CLEVELAND — For three quarters Tuesday night, the Boston Celtics were in cruise control.
Then, in the blink of an eye, their 22-point fourth-quarter lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers disappeared. After Jayson Tatum missed a long time and the Cavaliers successfully overturned a foul called on Darius Garland on the play, Cleveland emerged with an impressive 105-104 victory, snapping Boston's league-leading 11-game winning streak.
“I think we're a much better team than we showed today,” Jaylen Brown said afterward. “Today was just a loss of mentality.
“We had the game and then we felt comfortable, so it was more a question of mentality than of X's and O's. We simply have to be the most disciplined, most militant team. We were not that. We are generally that, and I felt it today and I believe that that's the reason they were able to get back into the game.
“Our mentality was a little lax and we were too careless with the ball. We weren't intentional on offense. We kind of let guys get into tendencies that we were supposed to eliminate. We gave up offensive rebounds, that stuff. That all comes with the mentality”.
For much of the game, it didn't seem like any of those things were going to matter. Boston made 50% of its three-pointers during the first three quarters. They had a comfortable 16-point lead heading into the fourth, one that ballooned to 22 points when Tatum made a layup for a 93-71 lead with 9 minutes left. — and was playing against a Cleveland team that entered the game without Donovan Mitchell and Max Strus due to knee problems and lost Evan Mobley to a sprained ankle late in the third.
Then the fourth quarter passed. Boston was 0-for-8 from deep, while Cavaliers forward Dean Wade was 5-for-5 from deep and 7-for-7 from the field, including a critical dunk with 19.1 seconds left on a shot Garland's failure. — by outscoring the Celtics 20-17 in the final frame.
“The range is pretty high,” Wade said with a smile when asked what that fourth was among his personal accomplishments. “Pretty high… It felt good. The rim seemed really big.”
That offensive rebound was something Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla mentioned several times in his postgame media session, along with several other mental errors and unforced errors Boston made down the stretch.
“We gave up offensive rebounds at the end of the shot clock when we were winning,” Mazzulla said. “I think in situations like this, they get a little more intense and a little more attention to detail. But we've been fouled in the defensive zone before and it didn't hurt us because [it was a] different moment of the game. And so they are the same situations that have been happening. They are simply at a more critical moment. So it's a good conscience for them.”
Then came the last play of the game, after Wade's dunk. Initially, Mazzulla didn't call a timeout, and Tatum brought the ball into the offensive zone, then Derrick White made a pick for the much smaller Garland to lunge toward him, before settling for a difficult step-back jumper in the right side of the line. that was lost for a long time.
It looked like Tatum (15 of 46 in clutch situations this season) would be bailed out when a foul was called on Garland. But Cavaliers coach JB Bickerstaff questioned the call and it was overturned, and crew chief Zach Zarba later told a team reporter that the contact made by Garland on Tatum's leg was due to Tatum hitting it. kicked and therefore it was inadvertent contact.
“I knew the leg kick was in play,” Garland said. “My shin still hurts a little bit, so I'm glad it went over.”
Tatum had a different interpretation, although he also admitted that he should have entered a play faster, instead of waiting for a final shot. Mazzulla said he tried to call a timeout with just under 5 seconds left, but the referees never saw it.
“It was unfortunate,” Tatum, who went 1 for 9 in the quarter, said of the final possession. “I thought they fouled me… but they always say the game isn't won or lost on the last play. There's a lot of things we didn't do right in that fourth quarter that put us in that position.”
He wasn't wrong. Boston's eight misses without making a 3-pointer in the quarter tied the most without making a 3-pointer in a quarter by the Celtics this season, and it was just the fourth time this season that Boston didn't make a 3-pointer in a quarter. The 17 points scored were the team's fewest in a fourth quarter this season, and the Celtics were outscored by 17, their worst point differential in a fourth quarter this season.
After seeing his league-leading winning streak snapped and heading into a potential NBA Finals preview against the Denver Nuggets on Thursday night, Brown said it was important to view this as a lesson in what not to do. it must be done.
“Today matters,” Brown said. “Whether everyone wants to throw it away or not, we have to watch the film and address some things, because that matters. Your habits are everything. Your mentality is everything. And in every game, you can't waste any possession, you can do it”. Don't waste time on the ground.
“So today matters. We need to look at that.”
