BOSTON — It’s rare to see Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla get out-Mazzulla’d, but that’s exactly what the reigning NBA champions endured once the young and energetic Memphis Grizzlies arrived at TD Garden on Saturday night.
Memphis made its plan universally known from the get-go: shrug off Jrue Holiday and force Boston’s co-stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to feed him. It wasn’t an unheard-of tactic from Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins and at first, it seemed as though Holiday was going to spoil the Mazzulla-like mind game. Holiday shot 3-for-8 from 3-point range and finished the first quarter with a team-leading 11 points.
Yet, the Celtics’ attempt to combat Jenkins’ trick didn’t last long, leaving them stranded and forced to pay a price in the form of a 127-121 defeat.
“It’s a bold strategy,” Mazzulla said postgame. “He’s an All-Star, he shoots over 40% from three. I think that’s a risky one and I thought he handled it great. It empowered him, we want him to shoot any that he’s open and I think that’s a huge gift because now we’re gonna see it again and it’s gonna be great for us.”
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The Grizzlies continued to dare Holiday to shoot, and Boston accepted the challenge. Holiday’s shots kept flying as the 34-year-old tossed up 26 field goal attempts, his most ever in a Celtics uniform while connecting on only eight to finish with a team-high 23 points. He shot just 4-of-17, connecting on just a single 3-pointer — in nine attempts — for the remaining three quarters of the game.
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It wasn’t the usual Holiday performance, especially in Boston, but the 16-year veteran felt nothing beyond the ordinary.
“It didn’t catch me off guard. I feel like every team lets me shoot,” Holiday told reporters, per CLNS Media. “Even yesterday (against the Milwaukee Bucks). Obviously, you have Jayson and Jaylen and people getting to the paint, and we’re usually the recipient of that, but tonight some of them went it, some of them didn’t. … Honestly, I kind of liked it. It’s been a while since I’ve been shooting that much. Gotta see one go in, and two go in, and from there, the flow starts to happen, but I’ll continue to shoot.”
Holiday is a career 37% shooter from three and, just last season, led the league in 3-point shooting percentage (60%) from the corners. So it’s not a foolproof scheme to give Holiday the green light and space to huck up more threes than anyone else on the team. It was, however, the difference maker on Saturday night.
The Celtics intend to take the loss in stride and treat Memphis’ strategy as a learning lesson for what others across the league might try and throw at them moving forward.
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“Teams will probably try, and I hope so,” Brown said. “We got full belief in Jrue. Tonight, maybe he didn’t shoot the ball as much as he’d like but we got full belief in Jrue and any of those guys and we wanna encourage it. So we’ll be ready if teams do decide that.”
It’s easy — and lazy — to single out Holiday’s atypical shooting performance, but that doesn’t tell the entire story of the night. Boston missed nine free-throw attempts and recorded a season-low 67.9% success rate at the charity stripe, was held to under 30 points in the first and second quarters and committed 14 turnovers — the Celtics average 11.8.
“Tonight, I don’t think was the best indication of Celtics basketball,” Brown admitted. “I feel like we fought till the end, but I think today is a night we put it behind us, we look at the film, get ready for what’s to come in the future.”