BOSTON — Throughout a slide that’s extended for nearly two weeks, the Celtics have given off a sense of optimism. After torching the NBA for the first six weeks of season, there seemed to be confidence that this was just a rough patch in a long season that has championship aspirations.
That may still be the case. But maybe Wednesday night represented the wake-up call they finally needed.
If back-to-back home losses to the upstart Magic weren’t enough, this should be. The Celtics had an extra day off and their first home practice in more than a month to focus on correcting their extended issues. Their star Jayson Tatum had a fresh reset. But still, the Celtics came out flat. After their worst half of the season, the Celtics stormed back with a furious second-half rally, but it fell short with a 117-112 loss to the Pacers at TD Garden.
The loss cemented the Celtics’ first three-game losing streak, and they’ve now lost six of their last seven games.
Tatum scored a game-high 41 points and led a strong comeback bid after the Celtics trailed by as many as 30 in the first half, when they heard boos from their fans after an awful effort. The Celtics came out strong in the second half as they trimmed their deficit to single digits on the back of Tatum, but the Pacers — led by Tyrese Haliburton’s 33 points on six 3-pointers — had every answer down the stretch.
Tatum scored 28 of his 41 points in the second half as the C’s used strong defense to bring the Garden back to life, which included a vicious jam over old friend Aaron Nesmith in the third quarter. The Celtics star almost looked angry as he looked to lead their second-half rally, It looked like they might pull it off as Jaylen Brown drilled a 3-pointer to cut their deficit to five with 3:06 to play. But the Pacers responded to restore their lead to double digits.
Tatum came back with a 6-0 run to cut it back to five with 18 seconds to go before Al Horford’s steal with 14 seconds left. Moments later, Tatum was fouled and seemed to make a potential four-point play opportunity as he drilled a 3. But the foul was ruled to happen on the floor, and the C’s didn’t score again and ultimately couldn’t overcome their woeful first half.
The Celtics actually got off to a good start, at least on the defensive end as the Pacers made just one of their first nine shots of the game, which forced Indiana coach Rick Carlisle to burn an early timeout.
After that? It was all Pacers.
The Pacers simply steamrolled the Celtics for the rest of the first half. The Celtics’ offensive woes continued, and though that hadn’t negatively impacted their defense over recent games, they couldn’t stop the Pacers. After their 1-for-9 start, the Celtics allowed the visitors to make 14 of their next 16 shots — which included a 28-5 run at one point — in a stunning turnaround as they fell behind by 20 after the opening period.
It didn’t get any better in the second quarter — in fact, the Celtics’ struggles soared to embarrassing levels, enough for them to hear it from their home crowd for the first time this season. Their shots wouldn’t fall, and their laziness mounted with turnovers, bad defense and a lack of effort on the glass. When Nesmith found himself wide open down the baseline for an easy dunk to put the Pacers up 25, boos started raining down on the Celtics.
About a minute later, as the Celtics’ deficit increased to 29 — forcing Joe Mazzulla to call a timeout — the boos grew even louder.
The timeouts didn’t seem to matter, though. The Celtics’ deficit grew to as large as 30, and even as Rob Williams threw down a buzzer-beating dunk before halftime, the boos followed them as they walked down the tunnel to the locker room.
