POST GAME CHARLOTTE HORNETS - HOME

Boston Celtics
Charlotte Hornets
Celtics Wrap: Boston Win Streak Snaps At Hands Of Red-Hot Hornets
The Hornets were too much for Boston on Wednesday


NESN by Patrick McAvoy

The Boston Celtics’ brief winning streak snapped Wednesday as they welcomed the red-hot Charlotte Hornets to TD Garden and fell 111-102.

Entering Wednesday’s tilt the Celtics had won two straight games and and five of their last six. The Hornets also entered the showdown winners of five of their last six.

With the loss the Celtics’ record fell to 23-23, while the Hornets improved to 25-20 with the win.

ONE KEY TAKEAWAY
The Celtics started strong Wednesday, but pretty much fizzled out the rest of the game. Boston held a two-point lead at the end of the first quarter and then fell flat in the second and entered halftime trailing by eight points.

Boston never could get over the hump from there and while it kept it close, Charlotte was just too much. Miles Bridges and former Celtics guard Terry Rozier led the way for the Hornets as they combined for 50 points.

Kelly Oubre returned to the court after a bout with COVID-19 and didn’t look like he missed a beat, finishing the night with 18 points. The Celtics were able to contain Gordon Hayward and LaMelo Ball, but the Hornets’ balanced attack was too much for the shorthanded Celtics.

STARS OF THE GAME
— Jaylen Brown was the best player on the court for the Celtics in their loss to Charlotte, finishing the night with 21 points, six rebounds and six assists.

— Dennis Schröder looked impressive despite the loss and took advantage of his extended time in the starting lineup with Marcus Smart out. Schröder finished the night with 24 points, seven rebounds and five assists.

— Rozier and Bridges were the stars of the game. The Hornets duo helped squash each of Boston’s runs throughout the contest and were too much to handle.


UP NEXT
The Celtics return to the court Friday as they welcome the Portland Trailblazers to TD Garden with tip-off scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET.

112288

Something is not right with Tatum, have we ever seen him play so bad? They gave him 3 turnovers, but it was easily double that, he got stripped, they blocked his shot, then they gave him open 3’s like Rondo. Why is he always on the bike when he’s not playing? He wasn’t doing that previous years, something is wrong, he’s down to 31% from 3, Marcus Smart like numbers. Young players are going right at him on defense too many times. He was arguing openly with GWill after one of many bad plays. His body language got worse and worse as the game went on.

cowens/oldschool wrote:Something is not right with Tatum, have we ever seen him play so bad? They gave him 3 turnovers, but it was easily double that, he got stripped, they blocked his shot, then they gave him open 3’s like Rondo. Why is he always on the bike when he’s not playing? He wasn’t doing that previous years, something is wrong, he’s down to 31% from 3, Marcus Smart like numbers. Young players are going right at him on defense too many times. He was arguing openly with GWill after one of many bad plays. His body language got worse and worse as the game went on.

Not only is his always on the bike but he is no longer peddling. There are times that he is just- sitting on the bike. Weird. If he insists on sitting on the bike than put the damn bike behind the bench so he can be with his teammates or better yet, if he ain’t peddling he needs to have his lanky ass on the bench with the rest of the team. Weird.

Maybe I’m making something out of nothing but I also thought it was weird and slightly inappropriate when his Mom and son were holding up a hand made poster saying please send my dad to the all star game (something to that effect).
Priorities? Or am i just tripping?

Well, at least we started better! Consistently inconsistent.

I'm trying to figure out where we are on the mountain. Not being able to overcome a deficit is not as bad and destructive to moral as blowing big leads and losing.

I'm pretty sure we are passed the halfway point. I'm just not sure how much further passed it we are. Let's go with 5/8th or 9/16th of the way up. It's these consistently inconsistent performances that are tying us to mediocrity and killing us momentum-wise. I haven't seen that change all season.

We assisted like crazy. Close to 70%. Can't complain about that. 14 TO's again. Can complain about that. Eleven is the magic number. Menace showed up and approached 3D range. Nice. Dang, I wish he wasn't such a tweener/catch-all at this point!! He shouldn't be coming off the bench. He made that clear in LA.

I was blacked out of game here in NC. Where is everybody?! MS, RWIII? WTH!!

db

J’s shooting or lack of shooting 3 ball doomed us….bottom line

47.5/43.4
45.0/37.3
45.0/40.3
45.9/38.6
41.5/31.7

It's official.  Jayson Tatum is not in a shooting slump.  He is in fact having his worst year shooting the ball as a pro.  I thought he was trending to the positive but I was wrong.  The hard part is that we are not loaded with quality shooters so when he or Jaylen cannot knock down open 3 pointers it really impacts winning.  Last night however, our supporting cast shot well from deep but still not good enough to offset the performance of our stars.

Overall, the team has not shot the ball well all season and they cannot win shooting 33.8% from behind the arc. (season total)

Last night's game was a winnable game but we stopped defending well on the perimeter with Terry, Oubre and Ball all killing us down the stretch.  Our offense sucked because we did not take advantage of being in the bonus 8 minutes or so into the 4th.  All we saw was a bunch of jump shots.  30.4% from deep on, gulp ..46 attempts.  We took more 3 points shots than 2 pointers and in so doing squandered any chance at winning this game.  JT and JB were a combined 2-18.

The rest of the guys went 12-28, a very respectable 42.8% from deep.

I still think we need to change our starting lineup.  Freedom is not a good rotation center.  Rob did not play last night so Freedom logged 19 minutes.  He's freakin dreadful.

Again, I would have Al come off the bench and go with a quicker lineup by putting Richardson in there.  It is unfathomable that you have an average team and you still have not taken a look at a lineup with Richardson as a starter.  If you can give Nesmith a start and Romeo 5 starts where is the logic in giving Josh the nod.  He is much better than both of those players.  Obviously the team needs to inject something new into the mix and as a fan I just do not understand Ime logic on that particular lineup.

cowens/oldschool wrote:J’s shooting or lack of shooting 3 ball doomed us….bottom line

True.

The Celtics go the way the two Js go. For the rest of this season, at least.

cowens/oldschool wrote:Something is not right with Tatum, have we ever seen him play so bad? They gave him 3 turnovers, but it was easily double that, he got stripped, they blocked his shot, then they gave him open 3’s like Rondo. Why is he always on the bike when he’s not playing? He wasn’t doing that previous years, something is wrong, he’s down to 31% from 3, Marcus Smart like numbers. Young players are going right at him on defense too many times. He was arguing openly with GWill after one of many bad plays. His body language got worse and worse as the game went on.

Celtics Pride.
My personal definition, including some terms from the posts above is; unselfish team oriented play, consistency, "swagger", a constant motor, intelligent role playing, and good decision making in crunch time to name a few. Over 75 years this team has been blessed with many major and minor players who exemplified this.

IMHO players in the current roster who exemplify Celtics Pride are:
Marcus Smart, Robert Williams, Grant Williams, Al Horford, and Josh Richardson. Each of these has room for improvement. Marcus especially on what his role is on this team.

Players on the cusp of Celtics Pride are:
Romeo Langford, Denis Schröder, Payton Pritchard and Aaron Nesmith (if he ever gets enough playtime). I've also seen  sparks of it in Bruno's brief minutes. One of the regular contributors mentioned playing Bruno more for the rest of season, sorry i couldn't find the post to quote it, but I agree. Thanks to you all for your love of the Cs as shown by your constant work on this board.

The two Js should be the at the top of the list. IMHO they are not. They are both blessed with incredible skills. I still have hope Brad can fix this, but I really don't have a clue how. Hard to watch for me.