Celtics get ‘butts kicked’ by Clippers, losing second straight NBA Finals preview at home – The Athletic

BOSTON — At one point, the Boston Celtics’ home winning streak had been going on for so long that it became an afterthought. By the time they reached 20-0 at the Garden, it just felt like they might never lose. Since then, it’s two losses in a row to two teams who might be back in this building in June.

At least the Denver Nuggets game was close. This was the Celtics’ biggest home loss since Ime Udoka’s first game in charge. It took that team awhile to find its identity, but the Celtics have been an elite team ever since. They’re not supposed to just fall flat at home anymore.

Joe Mazzulla said that in the third quarter Saturday night, they got their “butts kicked.” Jrue Holiday took it a step further.

“A good old-fashioned ass-whooping,” Holiday said after the LA Clippers crushed the Celtics 115-96. “They did everything better: Rebounding, transition, 50/50 balls, it seemed like they were a step ahead.”

This was the latest example of a growing trend that may be a harbinger of things to come. The Celtics have the NBA’s best record, but they are now 5-6 against the other top seven teams in the league. The Sixers are the only team up on that level of clear-cut contenders Boston has beaten more than it has lost.

If you’re gonna have a losing record against any sector of the NBA, the top of the top seems ideal. The Hornets and Warriors are the only non-playoff teams to beat them so far and it took them overtime to do it. The Celtics have been avoiding falling into trap games like Bugs Bunny running circles around Elmer Fudd.

But whether it was the stinker in Milwaukee or this dud at home, they’ve had a few games where a top team completely took them out of their game. This was just the fourth time the Celtics have been down by at least 35 points at home in the last 20 years, according to Celtics radio play-by-play announcer Sean Grande.

The Nuggets were barely able to get past the Celtics a week ago and they’re the defending champs. So why were the Clippers, demolished by the Celtics in Los Angeles a month ago, a mirror image Saturday night?

“If you’re not going to make open shots against a good defensive team, then you’re not going to score,” Mazzulla said. “I think that’s why the Clippers are also one of the — they’re very similar. Like we’re very similar teams. They have switchable wings, they got physicality, they don’t have a clear matchup that you can attack to create two-on-ones, and so it’s two very similar teams. That’s kind of why what they did to us tonight, we did to them a month ago.”

Mazzullaball can be distilled to a few core principles. Offense is defense. Defense is offense. It all flows into each other. They score by either creating high-volume open 3s by pushing in transition to force cross-matches or slowing things down to whittle away at those cross-matches.

But if targeting matchups and hitting open shots don’t work, what’s left? Until the bench warmers found some rhythm in the middle of the fourth quarter, the Celtics were en route to the seventh game shooting below 30 percent in franchise history, per Stathead. As scoring is exploding at historic proportions around the league this week, Boston could barely get anyone above double digits.

The box score shows a horrendous shooting night. But this was more than just bricking wide-open 3s. The Clippers’ defensive execution was impressive throughout the night, throwing off Boston’s rhythm in the half court and then pushing the tempo in transition off of every stop without fail. They were everything the Celtics purport to be.

When Paul George couldn’t score, he focused his energy on putting Jaylen Brown in a straitjacket and succeeded. Even with Ivica Zubac out for a month with a strained right calf, Mason Plumlee and Daniel Theis stepped up to form a brick wall at the rim. The Clippers were persistent in their help rotations and recoveries back to the shooters they left open to ensure Boston couldn’t start driving and kicking.

“I mean, they got some really good defenders over there, so it’s not as obvious who to attack,” Jayson Tatum said. “I think the answer is just continue to move and play with pace and attack and draw help and kick it to the open guy.”

Boston, of course, created plenty of open looks and bricked nearly all of them. Holiday is having a good shooting season, but he missed almost every open 3 he got all night.

“Honestly, I think especially at first, we had a lot of good shots. Lot of wide-open shots. Missed them,” Holiday said. “I think sometimes that kind of affects our defense, but at the end of the day, you still have to take them. Even when they’re not falling it looks bad, but you just have to have the confidence to keep going out there and shooting them.”

There was one offensive play by Holiday that represented a potential vulnerability come playoff time. When the Celtics were down just three early in the second quarter, Holiday had James Harden in the corner and easily drove through him, of course. Theis was rotating under the rim and was a tad late, so Holiday could have attacked Theis straight up to draw a foul or go past him for the reverse.

But Holiday made what is usually the wise play, kicking it out early to Sam Hauser and then continuing to run to the now-empty weakside corner so he could take an open 3 when Harden, of course, stopped guarding him a few seconds earlier. But Harden actually fought for the closeout and Holiday bricked it.

The process here is what Mazzulla and most modern coaches would praise. Mazzulla doesn’t want contested layups, and Holiday is a solid shooter on the move. But sometimes you need to just get to the line and there has to be somebody on this team besides Tatum who can do it when Kristaps Porziņģis is out. Most players on the team can step up to fill everyone else’s role, but attacking the rim with confidence is a slight weak point.

Naturally, after Holiday bypassed Theis to take the relocation 3, Theis came down the other end and buried a 3 of his own. That would be the last time the Celtics were within one shot of tying the score. By the middle of the third quarter, the Clippers’ lead was up to 30.

This comes one game after Boston visited the Miami Heat after they acquired Terry Rozier to bolster their offense, and annihilated them.

“There’s no coincidence that the two extremes happened one after another,” Mazzulla said. “I think those can be gifts when you look at them properly, and keep you balanced, and keep you humble, and just keep you in check.”

This package of games is something to remember over the course of the season. The Celtics can be elite or garbage, just like (almost) everyone else. A great record, or even a title campaign, is success on the aggregate. It’s not about playing the best game of the year but winning more often than losing. So when there’s a big loss, it has to be a reminder of why you hate losing.

“Definitely humbling, I think, to be able to kind of come home and get your butt kicked,” Holiday said. “But we know it’s a long season. We know we can learn from this and just kind of hold it in our back pocket. It’ll always be in the back of our head when we have a good game the game before.”

When the Celtics are great, when the Celtics are terrible, there’s one bit of perspective Mazzulla always says they’re fighting for.

“You’re never as good as you think you are, you’re never as bad as you think you are,” he said. “And I think it’s important.”

Mazzulla is always trying to think outside of the box, which has started to take hold in his second season in charge. Whether it’s blurring the lines between offense and defense or dusting off old Brad Stevens lines about being better or worse than you think, he just wants his team to see everything a little differently.

“We always talk about adversity, and adversity is always looked at as something negative happens to you,” said Mazzulla. “But to me, one of the hardest things to do is win consistently, all the time, and handle success. And that’s just as hard as handling losing, is being able to handle success. So I think regardless, you just focus on the character of your team, and our guys will bounce back.”

(Photo of Russell Westbrook going to the basket between Boston’s Derrick White and Luke Kornet during the second half Saturday: Bob DeChiara / USA Today)