Mazz: Celtics have nowhere to hide this time
By Tony Massarotti, 98.5 The Sports Hub
There is no Kyrie Irving to blame this time, no simple fix, no place to hide. The youngest and most talented of the Celtics are now being schooled, plain and simple, and they look soft and weak. They build sizable leads and blow them, and now, behind closed doors after another demoralizing loss, their locker room is erupting.
So what happened this time?
“We pulled apart,” said coach Brad Stevens.
Or, more accurately, they broke apart.
Just like last year.
So here we are again, Celtics followers, in the midst of a high-pressure playoff series – without Irving and Al Horford this time – and the Celtics are falling apart like a beachside sandcastle. In retrospect, maybe there is a reason Horford left, too. Independent of what you think about the Miami Heat, about whether Miami is better, the same or worse, there is no avoiding the fact that the Celtics certainly shouldn’t be losing like this, which is to say that the Celtics are melting when the temperature hits a mere 75 degrees.
Is it because they are young, still relatively inexperienced? Maybe. In the long run, there is also the chance this will be good for them. But there are a dozen eggs now on the faces on the men wearing green in this series. The Celtics have blown double-digit leads in four of their defeats this postseason, twice to the Heat, who overcame a 17-point deficit last night after overcoming a 14-point margin (in the fourth quarter) of Game 1.
Celtics guard Jaylen Brown (left) talks with Marcus Smart in the fourth quarter of Game 2 of the 2020 Eastern Conference Finals against the Miami Heat. (Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports)
And yet, more disturbing than blowing those leads is how the Celtics have responded to the setbacks. They have looked meek. They appeared intimidated. They were shaken. Beneath the great promise of Tatum and the expanding potential of Brown, the Celtics look young and scared and unsure of themselves. They look a little hollow. They look weak. They are – present tense – indisputably vulnerable.
The Heat know this.
And now, so does everybody else.
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Where does this go from here? Time will tell. Worse than losing to the Heat – and there is never any real shame in simply losing – the Celtics are developing a rather embarrassing label. Kyrie clearly wasn’t the only problem, and it certainly seems now that he was at least partly right. Horford saw it, too. Along with great promise, youth brings ignorance, inexperience, naivete, and vanity. And it inevitably brings lessons that are impossible to ignore.
Sometimes, after all, you don’t realize how good you can be.
And sometimes you’re not as good as you think you are.
You can hear Tony Massarotti weekdays from 2-6 p.m. EST on the Felger & Massarotti program. Follow him on Twitter @TonyMassarotti.
