Wednesday night was ugly for the Boston Celtics. Just over two weeks after they beat the Toronto Raptors by 54 points, the script was flipped. The Raptors handed them one of their worst losses of the season, as Boston fell 110-97 to a team that had only won nine games all year heading into the evening. The Celtics were lucky number 10.
From the very start of the game, the Celtics struggled. Whether it was giving up wide-open threes of suffering through a lifeless offense, Boston just couldn’t seem to do anything right. And the result was one of the ugliest losses of the season.
After the game, Kristaps Porzingis was very upset.
Kristaps Porzingis was mad after Celtics' loss to Raptors
An extremely frustrated Porzingis got fired up, calling Boston’s performance “weak.”
“I think we played with no spirit, with no personality,” Porzingis said via Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe. “It’s just a weak performance from us, honestly.”
Individually, Porzingis played well, but that’s not what mattered on Wednesday. The Celtics had an absolutely awful performance as a team, and not even Porzingis’ performance could lift them out of it.
He also piled onto his fiery statement, noting that the Celtics need to get a bit introspective.
“But we are in a bad moment right now, for sure,” Porzingis said. “We have to be realistic and look in the mirror. We’re not playing the best basketball. We’re not executing … There’s a lot of things we’re not doing well, and we have to be honest with ourselves, otherwise we’ll just keep going like this.”
Boston is now 7-7 in their last 14 games, and a few of their losses lately have been terrible. In addition to this defeat, they also lost to the De’Aaron Fox-less Sacramento Kings and to the Philadelphia 76ers on Christmas.
As one would expect, Celtics fans are none too pleased with the team’s recent performances. They’ve come to expect the best, and last year’s championship run likely spoiled them a bit.
That said, Porzingis’ comments after the loss to Toronto should be more than enough to get the fanbase riled up. He knows the Celtics have to fix something, and that’s at least a start.
But for now, the Celtics will have to sit with the agony of defeat all the way back to Boston, as they are flying home for games on Friday and Saturday.
Perhaps Porzingis’ speech can give the team some juice moving forward.