The Boston Celtics have been the second-best team in the Eastern Conference for most of the season. They have been stuck behind the Cleveland Cavaliers for that top spot.
Taking on the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday night, Boston was hoping to get a win to help close that gap. Instead, they got crushed, and the gap widened to 6.5 games.
Detroit handled Boston 117-97 in a game that got out of hand pretty quickly in the second half. While Boston still loses games, they don’t get smashed by teams like this very often.
Boston allowed the Pistons to crush them from behind the 3-point line. Malik Beasley had six of them on his own.
One player for the Celtics decided that he was mostly to blame for why the Pistons were able to crush them in this game. Starting center Kristaps Porzingis took a lot of the blame on his shoulders, saying after the game that he played poorly.
“Just had a bad game, to be honest,” Porzingis told reporters in Detroit. “Me, especially. I was terrible tonight. We just had a really bad game.
Porzingis was just 4-11 for the field and had just 11 points. What’s even worse is that he managed to grab just two rebounds despite being 7’3.
While Porzingis did play poorly, this loss isn’t solely on him. The entire team needed to play better defense in order to keep the Pistons from making the number of outside shots that they did.
With the Celtics still trying to catch Cleveland, they can’t afford to get blown out like this. They have to play harder against the better teams in the league.
Boston will have a shot to make up some ground on Cleveland on Friday night when the two teams play. If they play like this again, the Cavs will be widening the gap instead.
So far this season, Porzingis is averaging 18.9 points. 6.8 rebounds, and 1.9 assists per game. He is also shooting 47.4 percent from the field and 40.3 percent from the 3-point line.
