The hopes of the Boston Celtics attaining banner No. 18 came crashing down fairly quickly against the Golden State Warriors in Game 6. In a contest that was win or go home, the Celts kickstarted the night on a 14-2 run and there was a belief in the air that they could sustain this initial momentum.
The problem was the Warriors would storm back and lead at the end of the quarter by a hand. Basketball is a game of runs and these were astronomical runs by the dynastic Golden State squad.
A 25-8 run to end the first quarter was a start of an epic all-time collapse for these C’s.
Then between the end of the first and the beginning of the second was a 21-0 run by the Dubs, which marked the largest spurt allowed by a Finals team in over 50 years.
The wrong side of history for the Beantown boys.
Despite winning the third quarter by five and giving a sense of life into a packed TD Garden and millions of Boston Celtics fans watching around the world, they were not able to maintain any level of a completed comeback in the fourth quarter.
The final score makes it seem like this game was ever in question, but it really never got closer than nine points for the Celtics. The margin of error is way more minuscule when you are playing against a Warriors team that has the championship pedigree and overwhelming experience edge.
Here are 3 reasons why the Boston Celtics lost the NBA Finals Thursday night:
Reason Boston Celtics lost Game 6 No. 1) Jaayson Tatum was putrid
Ultimately, any team’s fate ends up being determined by if their best player has some type of impact on the game. The Boston Celtics could not get that level of production from Jayson Tatum this evening in an elimination game.
Maybe it’s the fact he’s 24 years old and the moment became too big for him. Maybe we will learn that his shoulder injury was far more serious than the C’s would initially reveal.
Neither of these choices are glamorous for Celtics fans. It will all become much clearer in the next 24 hours.
There were three critical areas of the game where Tatum struggled.
The first was the fact he only scored 13 points in the biggest game of his career on 6-of-18 shooting. There was a sense of hesitancy off the catch on his jump shots while also displaying poor shot selection.
The superstar forward needs to learn to play through contact, not for it, as he was foul hunting far too often.
His complaining about fouls constantly, regardless of justification, hurts his reputation among officials. Every time he drives, it seems like he’s searching for contact instead of finishing what should be a simple layup.
As a result, the wing is waving his arms in the air and making no concerted effort to get back defensively.
Next, is the careless turnovers by not valuing the possession of the basketball. It’s a combination of sloppy passes and poor decision-making to drive into a crowd of Warriors players in the paint.
Tatum will finish his playoff run with the most giveaways of any player in NBA history at 100.
Lastly, his lapses on the defensive end were all too noticeable.
In previous games where Jayson struggled with his shot, he still was impacting the game in other ways, be it by making the right reads offensively, not forcing up bad shots, or playing an elite level of defense.
Three early fouls were what forced him to be subbed earlier in the game and he seemed to play tentatively on defense the rest of the night.
Make no mistake: LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and even Kawhi Leonard struggled in their first Finals series. He’s only 24 and has yet to hit his prime years.
As long as the Celtics keep adding pieces around him, they’ll be in a position to win the conference title again and vie for banner 18.
Reason Boston Celtics lost Game 6 No. 2) The Bench was a non-factor again…
Depth wins championships in this league and, in the last two games, the Boston Celtics got a combined nine points from their three key bench pieces in Grant Williams, Derrick White, and Payton Pritchard.
PP was held scoreless in back-to-back games and when he’s not hitting open treys, his presence is that of a major liability. The guard is no more than six feet with obvious defensive limitations. This made him unplayable in key moments and begs the question if he can be a rotational piece on this team that is built on a tough defensive identity.
Batman has been a missing person on a milk carton at your local Stop and Shop since the Milwaukee series. He played for considerable minutes but was not aggressive to get up shots or impact the game in any other way.
The former Spur lived up to his bill as a non-shooter despite a false media narrative that he was a sniper when Boston acquired him at the trade deadline. He had some moments, but the Fred VanVleet-like new dad energy was only a temporary force.
Part of the reason, the Celtics lack the ability to get banner 18 right now is their lack of depth beyond their eight-man rotation. This offseason should give way to serious decisions to shore up additional bench pieces to be deep at every position.
Robert Williams is injury-prone, Al Horford is getting older, and the C’s could not trust Daniel Theis to provide meaningful minutes in this series, making him a non-rotational piece for the future.
Boston will need to sever ties to the end of the bench pieces in Luke Kornet, Juwan Morgan, and possibly Sam Hauser to get more reliable depth.
Ime Udoka’s eight-man philosophy worked in the regular season, but it showed serious weaknesses in the losses the Celts suffered in the playoffs.
Every champion outside of maybe the bubble Lakers had notable depth.
It’s almost impossible to win being this hollow.
Reason Boston Celtics lost Game 6 No. 3) Turnovers, turnovers, and… turnovers
Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum carry too much of the burden of being point forwards. They should not be bringing the ball up and it is evident at the rate of how much they gave away possessions.
The Boston Celtics actually managed to increase their number of turnovers in Game 6 by hitting the 22 mark as some sort of a weird flex.
Marcus Smart struggled to complete the right reads with giveaways off of sloppy passes.
Derrick White played sped up at times leading to lost possessions.
Robert Williams has a terrible habit of bringing the ball down on the catch when he’s grounded near the basket, leading to smaller players stripping the ball away and another wasted trip offensively.
He needs to catch the ball and get into his shooting motion.
The C’s need to target a low mistake point guard to take over a majority of the ball-handling duties. Smart may function better sliding over to the off-guard with less responsibility for getting the team into their action offensively.
This was a great season and now it is time to dig in as a front office and fill in the missing holes in this championship puzzle. This is only the second time in franchise history that a visiting team has hoisted the Larry O’Brien trophy in the TD/ Boston Garden.
Hopefully, this Finals experience and coming up short adds fuel to this young team’s fire. Fuel to ignite the engine to get back to the mountaintop.