The Boston Celtics were not supposed to be in this position — especially not against the New York Knicks. Yet, here they are. Once again, the Celtics built a comfortable 20-point lead early in the game. Once again, they squandered it. For the second straight game, Knicks forward Mikal Bridges denied Boston the opportunity to get off a game-winning shot attempt after losing the lead in the final seconds.
New York went on a 38-17 run to close out a 91-90 victory in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals at TD Garden. The defending champions will now travel to Madison Square Garden facing a 2-0 series deficit. During his postgame press conference, Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla acknowledged the difficult path that lies ahead
"We have a challenge ahead of us, and we have a chance to go after it, and we don't really have a choice," Mazzulla told reporters. "Just gotta figure it out."
Here’s everything the Celtics coach said after the team’s second straight late-game collapse.
Joe Mazzulla explained his timeout decision and Celtics' collapse
When asked about what led to the two consecutive late-game collapses, Mazzulla attributed 60 percent of the blame to missing on open looks and 40 percent of the blame to live ball turnovers.
“I think we executed and got some really good looks that we missed,” Mazzulla said. “And then I thought we had some live ball turnovers, just making the wrong read. So I’d say it’s about 60/40 where — when we’ve got some open looks, we’ve got to make them. And then we got to do a better job executing, especially not having live ball turnovers.”
Before their final possession, Boston had one remaining timeout that could have been used to advance the ball and draw up a play. Instead, Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla decided not to call it. The rationale? Mazzulla wanted to attempt the same play the Celtics ran on their previous possession, when Jason Tatum drove the ball coast-to-coast and blew by the entire Knicks defense for an easy dunk. Unsurprisingly, the Knicks did not allow Tatum to get an easy path to the basket for a second straight possession.
"Had one [timeout] left, got a good look on the same exact play 20 seconds earlier, tried to execute the exact same thing," Mazzulla told reporters. "They did a better job of their lower pickup point and we weren't able to get the advantage that we had on the last Tatum dunk. Good full-court setting … had action there, just didn’t execute.”
The Celtics should have won both games easily, but nobody wearing green was been able to find the rim in either contest. After missing a historic number of 3-point attempts in Game 1, Boston passed up deep opportunities in an attempt to drive the ball into the paint in Game 2. The uncharacteristic style of play only led to more misses and the same end result.
“Throughout the end of that fourth quarter, I thought we generated some good looks,” Mazzulla said. “And then I thought we had some live ball turnovers and they took advantage of it. They made the necessary plays to win. We put ourselves in position to do that, we just didn’t make the plays.”
If Boston wants to survive their self-inflicted wound, they’ll have to begin putting the ball in the basket on open shots. Until they can do that, timeouts and savvy coaching decisions won’t be able to save them.