Things aren’t going so well for the Celtics right now.
Boston’s latest blow came Wednesday night in the form of a 127-112 loss to the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena. It’s the eighth loss in 11 games and 14th of their last 21.
It’s hard to find something to like right now amid one of the team’s worst skids in years. In fact, Kendrick Perkins thinks they’ve hit rock bottom.
“The only way they can go is up, if they decide to go up,” he said during NBC Sports Boston’s postgame coverage.
In his mind, it all starts with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who, despite being named Eastern Conference All-Star reserves this year, have been underperforming of late. And Wednesday was no exception.
“Tonight, all I saw out of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum was bad body language, shooting up a whole lot of shots, complaining to the referees (and) not playing any type of defense,” he said. “I mean, listen. (Danilo) Gallinari went off for almost 40 points tonight. Are you kidding me? That makes me want to go get back on the treadmill and the elliptical and get in shape because if he’s out there doing that, I know I can go out there and get at least 10 rebounds. The Celtics made him look like an All-Star tonight. It’s just ridiculous.”
Then, Perkins offered the team a serious reality check.
“Right now, I’mma tell all the coaches and players and whoever that’s part of the organization: No one is going to feel sorry for you. The Boston fans are not going to feel sorry for you. … This performance tonight was unacceptable and this was the worst loss of the season just because of the effort. Now, if they would have lost the game and they would have been fighting, they just couldn’t make shots, I understand that. But to go out there and to put on this type of performance, not getting back on defense, it was just horrible all across the board.
“And guess what? The only thing Brad did right tonight was sub the guys out early and let the bench come in and play with energy and have some type of fight. Because I’ll tell you one thing … all the veterans, they had no fight whatsoever.”
Well, he’s not wrong.
The last month has been particularly rough for Boston, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. In the end, something needs to change somewhere somehow if the Celtics want any chance at turning things around.
