Losers of four of their last five games (and nearly the fifth), the Boston Celtics are reeling after their second loss in three days to the Orlando Magic. Fans are irked with an unexplained absence of star forward Jayson Tatum that interim Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla will only describe as “a personal thing via CLNS Media,” but a contending team should be able to play well enough to defeat a team with among the worst records in the league.
Disorganized and unengaged play from the top to the bottom of the roster is the primary culprit with perhaps a dash of an unfavorable matchup given Orlando’s size.
But postgame, Mazzulla related that he believed a game that saw Boston launch well over half their shots from 3-point range on a night the team was connecting on just 23.9% of them was “a great game for the majority” of the contest.
Magic at Celtics: Boston falls flat to Orlando in Jayson Tatum’s absence, lose 95-92 https://t.co/DI9uDi6yJS
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) December 18, 2022
“I like the shots that we got,” he explained. “You don’t adjust your approach.” On paper, the math that Mazzulla so loves for how it unlocked a historically good offense makes sense.
But on nights when the team can’t buy a jumper, finding ways to work in easy buckets and trips to the line will be critical if this team wants to be more of a lion and less than an (on) paper tiger.
It may be a shared responsibility among the players to play the right way, but having a Plan A and evidently nothing else is already proving to be a minor disaster.
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