BOSTON — Typically, the Boston Celtics play with more discipline than most teams in the league. But despite averaging the fewest turnovers, they failed to uphold those principles when face-to-face with the Nikola Jokić-less Denver Nuggets.
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla admitted that the team’s effort against the Chicago Bulls 48 hours prior didn’t meet his standards. And instead of turning the page with a much-needed return to 48 minutes of Celtics basketball, Boston fell into the same habits that made defeating a No. 10-seeded Chicago team — without its star Josh Giddey — feel like a mountain climb.
This time, however, Mazzulla’s squad failed to come away with another (underserved?) victory.
“We had some empty possessions on offense, and they did a good job versus our aggressive pick-and-roll coverage, finding the two-on-one, whether it was knocking down threes or hitting the roll man,” Mazzulla said after Boston lost its No. 2 seed with Wednesday night’s 114-110 loss at TD Garden.
The Nuggets took a page from Mazzulla’s playbook to beat the Celtics at their own game. Denver drained 20 3-pointers, shooting 45.5% to create an offensive onslaught too insurmountable for Mazzulla’s defense. Nuggets guard Peyton Watson, who averages 1.1 made threes this season, knocked down six to fuel his team-best 30-point performance. Meanwhile, Boston forced twice as many turnovers as Denver (14-7) and only managed eight trips to the free-throw line, converting 9-of-15 attempts.
Through spurts within the game, it was easy to forget that Jokić, Denver’s three-time MVP, wasn’t even on the floor. Coach David Adelman leaned on the team’s ball movement to find scoring opportunities for the shorthanded crew — and it paid off. The Nuggets racked up 27 assists to Boston’s 16, and though the Celtics dominated the inside scoring margin (48-26), that gap ultimately didn’t matter.
“They play well,” Jaylen Brown said. “When a team plays like that, they’re tough to beat. We still had a chance to win the game. Just a few possessions, offensively and defensively, that we just gotta be sharper, but any given night teams can get hot like that.”
The Celtics committed five turnovers in the fourth quarter alone. Those miscues took their toll in the closing minutes when Boston rallied to score 17 of their 28 fourth-quarter points in the final 2:04 of regulation.
Denver scored 16 second-chance points and conceded 15 from Celtics turnovers, which made gaining a favorable pendulum swing immensely easier for Jamal Murray and the Nuggets.
“It was probably that type of game where they hit every shot off our mistakes,” Payton Pritchard said. “It is the NBA, so usually that does happen. We’ve got to tighten that up. I feel like we’ve done a really good job of not turning it over and making bad reads. Today, we made a couple of those, but we’ve been on a good stretch. Tough game — they played well, so tip our cap.”
Similar to how the Celtics have operated all season without Jayson Tatum, the Nuggets didn’t rely on a singular player. Murray, usually Jokić‘s right-hand man, focused on getting everyone else involved rather than carrying the scoring load himself. That method cleared the path for Watson’s outburst, empowered Denver’s 49-31 bench scoring advantage, and snapped Boston’s four-game winning streak.
“Tonight was a tale of two,” Mazzulla said. “Murray — you’ve got to give him credit — he played really well, but he also had 17 assists versus the pick-and-roll, versus the aggressive coverages. So there are obviously possessions that we’ll get better at with our shifts and our rotations, but you’ve got to give credit to them. It was a two-on-one for the majority of the game, and they took advantage of that.”
The foundation Denver established through displaying its principles made it so that when the Celtics did muster up some fourth-quarter momentum and made it a 3-point game with 6.5 seconds left, it was too late.
Mazzulla acknowledged that the defeat presents an opportunity to examine all of Boston’s shortcomings in the first of two matchups scheduled against Denver. Still, the team’s approach to learn from every game, regardless of whether it puts the Celtics in the win or loss column, won’t change.
“Whether you win or lose, there are 15 to 20 (possessions) that you can get better at on both ends of the floor,” he said. “So that’s the most important thing — just stick to the process.”