The Celtics dominant 131-95 rout of the shorthanded Grizzlies on Wednesday night drew the ire of Memphis coach Tuomas Iisalo.
Boston led by as many as 38 points in the demolition as they scored at least 30 points in every quarter while holding the Grizzlies to a season-low 33.7 percent shooting from the field. Iisalo had praise for Boston but took issue with his team’s effort in the embarrassing defeat.
“I would say this - it’s one way to lose is not to make shots today, I think we struggled a lot,” Iisalo said. “Even with open 3-pointers and we couldn’t convert underneath the basket. At the same time, their shot making was at a relatively high level. That’s all good. That’s part of basketball. It happens sometimes.
“The fact that today, the Celtics were the things that we aspire to be: faster than the other team, harder working, better organized. That’s a tough pill to swallow as a coach, and I think it should be for all of our guys. You can lose games that’s part of basketball, but going away from your identity or the things that we know produce wins is something we must correct right away.”
The loss dropped the Grizzlies to 4-9 on the season and was their seventh loss in their past eight games. Iisalo acknowledged the team was very shorthanded for the matchup, missing star Ja Morant (sprained ankle) along with four other rotation players due to injury (Brandon Clarke, Zach Edey, Ty Jerome, Scotty Pippen Jr.). That left the team without four guards for the matchup with rookie Javon Small sidelined as well.
“Well we knew the organization part is going to be hard for us,” Iisalo said. “(Vince Williams Jr.) is a good player, but we have four point guards ahead of him, injured right now, and that makes it against a team that’s well organized and very aggressive in the full court, that makes it very tough.
“We got bullied on the boards. I think we gave up almost 42 second chance points against the team that’s not particularly bigger than us. Transition game, that’s one thing. In the half court, we were late for several actions, unable to communicate or arrive with the ball, basic things. It started out early, obviously, with two early timeouts and we again had stretches, but nothing consistent.”
The win improved the Celtics to 6-7 on the season after a very busy stretch of games for Boston. Joe Mazzulla was proud of how his team has performed amid the challenging schedule despite being sub-.500.
“There’s a high care factor and there’s a high competitive factor, and I think over the course of the season you can do a lot with that,” Mazzulla said of Boston’s first 13 games. “We got to continue to get better. I think we have the humility to know we’re not playing the way we want to, but we also know we’re playing hard and we can get so much better.”
The Celtics have three days off before returning to action at TD Garden on Sunday against the Clippers.
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