The 2020-2021 Boston Celtics have had a rocky regular season, but Tuesday’s loss to the Thunder is arguably as bad as it gets. And if people are arguing about which loss tops Boston’s list of ugly defeats, isn’t that telling enough?
Oklahoma City entered this game on a 14-game losing streak, with 11 of those losses coming by double-digits. Former Celtic Al Horford is sitting out the remainder of the season. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander hasn’t played in over a month. The active Thunder roster has an average age of 20 years and 285 days, younger than many college teams, including the National Champion Baylor Bears. Sam Presti and his front office have put together a magnificent tanking effort, yet Oklahoma City was able to snap its losing ways against a Celtics team actively fighting for playoff position.
The Thunder scored 41 points in the fourth quarter, as Boston continuously failed to capitalize on their mistakes. Oklahoma City turned the ball over 27 times, a season-high among Celtics opponents this year, and still came out with the win. It was just the third time this season that a team has won while committing at least 26 turnovers, according to Basketball Reference. Not jumping on an opponent’s missteps was a bad Celtics trend earlier in the season, and it reared its ugly head on Tuesday night.
It’s important to note that the Celtics were missing Jayson Tatum, Kemba Walker and Robert Williams in the loss, and the absence of three rotation players hurts no matter who you’re playing. Despite the injury report, this is not a game Boston should have lost. A team whose front office is actively trying to lose put forth more effort than a playoff-bound Celtics team Tuesday night. That has absolutely nothing to do with missing players.
The lack of urgency was eye-opening at points throughout this one, but specifically during the fourth quarter when it was beyond evident that Boston needed a stop. The Celtics began to make their push, and Oklahoma City responded with a 16-4 run in which Boston’s defense got crushed. When the Celtics needed an all-important defensive jolt, they came up empty-handed.
The Celtics made a late run, scoring 10 points in about 72 seconds to make it a one-possession game with under a minute remaining in regulation, however that shouldn’t be the case against a team like the Thunder. That certainly should not be a trend for a team jostling for postseason seeding, yet it feels like the Celtics are more often than not forced to execute a borderline-miraculous late run to get back into games due to sluggish stints from earlier quarters. It’s a dangerous trend, particularly at this point in the season. Those late-game runs won’t come as easy against postseason opponents.
Boston has had bad health all year long. It’s an unfortunate scenario that has created a lack of lineup chemistry because frankly, their ideal lineups have barely gotten any time on the floor together. Choppy play is understandable and expected with this group, but falling face-first against a struggling, young Thunder team is discouraging no matter how you cut it.
Coming off of an ugly defeat to the Charlotte Hornets on Sunday, Boston was in need of a win. Losing a game in the standings to Charlotte amplified that result a bit, but regardless of the implications in each matchup, there now are just 10 games remaining in the regular season. In a tightly-packed Eastern Conference, any loss is a bad loss for the Celtics, but they cannot afford ones like Tuesday night. This was a game where they had to take care of business, and other than Jaylen Brown and Payton Pritchard, the Celtics did not.
As I wrote earlier this week, Boston’s final 11 games present plenty of winnable matchups. Well, now one of those sits in the loss column, and at this point in the season, those results come back to bite you sooner rather than later.
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April 28, 2021 at 09:40AM
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What The Celtics’ Latest Bad Loss Means For Boston Moving Forward - Forbes
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