1. I try very hard to make the Takeaways impersonal. They aren’t about me; they are about the game. The goal is to tell you what I saw, but to keep them as emotionless as possible.
Off the top: I’m probably going to fail you in that goal today.
Maybe it’s because the Boston Celtics have played 105 games and there isn’t a whole lot left to say that’s new or hasn’t been said.
Many of the Celtics players seem worn out, and quite frankly, I think your writer here is too.
This is the longest season any of these players have ever experienced. It’s been close to non-stop since the bubble in 2020. Shortened, chaotic offseasons followed by compact, COVID-impacted regular seasons.
When Jayson Tatum tossed up an airball in the fourth quarter, I sighed in exasperation, like probably most everyone reading this. Later, during postgame, I said to myself “Tatum looks tired.”
In the 2020 bubble, Tatum played a league-leading 40.6 minutes per game in the playoffs.
The last two regular seasons, he’s set and reset a career-high in minutes per game. In these playoffs, Tatum is at 41 minutes per game in 23 games.
Oh, and he played a major role in Team USA winning the gold at the 2021 Olympic Games this past summer.
And, Tatum had a case of long COVID thrown in there too.
Simply put: Jayson Tatum looks like he could use a break.
Before you say “Tatum is 24 years old. I don’t want to hear it.”, think back to where you were at 24. Probably early in your career and struggling some days to find the energy to attack the day. Being an athlete and making millions of dollars doesn’t really change that. We all get tired sometimes.
Most of all, this was a long way to say: I think I’m just tired and don’t blame anyone on the Celtics if they are too.
2. There are countless articles on the site already about turnovers. We won’t spend a long time here, but it’s clearly a mess. The killers are the live-ball giveaways. It’s not really this way, but each one of those seems like it results in the Golden State Warriors getting a wide-open shot at the other end.
In a game where the Warriors didn’t grab many offensive rebounds (four), they still managed to get up 13 more shots than the Celtics did. Some of that is related to Boston taking way more free throws, but a 18-7 turnover margin certainly doesn’t help things any.
3. In a game that finished as a 10-point loss, the Celtics missed 10 free throws. Now, it wasn’t really a 10-point…
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