Being the best team in the league heading into the postseason can surely make members of the squad complacent. The Boston Celtics had a matchup that they had to win over the Atlanta Hawks. Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Kristaps Porzingis were all relatively doing well in the first half of the game. Then, De'Andre Hunter started to catch fire while Dejounte Murray picked Joe Mazzulla's defense apart. It led to a massive collapse that did not please the top team of the Eastern Conference.
Jayson Tatum immediately took accountability after they faltered in the game with a 120 to 118 scoreline, via Noa Dalzell of The Athletic
“It's tough. You want to win every game you play. People think we never should lose. We were up a lot. We f***ed the game up, and we know that. We're all adults and professionals, and we know we didn't do the things necessary to win. That's sometimes easier to fix when you know if you do the right things and play the right way, the way you're supposed to,” the Celtics superstar said.
Jayson Tatum still poured his heart out for the Celtics. He notched 37 points while managing to knock down 50% of his field goal attempts. Going nine for 11 on his shots from the charity stripe also helped the Celtics star quite a lot.
This collapse was massive for the Celtics. The Hawks outscored them 44 to 64 in the second half. De'Andre Hunter went unconscious to score 24 points. Dejounte Murray found every one of his open teammates for 15 assists. Clint Capela dominated the boards by grabbing seven of them on the defensive end and five of them on offense.
More importantly, it did not help that the Celtics only went 28.9% in their shots from far out. All of the Celtics' hopes of sealing the game in their favor just got shattered.
Celtics get real on the loss
Furthermore, Tatum was not the only one who was disappointed in this loss to the Hawks. Jaylen Brown unveiled that the Celtics' complacent demeanor cost them this matchup, via CLNS.
“We were up 30 and kind of took our foot off the gas, and it cost us. Just taking every possession, handling it the right way. I think that we got a little casual, we got a little distracted, and it cost us,” the Celtics All-Star declared.
Kristaps Porzingis took a more positive route during his assessment of their team's loss, via Bobby Manning of CLNS.
“We did a good job tonight not overreacting … it's the NBA. These kind of things happen. We don't want to make this a habit, and it hasn't been a habit for us. We slipped one game and we did relax…and we paid the price… JT was doing a great job getting some buckets for us,” he said.
Moreover, he also outlined some suggestions to improve on, “We could've been smarter in a couple of situations on defense, we gave them easy free throws … we should've made them work to get their buckets more as much as we worked to get ours.”
Will the Celtics be able to fix all of these concerns to notch their 18th banner?
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