For the first time since 2023, the Boston Celtics are trailing in a playoff series. Their Game 1 loss to the New York Knicks left many stunned, disappointed, and frustrated. Any time a team watches a 20-point lead disappear into thin air, those emotions are going to be present.
The most difficult part of the entire process was the way that it happened. Boston, among other things, leaned into their three-point centric offense, shot themselves in the foot, and out of the game.
If you opened up your social media timeline on Monday, you likely saw complaints about the Celtics' second-half shot selection. Here's what it looked like:
They took 34 of their 41 field goal attempts from beyond the arc in the second half.
"I mean, I think for the most part [we got good looks]," said Head Coach Joe Mazzulla after his squad's 108-105 overtime defeat. "Obviously, over the course of the game, you can always find 5-10 shots that you want to be better at, but throughout the night. For the most part, we fought for good looks throughout the game."
Was the Celtics' three-point volume the problem, exclusively?
In short, no.
There was a lot that went wrong here. First and foremost, they did, in fact, go cold.
After ballooning the lead to 20 points with 5:47 remaining in the third quarter, Boston's shots stopped falling -- even the good ones.
When the temperature dropped for the Celtics, the Knicks sold out on defending drives by sending multiple defenders at the ball every time it hit the paint. They were over-helping, and the C's just couldn't make them pay.
"Some of them felt good. Some of them felt like we maybe forced the issue," said Jaylen Brown. "Definitely, our rhythm and our timing was a little bit off. We got a lot of great looks... We gotta look at the film and see kind of what happened in that second half."
There was certainly a mix of rushed/not rushed attempts, but for the most part, if you were to re-watch every three-pointer that Boston took in the second half, probably 75% of them were good looks.
Was there room to trim the fat? Absolutely. For example, when this game was up for grabs in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter, the Celtics found themselves settling. That's what it was. It wasn't good shot creation that didn't work out, it was settling.
Jayson Tatum had three opportunities to put Boston ahead in that span and he fired up a trio of tough triples.
With that being said, there was also room to better win the margins, which is what Mazzulla is always talking about.
It's so easy to watch a collapse like that and put the entire blame on the shot selection, but it's deeper than that.
The Celtics turned the ball over seven times and allowed five offensive rebounds in the second half alone. Once their offense got tight, they weren't quite as focused and struggled to execute on both ends. Ultimately, the missed threes were tough, but there were other avenues where they could've controlled the game, and they didn't.