It wasn’t a banner night for the Boston Celtics on Wednesday. In fact, if they continue to play the way they did, banners will be the last thing they have to worry about.
Boston fell to the Indiana Pacers, 117-112, at TD Garden in a game that was far uglier than the final score would indicate. The Celtics entered halftime down by 28 points, playing about as uninspired as they have all season.
Naturally, the performance brought out the boobirds from the TD Garden faithful, something that didn’t seem to get to Jayson Tatum too much.
“You want to win every game,” Tatum said postgame, per NBC Sports Boston video. “There’s some things we gotta change, some things we gotta work on. But, (we’re) 22-10 in 32 games. We’ve got 50 left? That was some quick math, I went to Duke. We’ve got 50 games left man, but it sucks.
“We got booed, you never want to do that. Rightfully so. It’s all about how we bounce back. There’s literally nothing we can do right now to change what happened. Just gotta get ready for the next one.”
Despite the loss, Boston did find some things to build off in the second half. After receiving a simple, yet effective, speech from interim coach Joe Mazzulla in the locker room at halftime, the Celtics cut the Pacers’ lead all the way down to five before running out of time.
Tatum himself had another solid scoring night, finishing with 41 points on 13-of-25 shooting. Robert Williams continued his improvement with each passing game of his Celtics return, grabbing seven offensive rebounds in the comeback attempt. Malcolm Brogdon had a solid night against his former team, scoring 18 points and dishing out seven assists in 30 off the bench.
So, no, it wasn’t a good night for the Celtics. But an irritable holiday crowd and an ugly first half don’t seem to have Boston looking for the panic button.
