POST GAME MIAMI HEAT - AWAY

Celtics Wrap: Winning Streak Halted At Four With 115-99 Loss To Heat

NESN by Logan Mullen on Thu, Jan 10, 2019 at 9:20PM

The Celtics appear to have left their winning ways in Boston.

After stringing together a four-game win streak during a a four-game homestand, the Celtics traveled to Miami and fell to the Heat 115-99 on Thursday at AmericanAirlines Arena.

The Celtics trailed by as many as 26 during the third period, but mounted a comeback to cut the deficit down to as few as eight. They were unable to get it any closer in the fourth, and suffered the loss as a result.

Kyrie Irving led the Celtics with 22 points. Marcus Smart (18 points), Jayson Tatum (17) and Marcus Morris (17) also tallied double figures for Boston. Dwyane Wade had 19 points and was one of six Heat in double figures.

With the loss, the Celtics fall to 25-16, while the Heat climb to 20-20 with the win.

Here’s how it all went down.

STARTING FIVE
PG: Kyrie Irving
SG: Marcus Smart
SF: Jayson Tatum
PF: Marcus Morris Sr.
C: Al Horford

NARROW FIRST
Both teams got off to a hot start offensively but flamed out in the final stages of the frame, with the Heat leading 28-24 after 12 minutes.

Neither team was afraid to shoot out of the gate, as both teams opened up the first seven minutes by shooting 7-for-13 from the field. Because of the efficient shooting, neither side was able to get much separation. The first stanza featured three ties and seven lead changes, and neither team posted a lead bigger than four.

Irving led all players with 11 points in the first.

LATE PUSH FROM MIAMI
Things remained mostly narrow during the second quarter, but the Heat caught fire down the stretch to outscore the C’s 33-19 in the period and go into the half ahead 61-43.

With just under three minutes to play and the Celtics trailing by five, the Heat used a 15-2 run to end the quarter on a high note. Derrick Jones Jr. put the exclamation point on the run by hitting a 41-foot buzzer-beater near center court to up the advantage to 18 entering the break.

Jones led all players with nine second-quarter points, while Irving paced both teams with 17 in the half.

C’S FIGHT BACK
After an underwhelming end to the first half, the Celtics didn’t exactly come storming out of the gate in the third quarter. But that changed in a big way, with the visitor’s outscoring the Heat 29-22 in the frame to trail just 83-72 entering the fourth.

Things began heading further south for the Celtics out of the chute, with the Heat using an 11-3 run over the first 4:14 of the third to swell their lead to 26. Boston didn’t just lay down, however, responding with a 16-0 run to get the deficit cut to 10 by the 3:56 mark. After the hectic 8-plus minutes, Miami’s lead hovered around 10 the rest of the frame.

Smart led the way with nine third-quarter points.

HEAT PREVENT COMEBACK
Although they had a bit of a scare in the third quarter, the Heat didn’t allow the Celtics to make things too interesting in the fourth, outscoring them XX-XX to secure the victory.

With the momentum mostly on the Celtics’ side entering the fourth, Miami used a 12-4 run over the first 2:56 of the fourth to build their cushion back up to 19. The Celtics put together a quick 8-0 run over 1:08 to get the deficit down to 13 with 3:35 left in the game, but they couldn’t get any closerthe rest of the way.

PLAY OF THE GAME
Casual floater from the free throw line.

UP NEXT
The Celtics will remain in the Sunshine State for at tilt with the Orlando Magic on Saturday. Tip-off from Amway Center is set for 7 p.m. ET.

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Al Horford did his best to lose the game singlehandedly, but Brad deserves credit too for keeping him in there. Brad almost blew the sure loss by putting Rob Williams in, but Stevens regained his senses just in the nick of time and put Al back in when Miami most needed his errant shot making and porous defense.

The name across the front of their jersey said Boston but I have no idea who those guys were.  I saw them play last night and that was not the same team.  A lot of empty milk cartons out there with a have you seen me message.

It was just one game just one loss but the more we have to say that the more losses pile up.  A nick here and a nick there and all forms of life have left the body.  By the end of the sesson we may be viewing a a corpse.  

The Celtics are an arrogant bunch.  There is no substitute for playing the game the right way.  There is only one Kyrie Irving on this team and a bunch of guys obsessed with ISO basketball.  Me first ISO basketball.  Matador defense and fear of playing in the paint.

Did you see big Al Horford out there tonight?  Neither did I.  You never know if he can or will show up.  One thing seems evident he has more bad games than good ones.  He's freakin done!  Stick a fork in him or get him so help.  You cannot win with an undersized over the hill center.  Smart, Morris, Tatum and Irving were less than great but they still played hard.  Al sucked.

Williams actually impacted the game during a nice 6 minute stretch.  If I was Brad I would make a concerted effort to get him in the rotation.  But it probably will not happen.  Brad thinks having a roster full of 3 and D guys will do the trick.  But basketball is so much more than spacing the floor.  You have to defend in the paint and you have to rebound.

The Celtics managed to make it to the ECF 2 years in a row.  So quite naturally fans think we are almost there but I have to wonder about something.  If they had to play Toronto in the playoffs the past two seasons would they have made it that far?

That question may be answered this year unless we get knocked out early.  Miami could kill us like they did tonight.

worcester wrote:Al Horford did his best to lose the game singlehandedly, but Brad deserves  credit too for keeping him in there.  Brad almost blew the sure loss by putting Rob Williams in, but Stevens regained his senses just in the nick of time and put Al back in when Miami most needed his errant shot making and porous defense.

Lmao

Williams definitely improved our team when he was out there tonight. The Heat were definitely intimidated by him, and he significantly altered their offense, while certainly contributing more on our offensive end than Al did. Perhaps it was the B2B for Al. Note to Brad.Do not play Al much on back to back games or when social security checks get delivered.

Question to Gordon - which Heat player were you afraid would mess up your hair tonight? You are allowed to shoot the ball, you know. It is probably even in your contract.

Jaylen. I KNOW IT COMES AS A SHOCK, but Smart plays better, more consistent D than you and somehow even shoots a better 3 ball. He deserves to start. Get over it, and play as well as you can when you are on the floor. You would hate New Orleans if traded there. Way too muggy. Make yourself indispensable. Boston offers you a chance to learn how to ski. Just ask Jim Lonborg.

Here is the game flow:

You can't beat a good team with a real center when you don't have, or won't play, a real center. I think Brad is intimidated by the roster Danny gave him. He doesn't have the balls to sit overpaid veterans and allow Williams to play. The most disappointing part of this season for me is coming to that realization, but there are rival let-downs. For one, the team plays better ball without its best player. I think that comes back to the roster, too. When you're on the court and you know the teams needs you, you play your tail off. When there are seven other "wings" available, you may coast. Players are pissed. If we can see the problem from our recliners, they know it intimately. It's more like politics than sport. Horford is a crafty one. He has some gas left in the tank, but he's not going to burn it (except occasionally) until the playoffs. And he's not going to play center. Hawk

Hard to put into words.  dboss says it best.  A bunch of nicks here and there and you
may be looking at a corpse at the end of the season.  

5th place is ours until I see a change in what happened last night on a B2B or the teams above us catch up to us on the injury bug or we beat the teams we should beat and match the top teams in the league.  We just seem to love to shoot ourselves in the foot time after time in these rare situations.  The teams above us do give us opportunities to move up in the standings from time to time.  Last night was one of those to get us within a 1/2 game of PHI on the win side.  They haven't been and won't be handing those chances out like candy over the season.  Opportunity lost.    

I don't know what else to say. Starting to beat a dead horse.

db

dboss wrote:The name across the front of their jersey said Boston but I have no idea who those guys were.  I saw them play last night and that was not the same team.  A lot of empty milk cartons out there with a have you seen me message.

It was just one game just one loss but the more we have to say that the more losses pile up.  A nick here and a nick there and all forms of life have left the body.  By the end of the sesson we may be viewing a a corpse.  

The Celtics are an arrogant bunch.  There is no substitute for playing the game the right way.  There is only one Kyrie Irving on this team and a bunch of guys obsessed with ISO basketball.  Me first ISO basketball.  Matador defense and fear of playing in the paint.

Did you see big Al Horford out there tonight?  Neither did I.  You never know if he can or will show up.  One thing seems evident he has more bad games than good ones.  He's freakin done!  Stick a fork in him or get him so help.  You cannot win with an undersized over the hill center.  Smart, Morris, Tatum and Irving were less than great but they still played hard.  Al sucked.

Williams actually impacted the game during a nice 6 minute stretch.  If I was Brad I would make a concerted effort to get him in the rotation.  But it probably will not happen.  Brad thinks having a roster full of 3 and D guys will do the trick.  But basketball is so much more than spacing the floor.  You have to defend in the paint and you have to rebound.

The Celtics managed to make it to the ECF 2 years in a row.  So quite naturally fans think we are almost there but I have to wonder about something.  If they had to play Toronto in the playoffs the past two seasons would they have made it that far?

That question may be answered this year unless we get knocked out early.  Miami could kill us like they did tonight.

I don’t see Al coming back after his contract is up, unless it’s a huge discount....

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We played like an old team on the 2nd game of a b2b.  What makes that embarrassing is that we're not an old team, we're the 12th youngest.

They shot 46% from 3.  It seemed to me that a lot of those shots were contested, they just hit them anyway.  Josh Richardson was 4-8, he's 37.8% on the season from 3.  Winslow was 2-4, he's 35% on the season.  He hit one from straightaway 25', he was that confident.  So a couple of their players were having a good night.  I'm not sure how much more we could have done, to be honest, they were just on.

The real problem that I saw, for the starters, was that Hassan Whiteside was able to get position under the boards and get easy rebounds.  Nobody put a body on him because Al Horford forgot to get on the plane in Boston.  The worst game by Al that I've seen in a while.

We started off hot and then went icy cold.  Morris had a good game, Kyrie too.  Smart started off weak but then hit a couple of trifectas.  He ended up 5-10 on the night and 4-8 from 3.  Imagine that, Marcus Smart shooting 5-10 on the night and 50% from 3.  Now imagine if we let him go, rather than re-sign him, because we got frustrated because he's a "non-shooter".  He is now up to 35% from 3 on the year, and that's quite acceptable.  He also had a monster rejection of Bam Adebayo at the rim.  That was a monster slam dunk by Adebayo until Smart got right up there with him and blocked it.  The HEAT fans were also treated to a Marcus Smart kip up.

The game started to turn around for us when Brad put Williams in.  He needs to do that more, the kid is playing well.  The dilemma for Brad is that Horford is Horford and Theis is playing well too.  Last night, though, it should have been obvious early on that Al hadn't brung it and that Williams should have been put in against the Miami length of Adebayo and Whiteside.  In Brad I Trust, but I don't agree with his not going stronger with a player that clearly changed our energy level and got us playing harder.  We were sleep walking until The Time Lord came in and slowed the clock down so we could make a run.

Horford and Tatum were a combined 5-19, 26%.  The rest of the starters were 22-42, 52%.  We know Al sucked, but Tatum was not that much better.

The bench was a combined 9-28, 32%.  Wanamaker and Yabby played the final 3 minutes and were 2-3 (Yabby 2-2).  So the bench, not including those final garbage time scores, were a combined 27%.  Rozier, in particular, was 1-8.  The HEAT bench was 25-47, 53%.  23 points (including Yabby's unimpactful 5) vs 60 for the HEAT bench.  The HEAT bench score more than 50% of their points.  They had 3 players in double digits, same as the starters, and two more players with 8.  Their bench croaked us.

To be honest, when you shoot 40% and a pedestrian 35% from 3, and they shoot 48% and 46% from 3 AND they get 96 fgas we're lucky we only lost by 16.  It should have been 30.

http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401071293




bob


.

I am not sure that any one player can be blamed for such a poor team performance even if some players did not play to their utmost capabilities last night. Good teams pick up their teammate when he has a poor performance.

I am much more concerned that the Cs seem to continue to show such wide varieties of inconsistency of effort that most good teams just don't seem show.

In the past few years much of the up and down was pretty much due to a lack of first line talent in both the starting and the bench units. This year there seem to be plenty of talent in both groups, but the ups (four very solid home wins in the last week) are still followed by stinkers (last night in Miami). This is not to say that good teams have to win every game, but more to say that the continued up and down type of effort shown this year is very concerning.

Terry is too inconsistent to resign for big bucks. Jaylen has another year to prove his worth. or he would be at risk of being traded too.

Terry’s defense has really slipped this year.

That's the trouble with reading press clippings.

Too many minus points from last night for me to pile it on, and others have already mapped it out fairly.

It's getting to be a frequently discussed topic, but I think we're seeing the end of Horford and the future of the center spot in Williams. Last night's game was simply another page turned in that book.

No knock on Horford. He's had a fantastic career and still has some value. It's just the natural progression of age and injury. Couple that with the fact that Williams may be emerging as a special talent, and one of the steals from last years draft, and you might be able to predict where this is going.

Stevens has earned his reputation and standing as a thinking man's coach to this point. Just as he eventually saw the lineup was stronger and better balanced with Smart and Morris in the first five, I expect he'll see a need to increase minutes for Williams significantly.

As for Rozier, and I'll throw Brown into this category as well, I think he simply needs more minutes in order to get and stay in the rhythm and flow of the game. I suspect if either had the opportunity, they would produce what they did last year. The problem, of course, is you can't give seven players starters minutes.

Bob you mentioned a factor that cannot be overlooked.  The Heat have not been a top 3 point shooting team but they are not chopped liver either at .355%  They were making them even when our guys were challenging their shots.  

But that was just one factor in this game.  They killed Boston on the glass, in the paint and won the fast break battle.  If the Pacers game was a video of a new  beautiful housing development, the Heat game was a Frontline special on the devastating impact of warfare on infrastructure.

The Celtics went into this game with a 'look how good we are attitude'.  They were riding the wave of exhilaration following the Indiana win.  Unfortunately the tide was out and the wave was gone.

Consistency is what is lacking most on this team.  If Boston losses a hard fought game there is no good reason to find fault with their effort.

NYCelt,

With that said, do you think Danny will do anything before trade deadline?

db

dbrown4 wrote:NYCelt,

With that said, do you think Danny will do anything before trade deadline?

db

I said this before I’ll say it again, if we keep Morris long term over either of 2 J’s will be a colossal mistake....

cowens/oldschool,

Agreed. Danny typically doesn't make those during his tenure.

db

dbrown4 wrote:NYCelt,

With that said, do you think Danny will do anything before trade deadline?

db

I can see a move to bring in another big. Not something major though. A deal involving a reserve or two and a pick or two for someone who can maybe come in and board.

After the season, of course, whole different story. If the team fails to at least reach the Eastern finals, a deal to bring in at least a mid-tier type big and swap out a wing or two for reserves better suited to coming off the bench wouldn't be much of a surprise, in my opinion anyway. If Ainge were to go hunting big game, I would think Brown, Rozier, at least one first round pick in '19 or '20, and perhaps even Hayward if there's a market, could be on the table.

Caveat: If Kyrie departs, different picture and Rozier stays.

NYCelt wrote:

dbrown4 wrote:NYCelt,

With that said, do you think Danny will do anything before trade deadline?

db

I can see a move to bring in another big. Not something major though. A deal involving a reserve or two and a pick or two for someone who can maybe come in and board.

After the season, of course, whole different story. If the team fails to at least reach the Eastern finals, a deal to bring in at least a mid-tier type big and swap out a wing or two for reserves better suited to coming off the bench wouldn't be much of a surprise, in my opinion anyway. If Ainge were to go hunting big game, I would think Brown, Rozier, at least one first round pick in '19 or '20, and perhaps even Hayward if there's a market, could be on the table.

Caveat: If Kyrie departs, different picture and Rozier stays.

Interesting that the Celtics are bringing back RJ after also getting Dozier earlier.

The Phone are probably ringing off the hook.

if I was the GM everyone would want me sacked.

I would do my best to trade Morris and Terry Rozier right now. I would go after Dwayne Dedmon $6.3 million and Vince Carter that comes out to about $8.6 coming in and $8.6 going out. My reasoning for the trade is based on Terry and Morris becoming unaffordable free agents after the season which means we lose them for nothing and a need to sure up our center position with a veteran center. Plus a charity opportunity for Vince to go to the playoffs with maybe one more chance at a ring. Both Vince and Dedmon are FA's so there is really no long term risk. Then during FA I would pursue Anthony Davis and be willing to part with players and draft picks to make that happen. If I could not make a deal for Davis i would try to get Dedmon for 2 years and then package some of those picks to upgrade the 1 and 4 spots on the roster.

This entire scenario contemplates that the Boston Celtics may not have the right mix of talent to win the title this year but there remains an open window if you can acquire a veteran center who can defend and rebound and score some for you. With Terry gone, Marcus Smart will get more minutes at Pg and less at SG. Jaylen will get his SG minutes up. Tatum, Hayward, Theis and Semi and Yabu will fill the 4 as backups. Hordford will move to PF and Desmond will be the starting center. Baynes will be our big Physical option, Theis can be our small ball guy and Williams can develop behind Desmond in the same type of profile that he brings.

new starting 5 Irving, Smart, Tatum. Horford and Desmond

rotation with Brown, Hayward, Baynes, Theis, Semi, Carter, Wannamaker and Yabusele.

We allow the 5th most points in the paint and it was clear to see last night. Williams goes after shots and I have no doubt he would do a lot better job of putting a end to driving layups. I know he will make mistakes but I can live with them unless its just obvious he is costing us more than he is giving us.

I have seen many games that I don't think he could have been any worse protecting the rim than what we had in there. He gets a lot of lobs for baskets and he would get more with more time. Players like him in the league now, Gobert, Capella, Jordan, etc. I think he could end up being better than all of them, he does have a shot. He has to get the time, NOW.

"Horford and Tatum were a combined 5-19, 26%. The rest of the starters were 22-42, 52%. We know Al sucked, but Tatum was not that much better."

Bob,
I know I am a Tatum homer, but Tatum scored 17 points to Al's 2. I would say that is much better. To me when you score more points than you take shots you have been productive even if the percentage was close to 40% He was basically the only one taking the ball to the rim. I personally would like he to keep doing it until he gets better at it. I would also like to see him get more assists. Now that I can get on board with.

Dboss, much as I like Morris this year, your trade logic makes sense to me.