The modern NBA is about as feedback-friendly as any sport has ever been. The proliferation of 3-point shots means that scoring large amounts of points very quickly, or, simultaneously, missing a ton of difficult shots over the course of several quarters, means that there are very few truly safe avenues in basketball. ball. However, one barrier that has not been broken this season has been the rise to 30 points.
When Al Horford scored three points with 4:23 left in the second quarter of Monday’s game between the Boston Celtics And Atlanta Falcons, he pushed his team’s lead to this 30-point threshold. That effectively meant the game was over…right? Well, you read the title. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.
From the moment Horford made that 3-pointer until the end of the first half, Atlanta went on a 18-6 run. He continued to chip away at that lead, winning the third quarter 34-22. And then, finally, a 3-pointer by Wes Matthews with 9:58 left in the fourth quarter gave the Hawks the lead back at 97-96.
Both teams came back and were in fourth place for the rest of the fourth quarter, but DeJounte Murray regained the advantage definitively one minute from the end, and De’Andre Hunter He sealed it with a 3-pointer that gave Atlanta a four-point lead with 10 seconds left. After the game, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla tried to look for the positives.
“It’s a good lesson,” Mazzula said. “When you let a team hang around, they make sideline plays, points off turnovers, 3-pointers, offensive rebounds. Credit to them for fighting back.”
It’s a lesson the Celtics seem to learn quite frequently. After all, it was less than three weeks ago, on March 5, that Boston blew a 22-point team lead. Cleveland Cavaliers in a humiliating, nationally televised defeat. Boston has only lost 15 games all season, but has blown double-digit leads in more than half of those games (eight). Last season, the Celtics blew a 28-point lead at home to lose to the Brooklyn nets.
Historically speaking, overcoming this embarrassment seemed almost impossible. As of Monday, only nine teams in NBA history had lost by 30 points. Today, the Celtics are tied at 10. Fortunately, that wasn’t the biggest blown lead in league history. This dubious honor belongs to the 1996-97 season Denver Nuggetswhich allowed Utah Jazz to turn a 36-point deficit into a four-point victory.
Most teams, even the best, blow a handful of big leads every year. It just depends on the league’s current shooting profile and its 82-game schedule. Boston loses so rarely that any loss is going to be magnified. Every other team in the league has lost at least six more games than the Celtics. To some extent, this amplifies their rare failures. That they were missing Jrue Vacations And Derrick White against Atlanta should offer some relief. The Celtics were not at full strength.
But the Celtics have developed a worrying habit of falling asleep at the wheel. You can get away with it during the regular season games in March. They still have a 10.5 game lead for the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. It wasn’t a game they needed to win. But that kind of inconsistency can be the difference between survival and elimination in the playoffs. Even though the Celtics don’t lose often, it’s not a good sign that so many of their losses seem to happen the same way.
