Boston - The old saying about the NBA is that it is, at its core, a make-or-miss league. If ever there was a game that proved this to be true, it was the LA Clippers' 91-82 win over the Boston Celtics at TD Garden on Wednesday night.
Boston (16–19), who have now lost three in a row and four of their last five matches, had one of the worst shooting performances not only this season but in recent memory, as the Celtics scored 4–42. Shots from 3-point range - including missing loads of wide-open shots - losing a second straight game to a heavy short-handed team.
"I think so," said Jaylen Brown, who scored 30 but scored 13-for-36 for the game, when asked whether shooting, good or bad, can be contagious. "We missed a lot of shots, and I thought we had a lot of open forms.
"We pushed the ball and we got ... I know he played the zone, but we got a lot of great shots, I thought. Wide-open looks. And they didn't go down."
- The numbers support that, at least to some extent. Here's a quick run through the bloody details, courtesy of ESPN Stats & Information:
- The Celtics' 4-for-42 shooting performance was the second-worst ever by a team shooting at least 40 3s from 3-point range (only 4-for-45 performances by the Houston Rockets last February 28). Leaving behind the weather).a
- Boston went 1-for-18 in the fourth quarter, which included missing its last 15 3-pointers of the game. Those 17 misses in the quarter were the most in a single quarter by any team in at least the last 25 seasons.
- Boston's 82 points on 101 field goal attempts* is its lowest points in a game with at least 100 field goal attempts since the 3-point line was introduced in the 1979–80 season.
- Boston's 4-for-39 performance on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers is the worst night on catch-and-shoot opportunities for any team since Second Spectrum used tracking data in the 2013–14 season. Introduced, in which a minimum of 35 was used. Attempt. Including Wednesday's game, there have been 482 such games, and Boston was the last.
- The difference between Boston's effective field goal percentage (36.63) and its expected effective field goal percentage (56.68) was 20.05 – the worst mark of any team in any game this season.
- Brown's 36 field goal attempts without an assist is the most by any player since former Celtic Antoine Walker took several shots after losing to the Washington Wizards on January 7, 1998. That said, Brown also had eight potential assists - tied for the most games of any player this season in which he finished with zero assists.
In short: The Celtics got a lot of wide-open, quality shots - and missed almost all of them.
However, none of this changes the fact that Boston has now abandoned back-to-back games for teams devastated by a combination of injuries and COVID-19. The Clippers were so short-handed that they had two players arrive in Boston hours before the game — including James Ennis, who played against them in a win over the Brooklyn Nets in Los Angeles on Monday — to fill out their roster.
The loss leaves Boston in 10th place in the Eastern Conference standings with the Toronto Raptors. More importantly, it left the Celtics searching for answers on how to get out of a funk that had recently turned positive during the toughest month of their season taking care of the opposite side.
"I think we got a very open look, despite what the figures would say," Brown said. "I don't think we were force shots. I thought we got a lot of open looks that didn't go down.
"I think it's an unfortunate timing because we wanted to respond from the last game. A lot of them came up to fight, and we just came up short. We f---ing came up short."
Unlike the game Brown referred to — Monday's loss to the short-handed Minnesota Timberwolves, one of Boston's worst performances of the season — coach Ime Udoka said there were few positives to take away from the performance.
Boston removed the Clippers on the glass, caught 21 offensive rebounds and took 20 more shots. The Celtics made only eight turnovers, compared to 14 for the Clippers, and held LA on 91 points.
But that wasn't enough to pull off a bad shooting night—one that plunges Boston further down the eastern standings, another disappointing night full of them.
"We get 20 more shots and we keep a team up to 91 points... it's a game we must win," Udoka said.
Or as Grant Williams put it: "I think shooting is something we should get better at, I guess."