BOSTON — Energy is great. Every coach loves energy.
But you’re not going to win many basketball games on energy alone.
That was coach Brad Stevens’ message Thursday night after his Boston Celtics dropped a 103-95 decision in Game 3 of their first-round NBA playoff series with the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Cavs now can clinch the series with a win Sunday at TD Garden.
“The bottom line (Thursday) was we didn’t play with any poise,” Stevens said. “I don’t know if it was the terrific environment in there, if we were just — I don’t know if it was down 0-2, I don’t know what the deal was, but I thought (the Cavaliers) really played with poise and in control. We did not. And I thought that was the biggest difference in the game.
“Our effort was great, we played really hard, but we’ve got to play better. We’ve got to play better. And we’ve said it over and over. It’s an eight-point game at the end of the day, and there’s so many possessions that we threw away.”
This lack of poise was most evident at the end of each quarter, as the Celtics were unable to finish any of the four on a high note. Cleveland outscored Boston 34-16 over the final 2:30 of each frame, most notably ending the second quarter on a 12-0 run to take an eight-point lead into halftime.
“You know, you hope you learn from this experience (Thursday night),” Stevens said. “We’ve got a lot of guys doing this for the first time, and I thought in some ways that, again, we played with tremendous energy, we played with great spirit, but we just didn’t make good, sound basketball plays most of the night.”
Questions to players about Stevens’ comments yielded varying responses.
“I think we bounced back,” guard Evan Turner said. “I don’t know in regards to poise, but I think we were resilient. We had a lot of comebacks and we had a lot of runs and we had a lot of tough runs that led to success for them, but you know, to be down three with a minute or two minutes left, it’s somewhat great, but obviously, I don’t think we did a great job to fully help us get over the hump.”
Guard Avery Bradley, meanwhile, agreed with his coach’s assessment, saying the Celtics too often looked for knockout punches rather than following their usual blueprint.
“I feel like we tried to make the home-run play a lot,” Bradley said. “We were just taking a lot of threes and not making the simple plays like driving and kicking.”
Bradley was one of the prime culprits of attempting said home-run plays. He lofted a team-high six 3-pointers but found the bottom of the basket on only one. In his mind, however, missed shots were only a secondary problem for the C’s.
“Those plays really don’t matter,” said Bradley, who finished with 18 points in the loss. “Even though we missed shots like that, it’s the little things that do, like the offensive rebounds and the turnovers. That’s what they were scoring on. We’re going to miss shots throughout a game, so we’re not worried about that. We can’t control that. Things we can control is turning the ball over and getting offensive rebounds. That’s just effort to me.”
Thumbnail photo via David Butler II/USA TODAY Sports Images
