BOSTON — Jayson Tatum and the Celtics had larger hopes for Christmas Day’s matchup in opposition to the Philadelphia 76ers at TD Backyard.
The motivation of a nicely overdue response to Monday night time’s crumbling to the undermanned Orlando Magic, coupled with the spirit of the vacation season, nevertheless, simply wasn’t sufficient. Boston swallowed a tricky capsule within the type of a 118-114 loss to Philadelphia regardless of Jayson Tatum’s (loud) return to the ground — Tatum recorded a 32-point, 15-rebound double-double and shot 11-of-20 from the sphere.
Admittedly, it wasn’t an total crew effort as much as par for the reigning NBA champions.
“There’s issues that we gotta deal with. We gotta be higher,” Tatum mentioned postgame. “It’s nonetheless a protracted season. No one’s panicking. You simply have to have the ability to navigate the emotional rollercoaster of an NBA season. It feels rather a lot worse than it really is. We’re not panicking or something. We gotta man up and look within the mirror and determine some issues that we gotta do higher at. Everybody’s absolutely succesful and we’ve at all times accomplished an excellent job at responding and I’ve little doubt that we’ll.”
Oddly sufficient, the Celtics did reply to their defensive underperformance — by holding the Sixers to 16 factors within the third quarter — however the momentum was short-lived.
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Boston’s signal of life in overcoming 60 factors mixed between Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid, plus Caleb Martin’s seven 3-pointers made, rapidly took an premature U-turn and despatched the Celtics again to sq. one. There, Boston sat scratching its head and watched a 108-105 deficit within the final 2:25 minutes of regulation flip into an outpouring of followers fleeing for the exits.
“I believe we gotta take some possession,” Tatum confessed. “We gotta be higher. We gotta acknowledge the issues that we’ve accomplished not so nice. We gotta look within the mirror and man up, and we simply gotta be higher. We absolutely consider in ourselves, the issues that we are able to do once we’re absolutely locked in and we’ve accomplished it time and time once more. We’ve simply had some lapses lately. We simply gotta get again on monitor.”
The Celtics dedicated 13 turnovers to Philadelphia’s six, shot 61.5% from the free-throw line (on 13 makes an attempt) and by no means held a lead within the double figures. It didn’t simply rain, it poured, leaving Boston in the identical place it entered the ground on Christmas Day — in want of a refueling response to mild a fuse.
And although the Magic — with out Paolo Banchero and Franz Wager — and the Sixers — who’re nonetheless climbing out of the Jap Convention’s coffin at 11-17 — acquired the higher of Boston, the Celtics aren’t questioning who they’re deep down.
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“I really feel like being to a few straight convention finals, two Finals appearances within the final three years, we’ve been getting all people’s finest shot during the last three years,” Tatum mentioned. “So it’s not one thing that ought to catch us off guard or something like that. It ought to be one thing that’s anticipated.”
