into a rhythm, with the ability to knock down any shot on the floor.
Once Dallas started to send doubles at JT, he began passing out of them quicker, allowing the offense to find the open man. This often led to open buckets from Josh Richardson and Dennis Schroder, or a lob at the hoop for Robert Williams off of a slow rotation from the Mavs.
As Tatum begins to acknowledge double teams sooner in the possession, the offense will begin to find its own stride, taking advantage of the attention that their superstar covets from opposing defenses.