After advancing to the NBA Finals last season and entering this season as championship favorites, the Celtics knew they were going to get everyone’s best shot. In fact, they embraced it.
“We wanted this,” Grant Williams said late last month, as the C’s were going through their first slump of the season, punctuated by home losses to inferior opponents.
That rut taught the Celtics that they need to bring it every night, and not overlook teams they know they should beat. For Williams, doing so represents an important step of growth.
“If we do, that’s how we become a great team,” he said. “Right now we’re a good team but not great yet.”
The Celtics ended 2022 with an encouraging response by beating two championship-level teams, but have reverted back to old habits to begin 2023.
On paper, Tuesday’s game in Oklahoma City against the lottery-bound Thunder – who were missing leading scorer and budding superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – should have been a cakewalk for the Celtics. Instead, it was inexplicably the complete opposite. Without Gilgeous-Alexander, a Thunder roster full of unproven players handed the Celtics an embarrassing 150-117 loss.
“They played harder than us the entire game,” Celtics interim head coach Joe Mazzulla told reporters in Oklahoma City.
What did Mazzulla say to his team after this loss? He compared it to the Celtics’ 27-point win over the Suns last month. Like then, when he didn’t want to overreact to a dominant victory, he wanted to keep this brutal loss in perspective. It’s all part of a process, he said.
“Whether you win or lose, it’s a level of humility you have to have in the NBA, because those things happen,” Mazzulla told reporters. “Effort and getting outplayed is unacceptable. …
“You can’t overreact to a game like this in my opinion. If you have the understanding of you’re going to be able to do this to another team, which we did earlier this year, you have to have the understanding that it may happen to you at some point. … I’ll care more about how we respond in the next game and in the future. I may have a distorted view of my mindset, but it’s important to learn from these moments and you have to use them to grow. You don’t really have any other choice.”
The Celtics gave up the second-most points in a game in franchise history in Tuesday’s loss, and it was the third time they’ve given up at least 150. The only time they gave up more was in a 1979 game against the Pistons, when they allowed 160. On Tuesday, it happened without Gilgeous-Alexander, who entered the night fifth in the NBA in scoring at 30.8 points per game.
Mazzulla acknowledged there may have been some let-up by the Celtics after they learned the Thunder star would be out.
“Maybe a little, but it shouldn’t be that much,” he said. “It shouldn’t result in that.”
Nothing went right for the Celtics. Their outside shooting struggled again. Marcus Smart was ejected, and had to be restrained by Mazzulla as he left the floor. Their defense – which has made strides over the last month – produced a truly horrific performance. Seven Thunder players scored in double figures. Five of them – led by Josh Giddey’s 25 points – scored at least 20. Oklahoma City seemed to be running layup lines, and at times even dunk lines, on their way to 59.2 percent shooting from the floor.
OKC had more energy than the Celtics from the jump and pulled away with a dominant second quarter after the C’s had made a run to end the first. The C’s were outscored 40-21 in the second as they trailed by 20 at halftime and it only got worse in the third, when they allowed 48 points.
Smart was ejected in the third after receiving a second technical for arguing a call, but that was the least of the Celtics’ worries. The Thunder got just about whatever they wanted offensively, whether it was attacking the basket or shooting from deep, where they finished 20-for-40 from beyond the arc.
“They outplayed us in every aspect of the game,” Mazzulla said.
Mazzulla, while he’s not overreacting to one game, knows the Celtics must learn from an inexcusable loss like this as they continue a season with title aspirations.
“We have to coach in the short term and for the long term as well,” he told reporters. “Again, it may not be the most popular thing to say but you have to go through some (expletive) if you want to get to where you want to get to, whether it’s good or bad. That’s just how it is. We have to go through it and we’ll be judged by how we handle it. If we handle it the right way, it will be good for us. If we don’t, then that’s something we’ll have to address.”
– Robert Williams missed Tuesday’s game due to left knee injury management. The Celtics center – who missed the first 29 games of the season – hasn’t had any issues with the knee since his return, Mazzulla told reporters in Oklahoma City. Williams is averaging 8.3 points and 7.3 rebounds in 18.9 minutes per game in seven games.
