Celtics Have No Excuse For Losing To (Very) Undermanned Lakers

BOSTON -- The Celtics got right back to work, defending their home parquet against a much lower-tiered Lakers team without LeBron James and Anthony Davis available to play on Thursday night.

No better scenario could exist, right? No James, no Davis, and a No. 9-seeded Los Angeles team that's allowed 135.2 points to opponents in its last five games played with playoff hopes quickly fading before the All-Star break.

Yet, somehow, someway, Boston managed to turn its most favorable matchup of the season through its first 49 games, into the biggest head-scratcher, prompting a one-worded question afterward: how?

"It just happens," Mazzulla said after Boston's 114-105 loss to Los Angeles at TD Garden. "Stretches of bad basketball happen. You work your butt off every day to minimize those, but bad stretches of basketball happen. And we can't sit here and act like we're too entitled for it to happen to us. It happens, and it's a matter of how we respond to it. ... To think that we're not going to go through difficult times during an 82-game NBA season is not the right way to look at it. Am I pissed about losing? Yes. But am I ecstatic about the opportunity for us to grow? I'm even happier about that."

By halftime, the Celtics trailed a Lakers team that had gone 11-17 against teams with records .500 and above, 60-46. A showering of boos followed Boston into its locker room tunnel as going 7-for-23 from three while also comitting 12 turnovers in the first half didn't set the tone for a Gino-wrothy night at the place the C's had gone an NBA-best 22-2.

Meanwhile, James and Davis sat with their feet's kicked back on the sidelines, watching Austin Reaves proceed to score a season-high 32 points and drain seven threes.

When the third quarter opened, nothing changed. The Celtics bridged the scoring gap to a little as six points, then allowed the Lakers to respond with a 6-0 run. At multiple points throughout the final two frames, the opportunity to find a go-ahead run dangled in front of Boston, but constant mistakes continued to allow Los Angeles maintain ownership of the lead.

Mazzulla benched Brown, who tied a season-low with eight points on 4-of-12 shooting from the field, in the third quarter, noting it was an accountability move. On the same night in which Brown was named a 2024 All-Star (for a third time), the 24-year-old went no-show by scoring two points on a 1-for-5 showing from the field in the third and fourth quarters.

"Tonight was a rough night," Jaylen Brown explained. "We take full responsibility for it and it started with that first group. We weren't very good tonight. We came out lackadaisical and it's the NBA, you come out with that mentality you can lose. And that's what we did, we lost."

Brown added: "I guess it's the first time, I feel like all season, we have an experience like this. You don't wanna see that too often. Even though it presents an opportunity, you don't wanna be in this spot, you don't wanna lose games you're not supposed to. You wanna have the right mentality."

Like any other team, championship-caliber or not, the Celtics aren't immune to losing. They got blown out by the Milwaukee Bucks (135-102) and allowed the Los Angeles Clippers (115-96) to outshine them on their own home floor. But losing to the Lakers felt different. It was more self-inflicted than anything as the urgency to attack single-digit deficits wasn't apparent. Boston finished with only seven free-throws total to Los Angeles' 26.

The Celtics left Mazzulla no choice but to waive the white flag and surrender in the fourth quarter with 2:01 left to play, pulling all the starters off the floor while Boston fans fled for the exit tunnels in dissapoinment.

"Like Joe said, we're going through a rough patch and we just gotta get through it," Jayson Tatum said after finishing with 23 points on 8-of-23 shooting. "Obviously (we have to) change some things, but we gotta play better. In reality, we just can't change what just happened."

For a Celtics team that won their first 20 home games and set a franchise record, there's plenty of room to improve -- with two days off -- before Sunday's return to the court against the No. 13 seed Memphis Grizzlies.