Jayson Tatum finally broke out of his prolonged shooting slump in the Celtics' loss Wednesday to the Hawks. Too bad none of his teammates followed his lead.
The Hawks defeated the Celtics 110-99 at State Farm Arena to send Boston back below .500. Once again, the Celtics played without Jaylen Brown, and it showed. There was nobody to help Tatum, who finished with 38 points on 12-of-22 shooting with nine rebounds and five assists. The young All-Star hit a step-back three with 8:43 remaining in the fourth quarter that seemed like it could've engineered a Celtics comeback, but they failed to score on their next two possessions — including an ugly Enes Kanter miss on a shot at the rim.
Tatum only took one more shot for the rest of the game.
"Not where we want to be," Tatum told reporters. "We wish we could make some more shots, from the top down, but just trying to play with a little more pace more often than not, obviously."
Outside of Tatum, the Celtics couldn't hit shots, going just 11-of-41 from beyond the arc. The game swung in the second and third quarters, when the Celtics followed up a dismal offensive effort with disastrous defense. John Collins led the Hawks with 20 points, while Trae Young added 18.
Cam Reddish scored 19 off the bench for Atlanta; the Celtics' entire second unit chipped in 11 points, all of which belonged to Josh Richardson. Wednesday was the third straight game the Celtics failed to break 100 points. The Hawks led by at least eight points for the game's final 16 points.
Bad shooting and bad defense isn't a recipe for success. The Celtics had no options besides Tatum.
"He's doing the right thing," Udoka said to reporters. "We had countless amounts of wide-open threes in the fourth quarter that could have obviously changed the tide, so he's being unselfish and doing what's asked of him. We could try to get him balls in other spots, on the post perhaps, but we liked what he was doing in pick-and-roll, off-ball actions."
The Celtics are a much worse team when Brown isn't in the lineup. Since he got hurt, they're shooting just 29.7% from three over the last eight games. Their overall scoring has fallen from 109.3 points per game to 102.7.
Robert Williams III missing the game with a sore knee didn't help matters, either.
For the bulk of the season, we've talked about the need for Tatum to step up. He did it in Wednesday, but unfortunately none of his teammates helped him out.
LeBron James and the Lakers come to the Garden Friday night.
