Celtics’ Joe Mazzulla Offers Strange Take After Brutal OT Loss To Cavs

The Boston Celtics collapsed after what appeared to be an impressive assembly of a complete four quarters against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday night.

Without the presence of Jayson Tatum, Al Horford and Robert Williams, the night was off to a daunting start at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. But quickly, the leadership charges of Jaylen Brown in the starting lineup and Malcolm Brogdon off the bench cornered the Cavaliers throughout the night.

Then came the fourth quarter. The Celtics began the final frame with a 14-point lead and failed to preserve it. Quickly, the Cavaliers put together a 16-6 run to take the lead as the Celtics struggled to buy a bucket, shooting just 6-of-22 from the field in the fourth quarter, including 2-of-10 from 3-point range.

This positioned an utter failure from Grant Williams, who had the confidence to trash-talk Donovan Mitchell at the free-throw line, but not the ability to connect on a single attempt with the game on the line.

Ultimately, Williams and the Celtics shrunk in the golden minutes, resulting in a hard-to-swallow 118-114 loss to mark the team’s third in a row. But none of this triggered the concern meter of head coach Joe Mazzulla, who offered a strange reflection on what he saw.

“You have to go through those things,” Mazzulla told reporters, as seen on NBC Sports Boston’s postgame coverage. “And so, to me, in order to experience success, you have to have failures. And so, I don’t like losing. I hate losing. But I understand it. And I know that you need to do it in order to get to where you wanna get to.”

Mazzulla added: “I don’t think it was that excruciating.”

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Is failure essential? Certainly. But do the Celtics need to experience poor execution on three straight occasions, which spoke more to what they could control rather than any in-game circumstances that others could argue would excuse crumbling in crunch time?

With Tatum, Horford and Williams sidelined, the Celtics already entered a losing situation. But with 50 points from the bench, coupled with the severity of all games at this point in the season, spoiling an opportunity to steal a win can’t be underplayed.

With the loss, the C’s fall two games behind the Milwaukee Bucks for the top spot in the Eastern Conference. And with 16 games left, there’s more than enough time for the pendulum to swing either way, which evidently also doesn’t concern the first-year head coach.

“If it gets worse, it needs to get worse,” Mazzulla said. “For whatever reason. I don’t look to anything except what do we need to do every day, get to where we wanna get to. Everything that we’re experiencing from a basketball standpoint is for a reason.”

Mazzulla did reveal an underlying sense of anger in one particular area.

“We haven’t learned about offensive rebounding yet,” Mazzulla said. “And this might be the fifth or sixth loss. And so that part pisses me off. Other than that, it’s just part of it.”