Scoring Celtics championship hopes after loss to Thunder – NBC Sports Boston

We are not in the business of denying losses. The Oklahoma City Thunder bullied the Boston Celtics in the second half of Sunday’s potential NBA Finals preview, and the Celtics limped out of the Paycom Center with their first double-digit loss of the season.

Boston’s offense was a clumsy disaster in the second half, and the Thunder made things look even worse with their physicality and grit, whether it was ripping away loose balls and creating easy transition opportunities or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander beating on Jayson Tatum the edge to counteract. Boston’s last gasp comeback attempt.

The Celtics didn’t do themselves any favors with their shooting. In the shadow of Oklahoma City’s Bricktown, the Celtics built their own brick city. Boston is now 5-5 against teams ranked in the top 10 in defensive rating, as of Cleaning the Glass tracking, but that point drops to 2-4 when you zoom in on teams that are top 10 in both defensive rating and point differential.

By comparison, OKC is 7-2 against those teams and Cleveland is 3-1, with Boston being the only loss.

It seems fair to suggest that Boston’s offense was exceptionally bad in Sunday’s game. In fact, here are three of our favorite statistical anomalies from that tilt:

1. Tatum tallied 15 potential assists in Sunday’s loss, well above his season average of 11.6 per game, and the Celtics made just one (ONE!) of those shots.

Tatum routinely generated quality looks for teammates, but the only make of his feeds was a Kristaps Porzingis alley-oop dunk in transition. Tatum is averaging 14.8 points created by assists per game, but that number dropped to two in Oklahoma City.

2. Boston didn’t do itself any favors with the clean looks it generated against Oklahoma City. The Celtics were 10 of 27 (37 percent) on all open shots (4 to 6 feet) and an awful 3 of 21 (14.3 percent) on all wide-open looks (6-plus feet), per NBA tracking.

Boston was 8 of 39 (20.5 percent) on all open-or-better 3-pointers, including missing 17 of the 20 wide-open 3-pointers it took. For the season, the Celtics are shooting 38.9 percent on all wide-open 3s.

The Thunder’s defense deserves all the credit for how uncomfortable they made the Celtics, but Boston’s 48 open shots were just slightly lower than their season average in open looks (48.6).

3. Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, Sam Hauser and Payton Pritchard — five of Boston’s top seven offensive players — combined to miss all 19 shots they attempted in the second half of Sunday’s game. Suffice it to say, this is not the Banner 19 that Boston is chasing.

Again, this shouldn’t take away from how dominant the Thunder were in the second half. They are undeniably the best team in basketball to start the 2024-2025 season and tied Boston in knots for the final 24 minutes. We’re looking forward to a seven-game showdown in June.

But both teams have a long way to go to get there.

When the Celtics hit one of those bumps in the road — and with 10 losses through their first 36 games, they’ve hit more than expected to this point — the question is, how will the team respond? Even after the matchup of the season to date, there’s still an important doubleheader of games to cap off a scary week, and these games may tell us if Boston’s second-half stumble in OKC was an outlier or something more sinister.

The Celtics wrap up a four-game road trip against Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets on Tuesday night, then return home to host the storming Sacramento Kings on Friday night at TD Garden. Both opponents rank in the top 10 in point difference, per CTG tracking, and has two of the top seven offenses in the NBA.

A 3-1 trip would take some of the sting off the stumble in OKC, even if it was the crown jewel of the trip. Porzingis had noticed how Boston players huddled before this trip out west, taking stock of a disappointing December. A hot start to 2025 felt like this was a bit of a statement ride, but the Celtics need to finish strong to dispel any lingering concern after the OKC loss.

Kristaps Porzingis reacts to the Celtics starting their four-game West Coast road trip 2-0 and shares that the team held a ‘look in the mirror’ meeting beforehand after a disappointing December for the team.

What makes Sunday’s loss a little more frustrating is that it was one of the rare times this season that Boston had its entire top eight healthy. The Celtics had a full roster for the first time since November, and yet not only did the offense crater in the second half, but the bench was largely ineffective.

Aaron Wiggins generated more field goals (six) than Boston’s four-man bench group of Pritchard, Hauser, Luke Kornet and Al Horford (five). Pritchard, a front-runner for Sixth Man of the Year, was 0-for-5 and limited to less than 11 minutes of floor time.

Some will be quick to consider whether Boston should be thinking more about adding a piece to their bench before next month’s trade deadline. We’ll continue to note how difficult it will be to find someone talented enough to routinely crack Boston’s top nine, especially with the Celtics’ limited options to tinker.

Like most bumps these Celtics hit, it seems to come back to a common theme: Boston needs to play more consistently in all facets of the game. No one worried about the team’s offense Sunday as it built a 13-point lead with 65 points in the first half. But it’s still scary how good the Celtics can be in a 24-minute stretch and how unbelievably bad they can be in the next 24.

You can blame the schedule (three games in four nights on the road is no easy task) or even the officiating (although we’ll remind you that the Celtics shot 11 more free throws than the Thunder and the refs were the least of your problems). But the simple fact is that Oklahoma City dominated the second half with their physicality and grit. The Celtics didn’t match it on a big stage.

Tuesday’s tilt in Denver may prove that half was an outlier. But the Celtics must 1) bury that loss and 2) bring the necessary intent. We keep saying it: It’s hard to stay focused when you can’t reach your one true goal until June. But you have to find something that moves you before then.

The Celtics haven’t made their lives any easier with the way they’ve gone astray at times. We’ve been spoiled by how easily they routinely made winning look throughout the 2023-24 season. This season is far more of a grind, and the Celtics need to embrace the focus necessary to get where they want to go.