BOSTON — Joe Mazzulla blamed himself for each of the Boston Celtics’ two crunch-time defensive breakdowns Monday night. Luke Kornet pinned the first mistake on himself. Jaylen Brown, also involved in the second error, detailed several factors that combined to allow Amen Thompson to score a game-winning basket shortly before the final buzzer. Whoever deserved the brunt of the responsibility, the pair of failures doomed Boston to a 114-112 loss to the Houston Rockets.
“We’ve just got to be better as a group, more organized in the fourth quarter down the stretch,” Brown said.
The Celtics agreed on that part.
After Brown tied the score on two made throws with 11.8 seconds left, they fell behind within two seconds after allowing Alperen Sengun an easy path to the basket on the ensuing inbounds play.
Jayson Tatum pulled Boston back into another tie with a strong move against Thompson, but Boston, after delivering a foul to give with 4.3 seconds left, appeared unprepared to defend the Rockets’ final inbounds play. Kornet and Brown tried to switch but appeared to hesitate. Their brief moment of indecision left Brown in a compromised position against Thompson, who took advantage by driving for an eight-footer that ended the game.
After sniffing out what Houston wanted to do, Brown said the Celtics wanted to switch matchups so that he, not Kornet, would defend Thompson. But with the Rockets inbounding the ball quickly, Brown and Kornet botched the switch. By the time Brown fully committed to taking Thompson, he was slightly out of position instead of squared up to the young Rockets wing. Forced to scramble into a closeout, Brown failed to keep Thompson from securing enough separation to create an open look inside the paint.
“After we seen kinda what they was in, we knew they were probably going to try to get an iso,” Brown said. “They tried to go at Luke. So I guess I should’ve sniffed it out earlier. But we tried to communicate the switch to get Luke off of Thompson ‘cause he had it going, and they were going to go to him, and the timing was miscued, and they scored at the end.”
Kornet said the Celtics often pre-switch an action like that to leave themselves in a better situation. On that play, Brown said the team wanted to “get Luke out of there” so Thompson, who finished with a career-high 33 points, could not target the 7-foot-1 Kornet off the bounce. That would have likely been the right move, but the Celtics didn’t execute it properly.
“It was just kind of the timing of all of it,” Kornet said. “We obviously were trying to switch. I think we might’ve just gotten like … the ball being handed in and stuff and then kind of second-guessing it at the same time because we’re trying to get in position. Yeah, I mean, it just didn’t play out in a great way. It’s kind of hard to say exactly (what went wrong), I mean, just with the timing of trying to make it happen. I think it was a good move to try to get that going, but just sort of played out in an unfortunate way.”
Mazzulla said he was at fault for the mix-up. Though he said he just wanted to “get the best possible people on the play in order for us to defend (that action) with only five seconds left,” he said he communicated the matchups too late.
“And it put our guys in a tough spot,” Mazzulla said. “Our guys played great for 48 minutes, or 47 minutes and 30 seconds and I didn’t help them close it at the end. So I have to be better.”
Before walking into the Celtics tunnel after the game, Brown stopped for a quick conversation with assistant coach Tony Dobbins. The two men appeared to be discussing the confusion on the final possession.
After a little more time to digest what happened, Brown said the Celtics should have just stayed with their initial matchups. Still, he saw the rationale in trying to switch before the beginning of Houston’s possession.
“We should’ve probably stayed,” Brown said. “But if you can sniff it out early to see what they’re running, ‘cause you see how they lined up, then you try to get one of your better defenders in an action. So that’s what we were trying to do there. It happens and it cost us at the end.”
The Celtics gave up an even easier basket on the previous Houston possession when Kornet allowed Sengun to cut straight to the rim for an open dunk.
Though Mazzulla also tried to pin that mistake on his coaching, Kornet said he put himself in a bad position on the play. He said he “kind of gave (Sengun) a lane to the basket and he obviously took it.”
“I should have fouled just to (force the Rockets) to take it out again,” said Kornet, indicating that he should have used the Celtics’ final foul to give.
Whatever blame the players tried to take, Mazzulla wasn’t having it.
“No, no, no, those last two plays were on me,” Mazzulla said. “Those were my fault. I didn’t put us in the best matchups. I saw the play that they were trying to run. I tried to change the matchups. They put our guys in a tough spot. So that’s a tough one, because I thought our guys did everything to win the game, and they put us in position to win it, and I didn’t help them at the end. So both those plays, 100 percent on me.”
Celtics deal with short-handed issues
When healthy, the Celtics have as much scoring power as any team in the league. But on Monday night, with several key absences in an already difficult matchup, they encountered the spacing issues many clubs face. As talented as they are at most positions, a lack of wing depth is their biggest roster weakness in the best of times. With late scratch Al Horford joining Sam Hauser and Derrick White on the sideline, the Celtics needed to play without three of their best shooters. Kristaps Porziņģis’ early foul trouble only further limited Mazzulla’s lineup options.
It would be easy to blame the coach for trying Neemias Queta and Xavier Tillman together in the first quarter — and maybe, given how difficult scoring was for those groups, Mazzulla should have tried anything else. Still, beyond Payton Pritchard, who drilled his first five 3-pointers before missing a 60-foot heave at the final buzzer, it’s not like the other bench players Mazzulla called upon offered much more shooting than even Queta and Tillman.
The Rockets gleefully ignored Jaden Springer during his brief time on the court and didn’t seem threatened by Jordan Walsh. When Mazzulla used two-way contract player Drew Peterson in the second half, instead of returning to Tillman, Peterson went scoreless over three minutes and missed his only 3-point attempt. Mazzulla could have dusted off rookie Baylor Scheierman, but that would have been a tough assignment for him in such a high-level game.
So, the Celtics dealt with the cramped court. They worked with their imperfect lineups. They rode their starting five, which dominated their first-half minutes together, and left Jayson Tatum on the court for the entire second half.
Brown punished the Rockets’ smallest defenders, including Fred VanVleet and Jalen Green, early. Tatum didn’t score during the first half but took over during the third quarter. When not limited by foul trouble, Porziņģis damaged the Houston defense inside and out. After one violent put-back dunk, he earned a technical foul for bumping Dillon Brooks. Immediately after the call, Porziņģis turned toward the crowd and lifted his arms in the air like a White Walker from “Game of Thrones.” With that gesture, he turned the volume in the arena way up.
The Celtics and Rockets brought out the competitiveness in each other. Brooks barked at the crowd several times while setting a career high with 10 made 3-pointers. Brown woofed back at Brooks after drilling a transition 3-pointer. Horford, who didn’t even play, headed straight toward a referee to argue an offensive foul during one timeout.
The Celtics appeared in full control after surging ahead by 12 points early in the fourth quarter, but six straight empty possessions after that allowed the Rockets to take the lead.
Thompson hurt Boston on both ends during the fourth. Brooks’s run of 3-pointers stunned Brown and Tatum. And the Celtics, with two chances to at least force overtime, couldn’t take care of the details to secure one final stop.
After nearly pulling off what would have been a great win, given the state of their roster, they lost for the seventh time this season after leading by at least 10 points.
“We’ve got to be better down the stretch and execute,” Brown said. “Tonight wasn’t the best example of that, so something we’ve gotta look at for sure.”
(Photo of Amen Thompson driving to the basket against Jaylen Brown in the final seconds of Monday’s game: David Butler II / Imagn Images)
