Yeah, that was a stinker.
Despite Paul George turning back the clock for 38 points, the Celtics were out-rebounded and lost the margin battle in the trenches, Jayson Tatum looked off, and Jaylen Brown looked great in a Sixers win over the Knicks on their Ring Night. After building a 22-point lead in their season opener in Detroit, the Celtics were outscored 72-41 in the final 20 minutes that included a Pistons’ 23-0 run.
But as bad as Tuesday’s loss was, it’s just the start.
“There are bigger adversities
in life than losing a game. I’m excited for the challenges and the opportunity,” Joe Mazzulla said at practice on Thursday.
“It was a challenge losing that [game], but it’s how you respond to that. It may or may not happen again, but it’s who you become. You have to learn. As I told the team, I don’t want us to feel a certain type of way after a win or after a loss — it’s all the same. You have to be able to process possessions in a game, so it’s really more about the consistency of the approach, not the feeling of the result. We just have to maintain the consistency of the approach and the process and continue to go through that.”
With a chance to knock off the defending champion Knicks tomorrow night in their home opener, it’s a quick turnaround for a team looking to turn the page quickly. After a 4-0 successful preseason that seemed to legitimize Mazzulla’s approach, the trade for George, the free agent signings of Mitchell Robinson and Mike Conley Jr., and the development of the Celtics’ growing young core, the team will now have a four-game homestand to settle into the regular season and they don’t seem bothered by the hiccup.
“I don’t think it’s concerning. It’s the first game of 82,” Sam Hauser said. “There’s definitely going to be kinks that we have to work out. Obviously we ran into a few things in the last game, but I don’t think we’re concerned. We showed flashes of being really really good and showed flashes of where we need to improve. That’s the battle you go through each and every season.”
During training camp, Mazzulla stressed that it’s going to take 10-20 games to see what the team can lean on in terms of their strengths, what needs to be improved, and what the trend lines of the league are going to be. The Pistons, the East’s #1 seed last season, provided a good early test that Mazzulla liked “38 of 48 minutes” of. The key — as it is every year around this time — is being able to do for all 48, night in, night out.
“Last game was a perfect game because it was the epitome of momentum and opportunities and turning points and ebbs and flows,” Mazzulla said.
He noted that the team generated good shots during their worst stretches against the Pistons, but poor transition defense, fouling three-point shooters, and giving up and-1s off offensive rebounds ultimately allowed Detroit to steamroll them down the stretch. It’s all a learning process in the road to consistency.
“The way we want to play, the freedom, the ability to just read the game — it just takes time understanding what each guy likes. We had some really good moments of that, and throughout that process, there will be some janky moments, but we just continue to grow through it, We’re further along than I anticipated from that standpoint,” Mazzulla reiterated.
And how’s this for consistency: 26,864 points over 15 regular seasons and a decade’s worth of playoffs. That’s second all-time for the franchise. That’s The Truth. That’s Paul Pierce.
The Finals MVP and second all-time leading scorer visited today’s practice at the Auerbach Center.
“It makes you want to carry on the Celtics tradition, the legacy when you’ve got them around,” Hauser said of having The Captain back in the building.
