Good sign for the Celtics: Everyone’s pissed and hates losing, and Joe Mazzulla loves it

The Boston Celtics' nine-game winning streak was snapped in Wednesday night's in 124-103 loss to the Miami Heat. It was just the second loss since February for the C's -- they're 14-2 in their last 16 games.

Despite the strong run, losing doesn't sit well with head coach Joe Mazzulla and the guys in the Celtics' locker room -- and that's a good thing, for a team with aspirations to repeat as NBA champions.

"We’re all pissed. We all hate losing and that was my message was it's a good reminder that losing still sucks. I love the fact that the staff’s miserable, guys were pissed, not happy about it," said Mazzulla during his post-game press conference. "But we’re going to come back and do it again the next day. I think it’s great. At the end of the day, it doesn’t have much of an impact, but it still sucks and we’re all miserable right now."

The 'I love the fact that' everyone is miserable mentality has been one of Mazzulla's calling card essentially since he took the Celtics job. In the loss the Celtics were missing some starters, and again they've been on a very good run, but an obvious criticism of the C's effort is once again the three-pointer.

It's been said before, but the Celtics live and die by the three. On Wednesday, they died by it -- for lack of a better term -- only hitting from beyond the arc 27.9 percent of the time. Mind you, it wasn't for lack of trying, they attempted 43 (only converting 12), but could not get them to fall.

So, in a performance where a made three is so hard to come by, why waste 31 offensive drives on it. Comparatively, the Heat attempted 30 three pointers and hit them at 46.7 percent (14 made). Had the Celtics attempted the same amount of threes as the Heat (30) and used the 13 other drives to attempt a two pointer, they could have expected nearly 16 more points (they had shot the two at 61.4 percent).

Although the extra 16 points would not have beaten the Heat, it goes to show that they would have a better chance to compete if they rely on the two more heavily in games when threes won't go in.

Luke Graham is a digital sports content co-op for 98.5 the Sports Hub. He is currently a sophomore at Northeastern University studying communications and media studies. Read all his articles here, and follow him on X @LukeGraham05.