Boston Celtics
After scoring the first five points of the third quarter, the Celtics then saw the Bucks go on a 27-8 run over the final nine minutes of the period.
The Celtics couldn’t make anything in the second half, and the Giannis Antetokounmpo-less Bucks couldn’t miss as the Celtics’ five-game win streak ended in a 116-101 defeat.
Here are the takeaways.
Bobby Portis and Kyle Kuzma went off
Quite honestly, we did not expect to lead with Bobby Portis and Kyle Kuzma here, but the NBA’s regular season isn’t known for its predictability.
Kuzma — and again, we can’t stress enough how little we expected to write this sentence — put together a dominant performance, scoring 31 points on 13-for-17 shooting. Neemias Queta was his primary victim, struggling enormously to stay with Kuzma in the pick-and-roll, but the Celtics also couldn’t do much about him with their small-ball lineups or in transition.
Portis, meanwhile, scored the bulk of his offense either in the post or behind the 3-point line, and — as we will get to shortly — he can probably be credited as the emotional catalyst that lifted the Bucks to the win.
To win games with Antetokounmpo sidelined due to a calf injury, the Bucks are going to need some weird contributions, and the Celtics now get to leave Milwaukee with the sore taste of having been blown out by Kuzma and Portis.
Things got heated in the third quarter
The Celtics ran up a double-digit lead early in the third, but the Bucks came storming back and tied the game midway through the quarter.
Then things started to get a little heated.
It started with Jaylen Brown and Kevin Porter Jr. Brown smacked Porter in the mouth with an inadvertent elbow going up for a jumper, and when Brown tumbled to the ground on the next possession, Porter stepped over him and appeared to have something to say.
Tempers began to flare, and Brown went at Porter multiple times over the next few possessions. Brown’s isolation attempts had varying degrees of success, but Portis and the Bucks were the clear winners — the Celtics’ offense sputtered and died as a combination of iso-heavy possessions and missed 3-pointers gunked up the engine.
On the other end, Portis started to heat up, dominating his matchups in the post against a smallball Celtics lineup. After one bucket over two Celtics defenders, Portis turned to the crowd and started barking at them. On the next possession, he scored over Brown, pointedly stared into Brown’s face, and started talking trash. Brown, looking exasperated, pushed Portis away as the Bucks forward picked up a technical.
Everything seemed fine after the game, but some of the old animosity from two franchises that have had numerous playoff battles seemed to still be present.
The Celtics went unbelievably cold
Sometimes basketball just gets weird.
The Celtics’ offense was clicking in the first two quarters — good ball movement, good shooting, plenty of offensive rebounding. Playing against a Bucks team that was mediocre even with Giannis Antetokounmpo this season, everything looked like it was lining up to be an easy win in the second half.
But, whether the Celtics got wrapped up in trying to counter the Bucks’ trash talking or whether the basketball gods simply decided that five in a row was plenty for the Celtics, they got inhumanly cold for a very lengthy stretch. After scoring the first five points of the third quarter, the Celtics then saw the Bucks go on a 27-8 run over the final nine minutes of the period.
During that stretch, the Celtics were 0-for-12 from three and a staggering 4-for-21 overall from the floor.
The cold 3-point shooting extended to the fourth — the Celtics missed 16 total in a row before a triple from Jaylen Brown (which gave him the cold comfort of yet another 3-point game to warm him on a snowy night in Milwaukee) finally broke through the ice.
After the Celtics beat the Lakers last week, Joe Mazzulla noted that they have “definitely going through a stretch of shooting luck … that we weren’t going through at the beginning of the season.”
That luck ran out in a big way on Thursday.
That was as bad as Sam Hauser gets
Hauser isn’t necessarily a one-dimensional player, but he’s in the NBA for one reason, which is (of course) to shoot 3-pointers.
No culprit was more culpable for the Celtics’ abysmal shooting than Hauser, who was 0-for-9 from behind the arc and 0-for-1 from inside it because after missing two 3-pointers on one possession, he cut to the rim, received a nice drop-off pass and smoked a bunny like an 18-wheeler on the interstate.
Somewhat appropriately, Hauser—who was reinserted as part of the bench mob that came in with five minutes left when Mazzulla waved the white flag—rifled a 100 mph fastball directly out of bounds on the final Celtics possession of the game, giving the contest the ending it so richly deserved.
Hauser wasn’t alone in building a brick wall, obviously. Anfernee Simons was 1-for-6, Derrick White was 2-for-9, and Payton Pritchard was 3-for-11. A team doesn’t go 3-for-26 from deep in the second half without a group effort.
Still, Hauser’s poor shooting was particularly stark. He tried to shoot himself out of his slump, which is the right thing to do, but shooting yourself out of a slump looks really ugly until you actually pull it off.
Jordan Walsh continued to shine offensively
Not everything was bleak for the Celtics: Walsh continued to shine on both ends (three steals, including a sneak-up-from-behind poke-away on Kyle Kuzma), but his offense was particularly good. Walsh scored 20 points on hyper-efficient 8-for-10 shooting and finished 3-for-4 from deep after burying all three of his attempts in the first half, including one just before the halftime buzzer.
Brown said last week that he didn’t want to see Walsh’s head get too big from all the media attention, and Walsh still seems to be playing very much within himself. He takes open spot-up 3s when they present themselves (which is pretty often), he makes straight-line drives to the basket, he rolls out of screens, and he crashes the offensive glass.
Interestingly, Walsh’s touch around the rim really does appear to be pretty good, and his jumper—which once looked awkward, like many jumpers do from particularly long-limbed individuals—now looks compact and repeatable. There has been a lot to like during this eye-opening stretch.
A quick glance at the standings
It is, again, far too early to be watching the standings, but after the Celtics shot to No. 3 on the strength of their five-game winning streak, we should now note that precisely one game separates the Celtics in the third spot from the Hawks … who are in ninth.
Early-season standings are a wild ride.
What’s next
The Celtics will now head home. Thanks to the NBA Cup, they have three more days off before the Pistons visit Boston on Monday looking for revenge after the Celtics knocked them off in their last visit.
Following their game against the Pistons, the Celtics then inexplicably have three more days off … before a back-to-back against the Heat and Raptors on Friday and Saturday.
The NBA probably needs to take a close look at how the NBA Cup affects the schedule before next season.
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