The Celtics' Derrick White (right) and Neemias Queta bottle up Jazz guard Keyonte George in the second quarter, but George went on to score 16 of his 31 points in the third quarter.
The Celtics' Derrick White (right) and Neemias Queta bottle up Jazz guard Keyonte George in the second quarter, but George went on to score 16 of his 31 points in the third quarter.Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff
The Celtics didn’t win Monday against the Utah Jazz because they didn’t deserve to win. A team that looked sharp last week has returned to its wildly inconsistent and erratic ways with the common thread as it always has been under Joe Mazzulla — porous 3-point shooting.
His philosophy for the long-range shot has not changed despite the roster overall and Monday’s performance has to encourage him to reconsider their offensive approach after they missed 40 triples and then were completely punked on the boards in a 105-103 loss.
This Utah team was trounced the night before in Charlotte, and yet the Jazz played harder, a Celtics admission, in the second half to seize the lead and eventually the win.
The Celtics’ two major issues are obvious eight games in, one they were fully aware would be a weakness in the preseason, the other not so much.
Rebounding has become a real problem and it was no coincidence the Jazz won the game when Jusuf Nurkic reached over Neemias Queta, who had him screened, and flipped in a go-ahead layup with 0.6 seconds left. The Celtics were outrebounded 46-22 after the first quarter, including 13-4 in a pivotal third quarter when they missed 10 of 11 3-pointers and allowed Keyonte George to look like Allen Iverson in scoring 16 points in the period.
“We’re never going to be top five [in rebounding],” Mazzulla admitted. “But we have to be better. It’s a combination of ones that we have to get and we have to compensate in other areas to be better at that, whether it’s our shot-making, whether it’s our turnovers, whether it’s our offensive rebounds. We just have to fight to be better at that.”
So if the rebounding is linked to the offense, which is 28th in points and field goal percentage and 29th in 3-point percentage, then the Celtics are in real trouble.
Three-point shooting has now become an unexpected problem. The Celtics were a ghastly 11 for 51 from beyond the arc Monday. Jaylen Brown and Sam Hauser were a combined 1 for 17. Want another combo? Anfernee Simons and Derrick White were 5 for 16. Payton Pritchard went 4 for 11 but 1 for 6 in the second half.
Jazz center Jusuf Nurkić (right) tries to keep the Celtics' Josh Minott away from a loose ball in the fourth quarter.
Jazz center Jusuf Nurkić (right) tries to keep the Celtics' Josh Minott away from a loose ball in the fourth quarter.Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff
If the Celtics are going to take 51 threes in a game, they have to at least make league average. They are 31.1 percent as a team this season from the 3-point line while Pritchard and White are a combined 24 percent. Both have expanded offensive roles with Tatum gone and both are floundering.
“The thing I tell [Payton] the most is you’re not defined by shot-making,” Mazzulla said. “You do so many things for us. You don’t need to be defined by that and you’re a much better player than just shot-making. As long as you can focus on those things and the other stuff will come around.”
Regression was expected with Jayson Tatum out and four other veteran contributors gone. And the response would apparently be that the Celtics would win games being the more desperate team. But they were outworked, almost as if they expected the Jazz to lay down after they raced to a 14-2 lead.
They led by 10 at halftime before George took over the third quarter and the Celtics lost total command, and then they resorted to trying to rally behind a 3-point barrage and then when it really counted, got some bad luck from a no-call on a Brown trip, a Queta missed free throw, and then that Nurkic putback.
But that basket was justice because the Jazz played harder and wanted to win more than the Celtics. This team has to learn they can’t always win on their terms. This isn’t last season or the championship year. They’re going to have to get dirty, attack the paint, make the extra pass, and collapse on the boards.
They’re going to have to be the harder playing team every night. They just don’t have enough talent not to be that way. They were more talented than the Jazz theoretically but in truth Will Hardy simply put his three bigs on the floor and dwarfed the undersized Celtics, giving his team more chances to score by dominating the boards.
And the team isn’t good enough offensively to rely on scoring prowess to win. The offense was simply awful Monday as the Celtics countered Utah runs with 3-point attempts, shooting with little confidence, trying to will the ball in the basket.
But Mazzulla doesn’t have all that many offensive options without a post presence. Queta is proving to be an inconsistent rebounder and his questionable hands allow for fumbled balls or in a fourth-quarter sequence, allowing point guard Walter Clayton Jr. to literally rip a defensive rebound from his hands, costing the Celtics another key point.
The Celtics are learning the hard way that little things make the difference for average teams. And this franchise has spent so many years in the elite category, being relegated to average is a difficult adjustment. And they’re going to need to improve their 3-point shooting (likely), rebounding (don’t bet on it), and their fortitude and hustle (an absolute must) to win on most nights.
If not, they are going to experience disappointing nights like these far more than they expected.
“I thought we had a lot of good looks, we just shot the ball poorly,” Brown said. “We shot a lot of threes but I felt like a lot of them were good looks. We still got to find ways to win. We’ve got to get the rebounds at the end of the game, those are crucial. In moments it just felt like they were the harder playing team. I guess it’s a part of our learning curve but a team coming off a back-to-back shouldn’t be a harder playing team than us. I’ve got to be better in that regard as well.”
Gary Washburn is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at gary.washburn@globe.com. Follow him @GwashburnGlobe.