After a lackluster outing in New York, Boston was looking for a bounce back in the Motor City. Jaylen Brown impressed with 41 points (5-of-9 from 3, 12-of-15 from the line), six rebounds, and four assists, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard chipped in 15 and 21 each, but the Celtics lost to the Pistons 119-113.
As CelticsBlog’s Mark Aboyoun noted before the tip, it’s Hugo Gonzalez time. The 19-year-old rookie had an electric debut at Madison Square Garden and he and his energy were injected into the starting
lineup (replacing Sam Hauser) against the Pistons. Gonzalez didn’t disappoint. The box score won’t exactly impress (no points with two steals and a block), but he matched minutes with MVP candidate Cade Cunningham and pestered him whenever they went head-to-head.
In the loss to the Knicks, Joe Mazzulla identified four areas of controllables: offensive and defensive rebounding and the turnover differential.
“It’s holding them accountable to the things that they can control. That’s a high, high standard. To me, you can’t budge on that,” Mazzulla said. “And like I said, they’re going to be mistakes and that’s OK, but they gotta be mistakes of aggression and mistakes of opportunity, not mistakes of not playing hard.”
Mazzulla said that the team played twelve then twenty-four good minutes in the first two games. A strong push in the first quarter against to the Pistons led to a 11-point lead. They forced five turnovers for six points and held Detroit to 33% shooting from the field. The Celtics also won the fourth 32-25, but still haven’t played a complete 48 in their first 0-3 start since 2013-2014.
Unfortunately, rebounding remains the biggest area for improvement. Jalen Duren alone owned the Celtics with seven offensive boards to contribute to Detroit’s 18 for 30 second chance points. Fouls and subsequent free throws have been an issue, too. Detroit ballooned their 2-point halftime lead to 13 with sixteen trips to the charity stripe in the third quarter. On the night, the Pistons had a 36-24 edge.
Boston is still maintaining their identity as a three-point shooting team despite the departures of many of its shooters. They took 43 and 44 shots from behind the arc against the Sixers and Knicks respectively and went 15-of-45 in Detroit.
The Celtics will again look for their first win of the season in New Orleans tomorrow night at 8 pm EST.
