The streak is officially over. After 15 consecutive wins to kick off the season, the Cleveland Cavaliers have finally lost their first game, 120-117, on the road against the defending champion Boston Celtics. The defeat ensures that Cleveland would not claim sole possession of the second-longest undefeated start to a season in NBA history. They will instead remain tied with the 1993-94 Houston Rockets and the 1948-49 Washington Capitols.
Boston, which moved to 12-3 on the season, looked like it might run away with this game early on. The Celtics led by 17 at halftime behind a sizzling 14-of 22-effort from 3-point land and pushed that lead all the way up to 21 in the third quarter thanks to a stellar all-around performance from Jayson Tatum and excellent 3-point shooting from just about everyone. But Cleveland simply would not go away. An 18-3 run late in the third quarter made it close, and Cleveland cut the lead down to two points on five separate occasions. They just couldn't quite get it over the top, failing to ever even tie it in the second half.
It's a loss Cleveland will look back on with quite a bit of regret as the season progresses. Not only did they cede some ground in the regular season standings to Boston, but they also gave the Celtics control of their group in the NBA Cup. Now, Cleveland will have to rely on either another Cup loss for Boston or tiebreakers with other Eastern Conference teams to advance to the Knockout Stage.
The game was winnable for Cleveland, but a 3-of-21 shooting performance from Darius Garland coupled with underwhelming first-half defense was just enough for the Celtics to sneak out with the win. Here are the biggest takeaways from Boston's big win.
It wasn't as close as the score
The final score here suggests that Cleveland really hung with Boston through four quarters. That technically did happen, but the context behind the score is significant. When Boston made its first substitution of the game, it led by 10 points. Cleveland proceeded to trim that lead back down to seven by the middle of the second quarter. And then when Boston's starters returned with 5:38 remaining in the frame, they won the remainder of the half by 10 more points. With a 15-point lead in the third quarter, the Celtics inserted a lineup featuring three reserves: Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser and Neemias Queta. By the time Al Horford replaced Queta at the start of the fourth quarter, the lead was down to five. Those three reserves, the only ones who played in this game for the Celtics, all had point-differentials of minus-13 or worse.
Now, winning bench minutes absolutely matters. For the better part of a decade, that was basically the only way to beat the Golden State Warriors, and the Denver Nuggets suffer from a similar affliction. But again, remember the context. At full strength, Boston has Kristaps Porzingis starting at center and Horford coming off of the bench. In a high-leverage game, Jrue Holiday isn't going to play 28 minutes. Cleveland's best offensive stretches in this game relied on hunting Queta, who likely won't be in the playoff rotation, Pritchard, who played 26 minutes in this game but averaged 19 in the playoffs, and Hauser, who would normally punish them on the other end with his shooting but is mired in an uncharacteristic slump. If your path to beating Boston when it counts is punishing those guys, well, good luck with that, because you're just not going to have very many minutes to do it.
To be fair, the Cavaliers weren't exactly at full strength either. It's hard to glean too much from a game in which they were missing nearly their entire wing rotation. Dean Wade, Isaac Okoro, Max Strus and Caris LeVert all sat on Tuesday. Wade and Okoro are their best non-Mobley answers to Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Strus has beaten the Celtics in a playoff series before. All four will matter quite a bit in future battles with the Celtics. But Cleveland had its core four players and started sharpshooter Sam Merrill alongside them. They still couldn't generate good shots against Boston's starters. That's the problem they need to solve by May, and the players they were missing aren't going to fix that on their own.
Darius Garland has a Celtics problem
Darius Garland shot 40.3.% from the floor against Boston in the regular season a year ago. Not bad, but his inability to generate much inside of the arc was a red flag. Things got harder in the playoffs. Garland again hovered around 40% from the floor, but when his 3s stopped falling, his scoring dipped to just 16.8 points per game in a second-round loss. Tuesday was his worst Celtics game yet. Garland shot the ball 21 times and made three of them.
It's not hard to pinpoint why exactly Garland would have such a problem with the Celtics. They have Derrick White and Holiday. There's no easy matchup, and when the starters are on the floor, you can't screen your way into one because Tatum and Brown are just as quick and even bigger. It's harder for small guards to generate space when their first step alone won't cut it. Donovan Mitchell has thrived against Boston because he's bigger and stronger, and thus has more ways to get to his spots and a better chance at finishing through contact.
But this is relatively straightforward for Cleveland. Mitchell can't beat Boston singlehandedly, and the Cavs can't expect Ty Jerome and Craig Porter Jr. to swing playoff games consistently. Their path to pushing the Celtics when it counts starts with Garland looking like himself. Aside from Tuesday night's Boston game, Garland's start to the season has been sensational. He has three more regular-season games against Boston to figure this out. If he plays like this in the playoffs, Cleveland has no chance whatsoever against Boston.
Nobody has solved the math problem yet
The story of the first half of this game was Boston's shooting. The Celtics made 14 3s and the Cavaliers made four. Sometimes that's going to happen for just about everyone. Teams get hot. Teams get cold. That happened on Tuesday, and it's unavoidable. Frankly, a Cleveland team that entered this game making just under 42% of its 3s was due for an off-night. The more concerning figure here is the volume gap. Cleveland got it to within 12 attempts by the end of the game, but at one point in the third quarter, Boston had made more 3s (18) than Cleveland had attempted (16).
Entering Tuesday's game, the Celtics were averaging 51.1 3-point attempts per game. That's nearly six more attempts than any other team in the league this season. On the other end, their opponents are attempting only 35.5 3s per game, the sixth-fewest in basketball. Put those numbers together and the Celtics are taking nearly 16 more 3-pointers per game than their opponents.
That's a nearly impossible math problem for any opponent to solve unless Boston just misses more shots than it usually does. Sure, the other end of that equation is that Boston is vulnerable near the basket. Cleveland finished Tuesday's game with 24 more paint points. But it's not as though the Celtics can't get to the rim. Once the Cavaliers started running the Celtics off of the line more in the second half, Tatum started putting his head down and attacking. It worked out for Boston.
Until a team figures out how to close that 3-point gap without sacrificing the rim, it's just hard to imagine anyone beating Boston four times out of seven without extreme shooting luck in some other area. It's a pretty simple equation. Three is bigger than two.
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