The Celtics Played Like Lifeless Assholes And It Resulted In The Worst Loss Of The Season

It took them 30 games, but we finally got ourselves an egg from this group. For it to come at home, against a team missing three starters, on a night where you were like 95% healthy was certainly a surprise and frankly pretty disappointing. Now we did see something similar with BKN and these quick home and home games, you may remember what happened over Thanksgiving and what happened in the second meeting. As we learned following this loss, there are some people who apparently don't think the Celts are ever allowed to lose a game. That for some reason when every other team that is considered a contender has a bad loss it's no big deal, but when the Celtics do it for the first time all year it means something more. I will always find this entertaining. Yes, the Celtics played like lifeless dogshit and got blown out by a team they had no business losing to. It was also only the second loss this season by more than 6 points. We're basically at New Years. Shit happens in the NBA. Teams have surprising wins and disappointing losses over the course of an 82 game schedule so I'm not so sure what the big deal is. The Celts played like hot trash, were lazy defensively, sloppy, and deserved every single thing that happened to them in this embarrassing loss. They are also 22-8. 

But just like we do when we want to puff our chest out when this team wins and looks awesome. We do not run from these bad performances. We take it on the chin, accept it for what it was, and move on. Considering this was technically their worst loss of the season

it certainly won't be pretty.

The Good

- If we're being honest with one another I should skip this section entirely that's how disgusted I am at what we all had to watch yesterday, but nobody should live with nothing but negativity in their lives. This was ugly, but it would have looked even worse if it wasn't for Kemba's offense

On a night where nobody else really got anything going offensively, it was up to Kemba to figure out some way to generate points. His outside shot struggled for the second straight game and he is now 4-19 from deep, but at least he was aggressive in this game. He matched Lowry's 30, but if we're being honest his points weren't nearly as impactful. Only one turnover though which was nice to see, but when an 11-23 (3-11) performance is your best offensive showing of the night, that sort of tells you how things went.

- Another solid performance from Enes Kanter in his 17 minutes. He finished with 11/6 on 5-5 shooting and honestly probably should have played a little more considering how destroyed the Celts were on the glass. At the same time, when this game turned in the 3rd quarter he did play 5:18 of it and the Raptors outrebounded the Celts 11-6 with 4 OREB so who knows if it even would have helped, it was just that kind of game.

- A quiet night for the two Jays immediately after they dropped 60+, but at least Jaylen did some shit

They were also both good against TOR in the win on Christmas, so you can spare me the hot take that these two don't show up in big games. 

- Can we be done here? I think we're done here, let's get to the real point of this blog.

The Bad

- OK where to fucking start. I guess how much time do you have? Let's begin with the offense. Where was it. A cool 39/21% for the game, only 18 assists, 20 total bench points, no quarter over 29 points, just 43 second half points, this was by far one of the worst offensive performances we've seen from this team so far this season. They say it's a make or miss league and when you start the game by going 2-8 from the FT line and then follow that up with a 7-32 performance from three, what do you expect to happen. 

I'd argue that if they weren't given so many FTA (36), this team gets blown out even worse. Everything looked short which you can say is due to the B2B, but the Celtics have played like 5 games in 30 days or some shit. It was their own fault if they were tired because they didn't just blow out the Cavs the night before. Pick a name and they struggled offensively outside of Kanter for the most part. It's great having everyone back, but not so great when they all decide to play like assholes.

- The Celtics never led in this game. Not even for 1 second. At home. Gross.

- Call me crazy, but whenever we seem to play TOR it always feels like Serge Ibaka has the best game of his life. He is for sure on the list of those random guys that the Celtics make look like a HOF player. Last night it was his 20/10 on 9-14 shooting, but it was clear the minute you started watching this game that he and his teammates were playing with a different energy. They wanted this game after what happened on Christmas.

That played a huge role in their 15 OREB which led to 23 second chance points. You lose that shit 23-5 and what do you expect. They also gave up 52 points in the paint which was mostly just an effort thing. The Celtics looked reactionary and when they do that they get their dicks kicked in.

- Feels bad to have your best perimeter defenders available and give up 66 points to Lowry/VanVleet/McCaw.

Speaking of Patrick McCaw, it makes total sense that he went for 18 points on 8-12 shooting. Only the best game of his season and perhaps his career. That's always fun. I'm not kidding, he's only been in double figures one other time this year so it makes total sense that he would have a performance like this. That's why I can mostly dismiss this loss. When you play like the Celtics did the Basketball Gods are always going to rub it in, and if that means Patrick McCaw has the night of his life then so be it.

- It was extremely frustrating that on multiple occasions we saw the Celts cut the lead to 3-5 points and literally every single time immediately gave up some sort of 7-0 run that brought it back to double digits. I mean every single time. Get a momentum stop for me one time, this is supposed to be a top 4 defense so what the hell. Whether they were dagger threes, brutal offensive putbacks, this team simply couldn't make that final push to get over the hump.

Credit the Raptors for that though. That's some big time stuff to be undermanned like they are and continue to respond like that on numerous occasions. They earned that win, no two ways about it.

The Ugly

- Pretty pathetic showing from both Gordon and Tatum, two guys who can't really afford to look so bad against any sort of team with a pulse. They combined to go 6-20 (1-9), Tatum had a horrific amount of turnovers with 6, and they had just 11 second half points. Tatum played every minute of that third quarter and had 4 TOs to his 0 FGM which feels suboptimal. 

That was the frustrating part of that third quarter where we saw a 5 point deficit balloon to 10. The trio of Tatum, Jaylen, and Kemba played all 12 minutes. That shit shouldn't happen. Hayward is shooting just 22% from three this month (6 games), and honestly before last night he wasn't getting to the line either, just 1.8 FTA. 

- Daniel Theis had a -47 net rating. That's a real number, just 87 on offense and 134 on defense. Woof city.

- I suppose now would be a good place to mention the defense, because for a team that prides itself on shutting people down, they've been pretty terrible over the last 6 quarters. You may remember the second half in CLE where they gave up 70 points, well that sorry excuse for defensive effort reared its ugly head again last night, this time from the jump. The Raptors came out and dropped 36 on 71/60% in the first quarter to set the tone, then once the Celts made a run they came out in the third quarter with 30 points on 52/46% splits. Any hope for a comeback didn't last long considering they also shot 55/42% in the fourth quarter, so really outside of the second quarter we did not see the Celts do anything to slow down or stop TOR defensively. 

Good defenders were getting burned, a laziness on the glass not seen at any point in the season resulted in easy baskets, and the whole thing should have everyone very embarrassed. I can handle losing, but what I can't handle is when you lose while showing minimal effort.

- Not the best return for Marcus Smart, I think we can all agree. He came in when it was tied in the first quarter, things ballooned, and his shooting was most definitely rusty. The 2-9 (1-5) was tough to watch, especially when he kept jacking it up late. I'm willing to give him a pass given that he almost went blind and had missed 8 games, but that's where maybe you'd hope he would realize that maybe his shot isn't falling and do something else. 

I'm willing to deal with the poor shooting as long as he shows up on the defensive end, but that didn't happen either so frankly it was all gross when it came to Marcus' return. 

The good news is they have an opportunity to forget all about this loss with a game against CHA on Tuesday to close out 2019. Nothing really changed all that much despite this loss with IND and PHI also losing. The Celts got jumped by MIA and now trail the 2 seed by 1 game, but we are certainly not in a panic situation by any means. They played like absolute shit and they got what they deserved. Happens all the time in the NBA to pretty much every single team. How they respond will be the real test. They had that rough West Coast trip and then won 6 of their next 7. They dropped those two against IND/PHI and then won 5 straight. With CHA/ATL/CHI/WSH/SA up next they have that same opportunity to go on a run and get some momentum before the PHI game on January 7th. I just would ask everyone take a deep breath, take this disappointing loss like an adult and let's pray we never witness such a pathetic display of basketball again.