On Thursday evening, Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics put together far and away their worst performance of the 2023-24 NBA season with a 135-102 demolition at the hands of their Eastern Conference rivals, the Milwaukee Bucks. In fact, so abysmal were the Celtics on Thursday that head coach Joe Mazzulla opted to sit his starters for the entire second half, keeping Tatum's point total at seven for the evening.

Another one of those starters was none other than former Buck Jrue Holiday, making his return to Milwaukee, and after the game, the veteran point guard spoke on his head coach's decision to roll with the bench unit for the final 24 minutes.

“Having a tough schedule and it being a back-to-back … based on the way the game went, sometimes coaches make decisions like that,” said Holiday, per Bobby Manning of CLNS Media on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Indeed, the Celtics were playing less than 24 hours after finishing up an overtime win over the Minnesota Timberwolves at the TD Garden Wednesday night. Despite the thrashing at the hands of the Bucks, the Celtics still sit comfortably in first place in the Eastern Conference at 29-9, still three games ahead of second-place Milwaukee at the top of the conference hierarchy.

Still, Boston will hope to put this performance behind them quickly as they prepare for their next game, a home contest against the upstart Houston Rockets at the TD Garden on Saturday evening. That game is slated to tip off at 7:00 PM ET.