CLEVELAND — For three quarters of Tuesday evening, the Boston Celtics were in cruise control.
Then, in the blink of an eye, their 22-point fourth-quarter lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers was gone. After a Jayson Tatum fadeaway missed long and the Cavaliers managed to overturn a called foul Garland of Darius on the play, Cleveland emerged with a superb Victory 105-104ending Boston’s league-leading 11-game winning streak.
“I think we are a much better team than what we showed today,” Jaylen Brown then said. “Today it was just a loss of mentality.
“We played the game and then felt comfortable, so it was more about mindset than X’s and O’s. We just have to be the more disciplined and more militant. We weren’t that. Usually we are, and we I felt that today and I think that’s why they were able to come back in the game.
“Our mindset was a little too lax and we were too careless with the ball. We weren’t intentional on offense. We kind of let guys get into tendencies that we were supposed to eliminate. We gave up offensive rebounds, etc. it all just comes from a mindset.”
For much of the game, it didn’t seem like any of these things mattered. Boston hit 50% of its triples in the first three quarters, had a comfortable 16-point lead heading into the fourth — a lead that ballooned to 22 points when Tatum made a layup for a 93-point lead. 71 with 9 minutes left – – and playing against a Cleveland team that came into the game missing Donovan Mitchell And Max Strus with knee problems and lost Evan Mobley to a sprained ankle at the end of the third.
But then the fourth quarter happened. Boston went 0 of 8 from deep, while the Cavaliers advance Dean Wade went 5 of 5 from deep and 7 of 7 from the field – including a critical tip dunk with 19.1 seconds left to follow a missed shot from Garland – as he outscored the Celtics 20-17 on his own in final frame.
“The rank is pretty high,” Wade said with a smile when asked where that quarterback ranks among his personal accomplishments. “Pretty high. … It was good. The rim looked really big.”
That offensive rebound was something Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla brought up several times during his postgame media session, along with several other mental errors and unforced errors Boston made down the stretch .
“We gave up offensive rebounds at the end of the shot clock when we were winning,” Mazzulla said. “I think, in situations like this, they get a little more intense and a little more attention to detail. But we’ve committed fouls in the backcourt before, it didn’t hurt us because that [it was a] different moment of the game. So these are the same situations that occurred. They are simply in a more critical period. So it’s a good increased awareness for them. »
Then there was the final play of the game, after Wade’s tip dunk. Mazzulla didn’t call a timeout initially, and Tatum brought the ball to the frontcourt, then Derrick White made him a pick to have the much smaller Garland switched to him, before settling for a tough step-back jumper to the right side of the lane that missed long.
In short, it looked like Tatum — who has now hit 15 of 46 in clutch situations this season, the worst shooting percentage of anyone with at least 45 attempts in those moments, according to ESPN Stats. & Searching for information – would be bailed out when Garland was called for a foul. But Cavaliers coach JB Bickerstaff disputed the call and it was overturned, with crew chief Zach Zarba later telling a pool reporter that the contact Garland made on Tatum’s leg was due to Tatum kicking him out and therefore it was inadvertent contact.
“I knew the leg kick was kind of in play,” Garland said. “My shin still hurts a little bit, so I’m glad it got knocked down.”
Tatum had a different interpretation, although he also admitted that he should have gotten into the game quicker, instead of waiting for one last shot. Meanwhile, Mazzulla said he tried to call a timeout with just under 5 seconds remaining, but the referees never saw it.
“It was unfortunate,” Tatum, who went 1 for 9 in the quarter, said of the final possession. “I thought I made a mistake…but they always say the game is neither won nor lost on the last play. There were a lot of things we didn’t do well in that fourth quarter- time that put us in this position.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. Boston’s eight misses without a score on 3s in Game 4 are tied for the most without a hit in a quarter by the Celtics this season, and it was only the fourth time this season that Boston failed to make a 3 in A quarter. The 17 points scored were the team’s fewest points in a fourth quarter this season, and the Celtics were outscored by 17 – their worst point differential in a fourth quarter – time this season.
After seeing their league-leading winning streak come to a halt and heading toward a possible NBA Finals preview against the Denver Nuggets On Thursday night, Brown said it was important to view this as a lesson in what not to do.
“Today matters,” Brown said. “Whether everyone wants to throw it away or not, we have to watch the film and address some things, because it matters. Your habits are everything. Your mentality is everything. And in every game, you can’t waste any possessions, you can I don’t waste time on the floor.
“So today matters. We have to think about it.”
