Celtics Notebook: Half-bad not good enough for the Celtics

It’s befitting a .500 team — especially this one — that one of their most frustrating losses of the season caught them at their best AND worst.

“In a lot of ways, it was our best 28 minutes of the year,” Brad Stevens said of the first part of the Celtics’ overtime loss in New Orleans on Sunday. “The problem is, the game is 48 minutes.”

When the Celtics regrouped for practice in Dallas on Monday, the focus was on the last 25 minutes — the stretch of time it took to blow a 24-point lead before fading further in overtime.

Of prime concern to Stevens is how poorly his team has performed in the fourth quarter this season despite the presence of three high-level scorers — Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Kemba Walker.

Tatum spoke of the team’s tendency to play not to lose, instead of with a killer instinct — an issue very apparent as the Pelicans melted that 24-point Celtics lead.

Though Walker’s performances have improved, the veteran point guard slipped with a 14-point, 5-for-21 (1-for-13 from arc) afternoon against the Pelicans. He’s struggled in the fourth quarter, shooting 27.5% in that frame this season, and on Sunday scored once in the fourth. Overall he had two points on 1-for-9 shooting over the fourth quarter and overtime.

For now, anyway, Walker’s late-game makeup has matched that of his team.

“It happens, just have to find a way to be better, that’s it. It’s a key part of my work, you know. It’ll come,” said Walker. “It’ll come at some point, you know. Going through some ups and downs. Only the strong survive, to tell you the truth. When times get tough I’m not the type to put my head down and be frustrated over it. Just continue to work hard and my time will come.

“I mean, I just missed. It’s not much I can say, that’s really it. I work hard on my game, I put my work in to make those shots. I got my shots up the night before and on the day of the game, it was a rough night. That’s really it. That’s about all I can say to tell you the truth.”

In his other role — that of team leader — Walker feels confident that despite the grueling results, his team isn’t starting to fracture.

“We won’t (turn on each other),” said Walker. “That’s one of the reasons I’m here. I’m one of the leaders of this team. One of the reasons I’m here is to prevent situations like that. Like I said before, teams go through hard times. We’re just going through a bit of adversity — it’s all about how you get out of it. We’re gonna continue to build, continue to trust each other. We’ll hit our stride.”

Walker also insisted that this team hasn’t adopted a defeatist attitude.

“I just know, I just know it’s not,” he said. “We have guys who really love to compete, who really love to play this game. I know them all really well. We’re having a tough time — we’ve all just been having a tough time being consistent. We go into our film sessions and we learn, see our mistakes and try our best to get better in the areas we can improve in. That’s what we’re gonna continue to do — we’re going to continue to follow Brad’s lead, and I’ll try my best to help as much as possible, going forward, Jayson and Jaylen and Marcus (Smart).”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3qMzNWL