Jaylen Brown wants Celtics to move the ball more: 5 things we learned from Boston’s loss to the Pelicans

https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2021/02/jaylen-brown-wants-celtics-to-move-the-ball-more-5-things-we-learned-from-bostons-loss-to-the-pelicans.html



Jaylen Brown wants Celtics to move the ball more: 5 things we learned from Boston’s loss to the Pelicans



Updated 6:00 AM; Today 6:00 AM




Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown (7) shoots against New Orleans Pelicans forward Brandon Ingram (14) in the second half of an NBA basketball game in New Orleans, Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)AP


By Brian Robb | brobb@masslive.com



A rollercoaster ride of a Celtics season hit a new low on Sunday after the team blew a 24-point lead in the final 18 minutes of regulation en route to a 120-115 overtime loss to the New Orleans Pelicans.

There was plenty of soul searching after the defeat to get a sense of how exactly the Celtics let such a big lead get away from them so quickly.

“I think naturally when you get up like that,” Jayson Tatum explained, “You get more casual and you’re playing not to not to lose instead of playing to win, instead of being in attack mode and doing all that got you that lead. You kind of plan not to mess up and then that’s when you do, when you overthink it. So you got to just gotta play.”

While we already took a look at the fourth quarter woes that led to Boston’s late-game struggles, let’s dive into five other things we learned from the defeat.

Jaylen Brown is looking for his teammates more consistently: Court vision has been one area where Jaylen Brown has shown plenty of growth this season. However, the onus on the swingman has grown in that area during the past month with one of the team’s top distributors in Marcus Smart sidelined with a calf injury. Brown’s declining assist numbers cratered during a recent ugly slide for Boston in which he tallied zero assists during three of four games last week (all losses). Since then? Brown has made it a bigger priority to look for his teammates more.

Sunday’s loss to the Pelicans was Brown’s fourth straight game with five-plus assists, the very first time that Brown has done that in his career. More impressively, Brown tallied five of his nine assists on Sunday in the first quarter alone, no small feat for him considering he reached that five number in just four games total last year.

“That’s one of the things that I’ve been trying to do, to look to get other guys involved,” Brown said. “I think that’s better for our team, but definitely gotta come out and find ways to win.”

The unselfish mentality did not spread in the second half as the C’s dished out just eight assists as a team in the final 29 minutes of regulation and overtime. Sustaining that ball movement for Brown and others will likely be a major priority heading into Tuesday’s game with Dallas.

The Celtics are living and dying by the 3: Want to know if the Celtics won or lost on any given night without looking at the final score? Your best bet is to check the 3-point shooting percentage column. The Celtics knocked down just 27 percent of their 3-point attempts in Sunday’s loss (10-of-37), their fourth-worst shooting night of the year from beyond the arc.

“I thought we had quite a few times where we had some good looks with guys, on swing, swing, guys would be open for the three, guys rolling for layups,” Tatum said. “We just couldn’t hit some shots tonight.”

When those shots don’t go down at a decent clip, the Celtics have struggled mightily all year long. In fact, they dropped to 0-10 in games when they shot under 33 percent from 3-point range and 1-9 in games where they knock down under 45 percent of their shots from the field overall. That’s the sign of a team that has become heavily reliant on offense to win games and that dependence came back to bite on Sunday afternoon when the offense went cold and the defense couldn’t string together stops.

Brad Stevens isn’t second guessing his lineup decisions: Rob Williams played one of his best games of the season on Sunday (10 points, 13 rebounds) but only saw two minutes of action in the fourth quarter as Stevens turned to his starting frontcourt of Tristan Thompson and Daniel Theis to try to slow down Zion Williamson instead of opting for Williams’ offensive upside. The tactic did not pay dividends as New Orleans torched Boston on the interior (18 points in the paint in fourth quarter) with the Celtics getting outscored by 17 points in the minutes Thompson was on the floor.

“We had Theis and Thompson in most of the time when Zion was out there,” Stevens explained. “We had actually guarded Zion pretty well up to that point, and I thought those guys specifically did a good job guarding him. I didn’t think that necessarily was the only thing that changed the game.

“They got great energy play off their bench. Josh Hart was excellent, Melli brought them a good lift, good energy, and then when those guys came back and Ingram was obviously great, and Zion was better than he had been the first three quarters - that’s why we played Rob in overtime. But even then, he was good on Zion, but Tristan does a lot for us too. You can make an argument either way on that one.”

Williams ended up playing in overtime over Thompson and posted two points, four rebounds and a pair of blocks in those five minutes but it wasn’t enough to push Boston towards the win column.

The Celtics are entering a danger zone in the standings: Brad Stevens is no stranger to slow starts during his tenure in Boston but he hasn’t hit the .500 mark this late in the season since 2015. The 2020-21 Celtics have failed to win two games in a row for nearly a month now (January 25th) and have slowly plummeted down the Eastern Conference standings amid their uneven play.

They currently hold the sixth seed but are in danger of dropping into the play-in round with only a half game lead over the Knicks and Hornets for the time being. With Marcus Smart not expected back before the All-Star break, the Celtics will need to start getting back to the best version of themselves for a full 48 minutes if they don’t want to fall further in the East standings.

“We just got to keep playing the game the right way,” Brown said. “I think in that stretch (in the second half), we just went back to some of our bad habits instead of the stuff that got us the lead.

“They were blitzing, you got to get off it and we got to make the right plays and everything else will fall into place. We just have to match energy and we didn’t, so we ended up losing to a team that got comfortable and got rolling on their own floor with some talented players.”

Kemba Walker’s minutes limit keeps going up: Walker had one of his worst shooting outings of the year (5-of-21) after four consecutive strong games last week but he was cleared for his biggest minutes load of the year in the process. The veteran played all five minutes of overtime, giving him a season-high 36 minutes in the loss.

“He was at 33, 34 the other night against Atlanta at the end of the game,” Stevens said when asked about the increase. “He was at 30ish right at the end of regulation. I asked Kemba and our medical staff if it was OK to play or not. I was going to take him out at the start of overtime. They said he’s fine to play the overtime. If we would have gone two overtimes, he would not have played.”

The undersized point guard has been a frequent target for opponents on defense due to his size over his first month of action this year. However, Walker has always tried to make up for that weakness with his effort and positioning. As he shakes more of the rust, we saw a couple of bright spots from him defensively on Sunday as he drew two charges, giving him a team-high seven on the season.


Bob


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