For more than five of the last eight minutes, the Boston Celtics were held scoreless. Jayson Tatum tried to stop the bleeding with a layup off the glass, but missed and fell to the floor. On the other end, the Detroit Pistons rushed five-on-four, as former teammate Javonte Green drained a wide-open 3-pointer.
Tatum, unable to get back in time to contest Green’s three, admits the Celtics need to improve going forward.
“I think our communication has to be better,” Tatum told reporters after Boston’s
121-113 season-opening loss, per CLNS Media.
Tatum and the Celtics built a cozy 22-point lead as Detroit struggled mightily to muster up any offensive rhythm. Boston rode Paul George’s 38-point outburst and set themselves up for an easy victory line trot. But then the Pistons, eager to avoid embarrassment in front of their home crowd on Opening Night, made the Celtics pay for their plethora of miscues throughout the second half.
The same Boston defense that held Detroit to 45 points on 38.6 percent shooting in the first half allowed a 76-point second half.
The Pistons went on an unreal 23-0 run in the fourth quarter, completing their largest come-from-behind victory over the Celtics in the last 30 seasons, according to ESPN Insights. Detroit flipped the script, shooting 52.4 percent in the third and fourth quarters and knocking down 11 threes, fueled by Green’s five made 3-pointers amid his 19-point second half.
Too often, the Celtics paid the price for their inefficient offense. Detroit, meanwhile, turned Boston’s misses into quick scoring opportunities by pushing the pace in transition.
Time and again, the Celtics failed to get back quickly enough to contest.
“It probably started on defense,” Tatum said. “A couple of times we gave up the offensive rebound, they were scoring, we were fouling. That kind of slows the game down. Obviously, in the first half and early in the third, we were at our best when we were getting stops, and we were able to push the pace.”
Tatum, in particular, struggled to find his offensive spark in the second half, going 1-for-10 from the floor.
The Celtics still managed to give themselves one last fighting chance, as George’s seventh 3-pointer cut Detroit’s lead to six at 116-110 with 41 seconds left in regulation. But Boston couldn’t complete the comeback, suffering its first blown 20-point lead of the season.
“We did a lot of good things, and obviously there’s a lot of stuff that we gotta do better,” Derrick White told reporters, per CLNS Media. “So we just gotta continue to grow and learn and see what we did wrong, and we’ll be better at it.”
Boston suffered the consequences of a combination of woes. White hurled a Hail Mary fadeaway 3-pointer with 5:25 left, and George missed badly on a layup with 4:48 left, allowing Detroit to coast amid its game-changing run in the fourth.
The Celtics missed 10 consecutive shot attempts at one point.
“You get better shots, that definitely helps,” White said. “Crashing definitely helps. Transition defense. Those two things can kind of set your defense up to get matched up and be able to find their shooters. I think there was a couple of times we didn’t find their shooters and then they would miss and we didn’t get the rebound.”
Bad shot attempts plus an outnumbered defense in transition helped seal Boston’s fate faster than anyone could’ve anticipated.
“It’s kind of all those things that we gotta do better,” White added.
To kick off the season, the tale of two halves caught up to the Celtics. They weren’t the same team coming out of the tunnel after halftime as they were when they entered it with a 58-45 lead. Boston carried its preseason momentum into the regular season for the first two quarters of the opener before letting it slip away, putting itself in a position where it desperately needed to claw back for a chance at redemption in its final few possessions.
The loss gives the team plenty to review before returning home to host the New York Knicks on Friday night at TD Garden.
“We’ll go back and watch, and separate out of the 76 points which came from our offense and which came from our defense,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla told reporters, per CLNS Media. “Some of those things were a byproduct of our lack of offense in that third quarter. So we’ll separate the points of the 76: which ones came from our offense — we have to fix our offense to prevent some of those — and which ones came from our half-court defense.”
Perhaps it’s early-season rust or a new cast still figuring itself out. Regardless, letting a 20-point lead slip away against a Pistons offense that looked just as out of sorts as Boston did remains inexcusable.
