Celtics’ Jayson Tatum Makes This Admission After Stunning Game 1 Loss
It was as if the Boston Celtics were allergic to the green paint on the parquet floor in their Game 1 loss to the New York Knicks to start the Eastern Conference semifinals.
The Celtics couldn’t stop launching 3-pointers despite their ineffectiveness from beyond the arc. Boston set an NBA record by missing an eye-popping 45 triples and they made only 15 attempts from deep to shoot 25% from downtown.
Celtics star Jayson Tatum was part of the problem as he shot 4-for-15 from deep. And unsurprisingly, he believed the Celtics could have taken a different offensive approach when the outside shots weren’t falling.
“There’s a lot of shots we want certain guys taking, and I felt like we got some good looks,” Tatum told reporters, per the Boston Herald’s Zack Cox. “Obviously in hindsight, if we could go back, we’d probably drive the ball a bit more, because we missed a lot of shots tonight.”
Tatum admitted he could have “put more pressure on the rim.” That was especially true at the end of regulation when he had a horrendous stretch. The six-time All-Star settled for three 3-pointers over the final 97 seconds of regulation and missed each one, cratering Boston’s chances of topping the Knicks.
Tatum didn’t learn from his mistakes, either. After continuously clanging shots off the rim, he had a chance to break a deadlock with under 10 seconds left in the fourth quarter, but decided to throw up a contested, step-back 25-footer that didn’t go in.
It obviously wasn’t just Tatum who settled for shooting treys. The Celtics in fact took 19 of their 20 shots in the third quarter from behind the 3-point line.
“I think we have to look at it,” Jaylen Brown told reporters, per Sports Illustrated’s Bobby Krivitsky. “Some of them felt good, some of them felt like we maybe forced the issue. Definitely our rhythm and our timing was a bit off.”