What is lacking with the Celtics is just plain confidence. They botched too many plays in the final 20 seconds of regulation Saturday to claim they are the same bunch that coasted to the championship last season.
Six months later, they are just another pretty good team, despite returning the same roster. How else other than a lack of confidence and poise would you explain Jrue Holiday’s decision to pass the ball to Jaylen Brown instead of scoring an uncontested layup or waiting for a foul with the Celtics up by 3 with 13.9 seconds left?
How else would you explain Jayson Tatum losing focus and missing the second free throw with a chance for another 3-point lead with 7.9 seconds left?
And how do you explain Holiday fouling Trae Young unintentionally-intentionally with the Celtics clinging to a 2-point lead?
Did he fear Young would hit a go-ahead three? Honestly, that would have fit perfect with the Celtics’ fortunes of late. Holiday said he meant to foul, but couldn’t explain why. And nobody could explain why the Celtics lost, 119-115, in overtime in a game they had won – if they played with that fleeting confidence.
The Celtics are 13-10 in their past 23 games and Saturday was their eighth loss at home.
If ever there was an indication that this is not last year’s team, this game was it. They played a brilliant first quarter, lousy second and part of the third, then stormed back to take control before blowing a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter and then a 3-point lead with the ball and less than 20 seconds left.
The Celtics take more emotional turns than the best novella. And when they desperately needed a steady hand to secure the win, Holiday, the 16-year veteran, made two critical mistakes in the final seconds. Tatum, the MVP candidate, not only misses the free throw, but appeared intimidated by the defense by Dyson Daniels, settling for 3-pointers instead of attacking the rim.
The Celtics are a mess, an unreliable team that is capable of crumbling in crucial moments of games and are still without a tangible explanation why. “Shots just aren’t going down’’ can’t be the long-term excuse.
Meanwhile, the franchise’s unquestioned leader, Joe Mazzulla, was eerily optimistic about the long-term future despite being knocked from the ranks of the invincible over the past few weeks.
“The failures are just as much a part of it as the successes,’’ he said. “We know exactly why we lost the game. We got to learn from it. There is no fear. I’m actually more excited at this juncture of the season than I was at the beginning.
“This is the fun part. You talk about what we were able to accomplish as a team in the past and if we’re going to be together on a journey for however long that is, two years or whatever the case may be, this is what you sign up for. As long as we’re in it, that’s how we’re going to attack it. There is zero fear whatsoever. If anything, there’s excitement. This is a journey, so sign me up for this.’’
Perhaps the expectations for this team were too grandiose. The assumption that the same roster would travel the same road to the same result as last season. But there have been numerous bumps and struggles, blown leads, a plethora of missed 3-pointers, ghastly turnovers, and slumps by several players.
Still, the Celtics are 29-13 and firmly in second place in the Eastern Conference. They lost another game on the Cavaliers and trail by 6½ games. So what we need to do is chill on the 2024 comparisons and treat this team as its own entity with its many strengths and yes, glaring weaknesses.
Last year’s team doesn’t lose this game. But again, this isn’t 2024 and judging this team on that scale isn’t fair because they haven’t proved capable of that comparison. At least not yet.
“Again, you get the spirits up by having honest communication but at the same time we’ve got to play another game, we don’t have time to worry about it’’’ said Mazzulla. “There’s an accountability thing. There’s communication in there. But my question when I’m always in situations like this is what do you expect?
“Do you expect that you do something as a team, you expect it to just go well for you all the time? I would ask myself that in situations like this. What the [heck] did you expect? Do you expect we were just going to have another 65-win season and really just never going into making mistakes? If you have the same team and group of guys doing something together that we’re going to show our ass from time to time? What did we expect? That’s why it’s part of the journey. We don’t have time to worry about that. We have to fix it. We have to fix the details and we’ll do that but what keeps me one is I trust the mind-set and character and the preparation of our team over the course of the long stretch. There’s the utmost trust in how they carry themselves.’’
Mazzulla’s trust in the players may not match the players’ trust in themselves because they are not playing with the fortitude, confidence, or even determination as last year. But then again, this isn’t last year as we’ve learned harshly over the past month.
Gary Washburn can be reached at gary.washburn@globe.com. Follow him @GwashburnGlobe.
