It’s a make/miss league, as they say. For the second straight game, the Boston Celtics got off to a hot shooting start, but went cold later in the game. It cost them on Thursday against the Milwaukee Bucks, and again on Monday vs. the Detroit Pistons.
Boston’s three-point stroke seemed to be back to start this one. They came out of the gates firing and made four of their first five attempts from beyond the arc. From that point on, it got worse. The Cs sank just two of their next 27 long-range attempts.
Bad three-point shooting is never a good thing. You’re objectively going to win more games when shots are falling, it’s that simple.
Though the Celtics didn't get the result they wanted, they stuck to their process
To their credit, the Celtics competed and fought to stay in the game even when they couldn’t connect from distance. They defended, matched Detroit’s physicality, and battled on the glass. The problem with the cold shooting was that it made it even harder for Jaylen Brown to do his thing, which he did extremely well in the first half.
For those first 24 minutes, the Pistons respected Boston’s shooters and were reluctant to send help at Brown. He got basically whatever he wanted, hunting Duncan Robinson in switches consistently.
Once Detroit decided they’d live with giving up open looks from the perimeter, Boston’s offense stalled. Brown had a quiet third quarter, compared to the first two, as they blitzed him whenever they got the opportunity.
To his credit, JB was more than willing to make the right play and swing the ball when the Pistons were aggressive. Brown’s teammates just didn’t make them pay for selling out on him.
“I think at the end of the day, you just have to make the right read, which I thought he did tonight,” Joe Mazzulla explained postgame. “He got to the free-throw line, finished at the rim, and kicked out as he drove through traffic for us. That's just the nature of it. Nothing else is more important than that, regardless of if they're going in or not, to make it the right read. I thought we did that for the majority of the game. And I thought there were obviously possessions that we can get better.”
He continued to fight in the fourth and wound up totalling an impressive 34 points, even with the added attention from Detroit’s defense.
Had he and Derrick White, who tallied 31 after an impressive fourth quarter, gotten any help from the rest of the roster, this loss could’ve easily been a win.
Boston finished the night with just 10 threes on 39 attempts, which equates to 25.6%. If you subtract both Brown and White’s attempts, they made just four of 22. That’s quite the contrast to the hot shooting they’ve gotten used to, having shot 39.6% over their last 10 games.
Though he filled the statsheet, Brown still welcomed the burden of blame during his postgame availability. JB pointed to his missed free throws, of which there were seven, as well as some mental lapses on the defensive end, as areas where he could’ve done more.
“I’ll take the accountability,” Brown concluded at the end of his presser.
Regardless if Brown is willing to take the blame, his teammates have to be able to knock down open threes when the shots are there. So far this season, they've done a good job of doing so, which is why Boston's record is what it is. But if these past two games become the new normal, the winning ways are going to come to a halt.