The Celtics played one of their worst games of the season Saturday night, losing 115-96 to the Los Angeles Clippers at TD Garden. Kawhi Leonard and Paul George did a great job leading the Clippers defensively, but other than Jayson Tatum, who scored 21 points, Celtics starters were liabilities on the offensive side of the court.
What the recent moves around the East mean for the Celtics
Here are three takeaways from the game:
Live by the three, die by the three
Two weeks ago, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla stressed the importance of having self-awareness of how the team is playing by saying, "Don't get caught up in trying to be perfect. Just constantly have an awareness of, 'Are we playing the way we should be playing or are we not, and how quickly do we get back to that? '"
After having the best shooting night of the season against the Miami Heat, shooting 63.8 percent from the field, the Celtics followed up with their worst field-goal percentage in a game this season at 36.0 percent.
They were 36-of-100 from the field and 10-of-40 from behind the arc.
In all the wins the Celtics have this season, the team has hit 39.9 percent of their threes, the 10th-best percentage in the NBA. As for all losses, that percentage from behind the arc drops to 31.2 percent from three, which is the lowest percentage by any team in the NBA.
The Celtics are still the best team in the league, but they need to become less dependent on the three because when they aren't falling, it becomes very challenging for the team to overcome it.
Bench plays well, starters don’t
When Luke Kornet (12 points) and Payton Pritchard (11 points) score more points than Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White and Al Horford, how do you expect to win as a team? Other than Jayson Tatum, who finished the game with 21 points, the team played so badly offensively that Mazzulla decided to bench the entire starting lineup for the whole fourth quarter.
The starters, minus Tatum, scored a combined 17 points, shooting 1-of-17 (5.9%) from behind the arc. Excluding Tatum, the other four starters also shot 5-of-37 (13.5%) from the field—an awful outing. The bench as a unit shot 48.9 percent from the field and 36.8 percent from behind the arc. It is important to note that the Celtics were missing Kristaps Porzingis, who has been a significant contributor all season, but they are 10-3 without him, including this loss.
Poor offense leads to poor defense
When speaking on the correlation between offense and defense, Mazzulla said, "Unfortunately, we let our offense affect our defense, and they got a lot of leak-outs and easy ones in transition."
The Celtics have the top-rated transition defense in the league, but when the offense isn't clicking, that lockdown defense takes a hit. Letting bad offense impact how you play defensively can be a lingering issue if the Celtics can't figure out how to make adjustments on the defensive side once the playoffs come.
The Celtics still lead the league in wins at 35-11 and are the favorites to win the NBA Finals, but Saturday’s loss highlighted some things they need to address as a unit before they can think about raising Banner 18.