BOSTON — Two days before the Boston Celtics’ second-round series opener, Joe Mazzulla explained why he leans on history to help his team handle certain situations. He didn’t yet know the frustration coming in a 108-105 overtime Game 1 loss to the New York Knicks, but Mazzulla had studied the past enough to realize the Celtics could soon encounter trouble.
“That just maintains a high level of perspective,” Mazzulla said. “You could easily sit there and think what’s going on right now is the most important thing and the end of the world and no one’s ever been down 1-0, no one’s ever been down, and then you go back and look at it and it happens all the time.”
How is that for foreshadowing? After building a 20-point second-half lead in Game 1, the Celtics scored just 30 points over the final 22:47, including overtime. They attempted an NBA playoff record 60 3-point attempts, but only sank 15 of them (25 percent). Overall, they shot just 35.1 percent from the field, the second-lowest mark of the Mazzulla era, including both the regular season and the playoffs, despite facing an opponent that ranked 13th in defensive efficiency throughout the regular season.
Following one of the most comfortable paths to a championship in recent memory last season, the Celtics are face-to-face with the uncomfortable again. For the first time since acquiring Kristaps Porziņģis and Jrue Holiday in the summer of 2023, Mazzulla’s team owns a series deficit. He expected such turbulence at some point. He wanted his team to expect it too — and to be prepared for it when it comes.
“It takes what it takes,” Derrick White said of Mazzulla’s message. “There’s (nothing) set in stone — one way (or) one path — that it’s going to go. And we don’t get to really decide. So it takes what it takes. Obviously, we lost Game 1 and we’ve gotta bounce back.”
Realistically, the Celtics understood they wouldn’t likely have another stress-free playoff run. Privately, Mazzulla has preached to his players that not all marches to a championship go as smoothly as theirs did last season. With the added difficulties of pursuing a repeat, which no team has accomplished since 2018, Mazzulla braced for the challenges to come. Before the second round started, he said looking at history has helped him do it.
“It gives you a great long-term perspective, especially looking at some of the greats, whether it’s the great players, great teams, great coaches — everybody goes through stuff,” Mazzulla said. “And it’s easy to say you’re grateful for going through it after you go through it. No one’s ever grateful for it when you’re going through it because of the horse with blinders and thinking it’s the worst thing ever. There’s been great teams that have gone down, great teams that have blown leads, kept leads, all that stuff just kind of goes into the nature of the competitive arena that you’re in, and you have to take the good with the bad if you plan on being in it for a good amount of time. So studying that gives you the perspective you need to get to where you want to get to.”
A look around at the current playoffs could provide some similar perspective. The NBA’s two other 60-win teams, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, also dropped their second-round openers. The Celtics were charmed last season, but even for most great teams, the playoffs bring severe emotional swings.
That perspective will be needed now. After struggling to generate 3-point looks against the Orlando Magic in the first round, the Celtics players believed they took too many on Monday. Jayson Tatum, who shot 4-of-15 from deep, said he settled too often at times. Jaylen Brown, who missed nine of his 10 3-point attempts, thought his team should have ditched some of the long balls after the Knicks started charging back in the second half. Thirty-four of the Celtics’ 41 field-goal attempts after halftime came from behind the arc.
“In those moments when other teams got momentum, we can’t just fire up 3s to break up momentum,” Brown said. “You got to get to the free-throw line, get to the paint, get to the basket, maybe get an easy 2. Get some free throws, and then maybe the next 3-pointer feels a little bit better. I feel like we just settled in the second half a lot, but we’ll look at it and we’ll make adjustments.”
Anything close to a normal shooting night would have given the Celtics an early series lead, but they finished with their sixth-worst 3-point percentage of the season instead. Though Tatum didn’t specify which plays he thought he settled on, he might have meant two of his shots in the final minute of regulation. After hunting matchups the Celtics wanted, he twice missed off-the-dribble 3-pointers — first with Jalen Brunson defending him on a switch and then with Mitchell Robinson doing the same.
“I like a lot of the looks I took tonight,” said Tatum. “Certain ones I settled. Just, I gotta be better in some of those moments. Just be a little bit more intentional.”
Mazzulla was more charitable when asked about the Celtics’ shot selection. Though he said they probably had eight-to-10 shots they could have chosen more wisely, he thought their offensive process was typically sound.
“To me, I look at the process and the shot quality,” Mazzulla said. “So our shot quality was high. The points in the paint were even. We shot one more layup than they did. We shot 10 non-paint 2s. They shot much more than that. So you have to take a look at the process of what we’re trying to accomplish, and we were able to accomplish good results for the most part.”
By good results, Mazzulla meant shots he liked Boston taking — not necessarily shots that went in. The Celtics could have used at least one more 3-point try. Down three in the final seconds of overtime, they failed to produce a tying attempt. Following a foul-to-give by Karl-Anthony Towns with three seconds left, Mikal Bridges stripped Brown on the ensuing inbounds play.
“Plenty enough (time) to get a good look at the rim,” Brown said. “I wasn’t able to get that. So, yeah, that was it.”
“It was tough (in that situation),” added White, the inbounder on the play. “Especially we knew they were going to foul and we didn’t have any more timeouts. So you have to try to get separation and go up quick. So just trying to read it, and it was unfortunate it didn’t work out.”
Mazzulla had been prepared for some adversity against the Knicks (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
The Celtics had other regrets.
“I think we left some of their good shooters open,” Mazzulla said. “I think (OG) Anunoby (who scored 29 points) went on a small run by himself. So some personnel stuff, they were able to get out and transition off of some of our misses, and then I think they had a 5-0 run off of offensive rebounds. So detail stuff that we have to be able to be better at. And if you look at that run, I thought we missed some good ones. And I thought there was obviously a few (shots) that we could fight to get better at.”
While in conversation with assistant coach Matt Reynolds after the game, White stretched up to grab an imaginary rebound. He was clearly thinking back to a play late in the fourth quarter. After Tatum missed a go-ahead jump shot in the final seconds of regulation, White tried to grab the loose ball with both hands, but it squirted out of his grasp and fell into the possession of Deuce McBride. In the reenactment of the play, White extended his right arm by itself — a small tweak — to pull down the invisible ball hanging in the air. He wouldn’t have needed to reach much higher than he did on the court. An extra two or three inches would have given his team another shot to escape in the final seconds of regulation.
“Just on a 50-50 play, I wish I came down with it, obviously,” White said. “But, yeah, just going up there, trying to make a play.”
One more play in regulation would have been enough for the Celtics. They were that close to feeling a lot differently about Game 1. Instead, they lost home-court advantage and left themselves in a series hole. They also now have two new ailments to deal with in an illness for Porziņģis, which sidelined him for the second half of the series opener, and a sprained right ankle for Sam Hauser, which he suffered in the second half.
The playoffs are unpredictable. They can lurch in different directions. The Celtics expect this to be hard.
“You can just look at all the champions,” White said. “It’s not one path. So every series is different, every year’s different. Whatever the series takes, whatever the game takes, you’ve gotta be able to do it.”
(Photo of Jayson Tatum and Mikal Bridges: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)