The Boston Celtics faced just one glaring issue during Thursday night’s overtime loss in Atlanta, and it's not one that they usually encounter: a lapse on the defensive glass.
The Hawks missed 53 field-goal attempts but managed to regain possession of 17 of those shots, which led to a 28-8 advantage in second-chance points.
“That’s the game, right there,” head coach Joe Mazzulla stated bluntly after the 123-122 defeat.
Fortunately, that normally is not the game for Boston. Defensive rebounding has been one of its strong suits this season, and while the lopsided second-chance scoring margin was frustrating, it’s not an issue to be concerned about.
Entering the night, the Celtics had the seventh-best defensive rebounding percentage in the league (72.8 percent) along with the fourth-best overall rebounding percentage (51.7 percent). On Thursday night, those percentages were an unusually low 64.3 and 45.3, respectively.
Boston also averages the seventh-most second-chance points (14.7) while surrendering the eighth-fewest (13.3) in that department.
So what caused the anomaly?
As Mazzulla explained, “[The Hawks] do a good job of crashing. When you’re in their pick-and-roll spacing, you want to shift and when you shift off those guys, they do a great job of cutting and being behind you and being able to get there. So I’m sure there’s a few [rebounding situations] that we can get better at, but that, to me, is the game right there: offensive rebounds and second-chance points. I thought we played a hell of a game outside of that component.”
Outside of the rebounding, the Celtics shot the ball to their typical standard with splits of 47.9/38.9/85.7. They assisted on 28 of their 45 field goals and had a 2.3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.
Jayson Tatum went off for 31 points, 13 rebounds, and six assists – his 20th career game with at least 30, 10, and five. Derrick White dropped 22 points on 8-of-11 shooting, including 5-of-6 from deep. He and Jrue Holiday corralled seven rebounds and dished out five assists apiece. And Kristaps Porzingis contributed 20 points, seven rebounds, and three blocks.
On the other end, Dejounte Murray scored a career-high 44 points, but that wasn’t because the Celtics couldn’t contain him; it was because he took a whopping 44 field-goal attempts – the fifth-most that an individual has ever attempted against the Celtics and the most since Kobe Bryant in 2002.
Murray also sunk the game-winner over Holiday, but as Mazzulla noted, “Jrue stole it from him two plays earlier, so I would want nothing more than Jrue Holiday on Dejounte Murray at the end of the game.”
After it was all said and done, that one shot wasn’t the most noteworthy difference in the game. The second-chance scoring margin was the main problem, but based on a full season of data, it’s not an issue that anyone should be worried about.