Celtics go cold again, fall to top-seed Pistons: 7 takeaways

Boston Celtics

As a team, the Celtics finished 10-for-39 and went 1-for-18 from deep in the second and third as the Pistons built a four-point advantage going into the fourth.

The Celtics made several costly mistakes and missed a number of costly shots en route to a 112-105 loss to Cade Cunningham and the Pistons on Monday, dropping their second straight loss on the heels of their five-game winning streak.

Here are the takeaways. 

The Celtics simply missed too many shots

After Thursday’s abomination against the Bucks, Celtics fans might have been hoping to see the shooting numbers swing back to normal, but after a decent start (5-for-11 in the first quarter), it fell off a cliff again. 

As a team, the Celtics finished 10-for-39 (25.6 percent) and went 1-for-18 from deep in the second and third as the Pistons built a four-point advantage going into the fourth. The overall shooting numbers were actually bailed out a bit by three tough makes in the fourth—two by Derrick White, one by Jaylen Brown—but the game ended with an appropriately disappointing thud: On a make-or-break possession down five with 45 seconds left, Payton Pritchard airballed a 3-pointer, and the Pistons held on for the win.

Once again, nearly everyone was at fault (except for Sam Hauser). Brown was 1-for-5. Anfernee Simons missed all five of his attempts. Josh Minott and Baylor Scheierman were both 0-for-2. Payton Pritchard was 2-for 8. White was 5-for-12, which is good in a vacuum (41.7 percent), but he missed some bad ones too. 

The Celtics held on admirably through the third quarter, but the Pistons had wrestled control of the game away by the end of the period. You can’t get away with a 1-for-16 stretch from three against most teams in the NBA, and the margin for error becomes minuscule—and perhaps nonexistent—against a team as talented on both ends as the Pistons. 

“This game, I thought we executed,” Joe Mazzulla said. “Thought we got some really good looks. I thought we didn’t make them. […]

“I thought it was a better process tonight than it was in the past game, for sure, I thought they just made some more plays than we did down the stretch.”

Jaylen Brown missed so many free throws

Without Brown’s offensive brilliance (34 points, 13-for-25 shooting), the Celtics would have been cooked long before Pritchard’s airball, but that has been the case all season. As the Celtics bricked and bricked their way through the middle 24 minutes of the game, Brown’s ability to get wherever he wanted kept the Celtics alive. 

Unfortunately for the Celtics, Brown’s free-throw shooting—which has hovered around a career-high 80 percent all season—crashed at the worst possible time. Brown took advantage of a grabby, reaching Pistons defense and earned 14 trips to the free-throw line, but he only made seven of those attempts. That number is stark on its face, and the final score casts it in an even less friendly light: The Celtics lost the game by seven, and while a 14-for-14 night would have been remarkable for anyone (especially Brown), an 80 percent night would conservatively have given the Celtics three extra points down the stretch, which would have entirely changed the complexion of the game. 

Brown’s shot-making was as high-level as ever—some of the first- and third-quarter buckets he muscled in were as difficult as you will see at the NBA level—but in a season where we sing his praises seemingly every game, it’s worth noting when his rare missteps are as costly as Monday.

“Especially in the fourth quarter, just some mindset plays,” Brown said. “Foul. Staying down on the shot fake. Had a turnover in the fourth, and then just too many missed free throws. Just mentality-wise, mindset-wise, I needed to be more for my team. I wasn’t tonight.”

Cade Cunningham is a killer

The Pistons have been percolating for a while, and Cunningham is the engine that makes everything go. 

On Monday, the 24-year-old guard made a season-high six 3-pointers in a 32-point outburst, and his offense down the stretch put the game to bed. With less than two minutes remaining, he scored twice on White—as solid and stalwart a defensive guard as exists in the NBA—and he had White stumbling and off balance on the second. 

Cunningham is nearly as gifted as Brown at getting to his spots, and he is surrounded by high-energy, highly athletic wings and a pair of bruising bigs that take up a ton of space when they roll off his screens. 

The Pistons hit several big shots—Celtics killer Caris Levert kept the Pistons afloat when Cunningham went to the bench, and former Celtics guard Javonte Green hit a pair of big zone-busting 3-pointers (as well as one of the better dunks you’ll ever see over White), but Cunningham looks like a superstar hitting the very beginning of his prime as his team surges into a new era.

“He’s elite,” White said. “He’s really good at basketball, and his size and he shot it well today too. I think every game is going to be difficult trying to slow him down and obviously he made some big plays on the stretch.”

Derrick White kept the Celtics alive (but turned it over)

Similar to Brown, White had a big game—31 points, 10-for-18 shooting—but he had four costly turnovers, all operating in the pick-and-roll as the ball-handler. The Pistons’ physicality forces teams to turn the ball over, and the Celtics only finished with 13, but the four each by Brown and White were costly. 

Still, like Brown, White kept the Celtics afloat in the fourth when the game threatened to get away with several big shots. He scored 14 of his points in the fourth on 5-for-9 shooting and hit three 3-pointers at a time when the Celtics needed threes like a drowning man needs a life raft. 

“He’s just confident,” Payton Pritchard said. “He’s been there so many times, so it’s nothing new to him. He’s a ball player.”

Sam Hauser sprained his ankle

Hauser has had a rough week: After going 0-for-10 in Milwaukee, he sprained his ankle in the first half of Monday’s game. Adding insult to (literal) injury, Hauser was unable to get off the floor for a couple of possessions and was forced to hobble up and down the floor until the Celtics finally managed to get a sub in the game. 

The Celtics’ wings didn’t contribute much. Hugo González actually looked like a rookie against the Pistons, while Josh Minott tossed up a pair of doomed 3-pointers and did little else offensively. Jordan Walsh picked off a pair of eye-catching steals, but he was in foul trouble early on a night when they needed big minutes from him against Cunningham (although Mazzulla noted that most of Cunningham’s offense was out of the pick-and-roll, rather than attacking a matchup, which is why he felt comfortable with Anfernee Simons playing down the stretch instead of Walsh).

The Pistons’ bench outscored the Celtics in total 47-14.

“You have to make them in order for the bench points to count,” Mazzulla said. “So we’ve got to make the open looks. Like I said, I thought we got some really good looks. I thought the process of it was good. We just didn’t make some of them.”

The Celtics were good in isolation (as usual)

Thanks in no small part to Brown, the Celtics are one of the NBA’s better teams at scoring in isolation (80th percentile), and they were solid against the Pistons on Monday—1.5 points per possession in single-coverage isolation, according to Synergy Sports. Brown and Anfernee Simons (nine points, 3-for-9 shooting) were both able to attack and get into the paint in particular—Brown attacked Pistons forward Duncan Robinson with particular enthusiasm, while Simons put in three highly contested shots at and around the rim after blowing by his defender.

Iso offense requires a specific, highly gifted personnel offensively, but the Celtics are lucky enough to employ several players who can make the most of it—especially Brown, who averages 1.01 points per possession in iso situations (83rd percentile league-wide), even with the massive amount of usage he has taken on this season.

Against an aggressive defense, being able to score in isolation is a gift. If the Celtics had paired it with better 3-point shooting, they very well might have beaten the Pistons for a second time in as many months.

What’s next

If you enjoyed this brief return to Celtics basketball after three days off, don’t get too excited: You’ll have to wait until Friday to see them again when they face the Heat at TD Garden. That starts a flurry of games after this sleepy stretch: On Saturday they return to Toronto to take on the Raptors before returning to TD Garden to take on the Pacers for their third game in four nights.