BOSTON — Jaylen Brown wasn’t at his sharpest Wednesday night against the Hornets. He missed four of his first six shots and four of his final six as the Celtics suffered a lopsided 118–89 defeat at TD Garden.
“I take accountability,” Brown said. “I gotta be better at the rim and play with more energy.”
Brown’s first three shots were all within 12 feet of the rim, and all three missed. He proceeded to miss six more from within six feet before finishing 7-for-19 with 20 points, 11 rebounds, and three turnovers.
Both Brown’s scoring and playmaking proved unreliable, turning what began as a first-quarter 7-for-23 Celtics slump into a contagious burden that prevented anyone from finding a rhythm.
Charlotte’s defense smothered Boston so effectively that it held the Celtics to fewer than 23 points for three quarters.
“That wasn’t Celtics basketball,” Brown said. “They had more energy than us. Usually, that doesn’t happen a lot all season long. Today wasn’t the best example of Celtics basketball, and we all can be better. Being the leader, I take accountability.”
Brown tried to revive the Celtics. In the second quarter, he poster-dunked over 6-foot-10 center Moussa Diabaté in an attempt to motivate the rest of the team. The energy lift lasted only a few moments before Charlotte closed the frame with a 64-43 halftime lead. Brown’s latest dunk-of-the-year submission wasn’t enough to swing the pendulum in Boston’s favor. The shooting woes, turnovers, and unlikely brand of basketball that prompted halftime boos among the over 19,000 fans in attendance remained stuck to the Celtics.
In the third quarter, Brown’s right-handed layup attempt was blocked by Ryan Kalkbrenner. Brown immediately looked toward the officials, shouting while holding his right arm. Seconds later, he was charged with a his career-high ninth technical foul of the season, allowing Colby White to visit the charity stripe and extend Charlotte’s lead to 20 points with 11.4 seconds remaining.
No matter where the Celtics looked, they couldn’t find an answer.
Hornets coach Charles Lee’s offense, on the other hand, never took its foot off the gas. Charlotte recorded 26 assists to Boston’s 18 and scored 22 fast-break points, while the Celtics finished with nine.
Part of Boston’s internal makeup that has made the Celtics one of the most dominant teams in the NBA this season is their ability to outwork opponents. Regardless of who’s healthy, they’ve been able to rely on their all-or-nothing commitment to make up for any star-power gap or unfavorable matchup. This time, that wasn’t the case, and Brown called it out.
“We weren’t the harder-playing team tonight on either side of the ball,” Brown said. “Uncharacteristic of us.”
In addition to getting outworked, key contributors to Boston’s offense became complete non-factors. Payton Pritchard went scoreless for the second time in three games, this time shooting 0-for-6, including 0-for-5 from three. Nikola Vučević scored only eight points, shooting 2-for-10 with only four rebounds. Everyone on Charlotte’s sideline whom Lee played registered a positive plus-minus, as the Hornets outscored the Celtics 44-26 in bench points.
“We just didn’t have it tonight,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said.
Failing to convert at the rim wasn’t just Brown’s problem; it plagued Boston’s entire offense.
“We went 4-for-18 from layups, so I don’t really know what else to tell you,” Mazzulla said. “That was in the first half. We went 11-for-33 in the game, and brought it up to 33 percent.”
As Mazzulla saw it, Boston’s misses constantly turned into fast-break opportunities for Charlotte, who capitalized on easy baskets. The Celtics committed 15 turnovers, which the Hornets converted into 21 points. Poor ball protection and the inability to finish at the rim quickly caught up to Boston. Charlotte had little trouble maintaining its double-digit lead, as the Celtics were unintentionally blueprinting their own undoing.
Nobody in the locker room was overly concerned with the loss. They were more focused on learning from their mistakes. That’s the Mazzulla way.
“I think we had a lot of good looks,” Derrick White said. “There’s a lot of layups we missed, a lot of open looks that we missed, and honestly, we’re gonna look back and see some things that we should’ve done better. But I think overall it was pretty good. We just gotta execute better.”
