If there has been one thing that the Boston Celtics have done to themselves in the playoffs, it is that they never make it easy for themselves. That was the case again on Tuesday night at the TD Garden.
After splitting the first two games at home against the Philadelphia 76ers in their Eastern Conference first-round series, the Celtics went to Philadelphia and won both games. Coming home up 3-1, they had the opportunity to close out the 76ers and got some much-needed rest for the conference semifinals beginning over the weekend. Instead, in typical Celtics fashion, they failed to do so.
Philadelphia outscored them, 63-40, in the second half to send the series back to Philadelphia for Game 6 on Thursday night. It wasn’t so much that they lost, but how. After the game, head coach Joe Mazzulla had a blunt answer for what happened.
Boston Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla Drops Blunt Answer on Game 5 Loss to 76ers
What happened to the Celtics in the second half was rather stunning. Leading by 13 points at one point in the third quarter, Boston scored just 11 fourth-quarter points. That’s right, just 11 points over 12 minutes for the Eastern Conference’s second-seed. What happened?
“Just missed some shots,” said Mazzulla. “Thought we had some good looks but didn’t capitalize on them.”
Yeah, I’d say so. In the fourth quarter, the Celtics made just three of their 22 field goal attempts. In fact, they missed their last 16 attempts from the field. Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum combined to miss all eight of their shots. Boston made two of eight 3-point attempts. It was a quarter full of bricks. Let’s not mention the number of missed layups throughout the game.
The series heads back to Philadelphia, and the 76ers have life. What do the Celtics need to do on Thursday night that they didn’t do on Tuesday?
“We just didn’t execute and have to be able to bounce back from that,” said Mazzulla. “We’ll do the same things we always do.”
Boston Celtics Make Things More Difficult Than They Need to Be
Philadelphia got 33 points from Joel Embiid, and they knocked down 15 of their 42 3-point attempts, compared to Boston hitting just 11 of 39 attempts. It’s rare that an opponent hits more and takes more 3’s than the Celtics. Still, Philadelphia coach Nick Nurse thinks his team can be better.
“We’ve got to play better,” said Nurse. “We need to do the ‘effort’ side of things much better.”
The effort was there in Game 5, and because of that, there is a Game 6 on Thursday night. If there is one thing that can be said about the Boston Celtics, it’s that they will not stray from their plan of shooting 3-pointers. They live by the 3, they die by the 3.
However, they have made things more difficult for themselves than it needs to be. The last thing they want to do is come back home for a Game 7 on Saturday at the TD Garden. Philadelphia has already won two of the three games in the series so far in Boston. Things could get really difficult for the Celtics with a Game 6 loss. It didn’t need to come to this.
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