BOSTON — The Boston Celtics had one last chance to seize momentum early in the fourth quarter of a frustrating Sunday afternoon against the New York Knicks. Baylor Scheierman hustled to track down a long rebound, then sprinted to the left corner and drilled a 3-pointer. On his way back down the court, he clapped his hands together and screamed.
The TD Garden crowd roared with Scheierman for a moment, but the joy ended abruptly. The Celtics stopped the Knicks, but couldn’t reach halfcourt before running into yet another setback in a 111-89 loss full of them. Jaylen Brown had his pocket picked by Jose Alvarado, who converted a layup moments later.
“We’ve played great basketball for a long time in this small stretch and have taken the game to that level of physicality and execution (needed against great teams),” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said. “Tonight wasn’t our best.”
Despite the lopsided outcome in a playoff rematch, the Celtics didn’t overreact. Brown believed they controlled most of the areas they needed to. He pointed to the job they did on the glass, where they had twice as many offensive rebounds as the Knicks, and in handling the basketball with only 10 turnovers. Still, Brown acknowledged, the Celtics need to find their rhythm again after acquiring Nikola Vučević before the trade deadline. Boston shot just 37 percent from the field, including 17.1 percent on 3-point attempts.
“We got to figure out the chemistry a little bit, the flow a little bit,” Brown said. “We want Vuc to be a little bit more aggressive, looking for him to get going and make him feel confident in taking those shots and where he can catch the ball. I think he’s still learning, but we need him to be aggressive. So we’ll make adjustments, we’ll communicate, we’ll watch film, and we’ll be better for it.”
The Vučević trade has brought on other changes for the Celtics rotation. Payton Pritchard has come off the bench in every game since the team sent Anfernee Simons to the Chicago Bulls as part of the deal. In each of the last three games, Mazzulla has started a big lineup with Neemias Queta and Luka Garza alongside each other. That duo had only played three minutes together all season before this stretch, but Mazzulla wants to work in bigger lineups now that he has another strong frontcourt option in Vučević.
“The same as we’ve done (with the starting lineup) the whole year,” Mazzulla said. “We’ve tinkered with it all year. I think we’re up to 15 or 17 different ones, so nothing’s changed. Everybody on our roster has a chance to impact winning. We have a chance to develop, do different things there, so whether before or after the trade deadline, nothing changes in our approach.”
Knicks coach Mike Brown believes the lineup flexibility Vucevic provides will be useful.
“It’s going to help them a lot,” Brown said. “They’ve got three big guys now, so they can match up a lot of different ways with a lot of different opponents.”
That might be the case, but the Celtics still need to figure out how to incorporate a style they hadn’t even experimented with much before. For the second straight game, they had a slow offensive start. They shot just 34.6 percent from the field in the first quarter while missing 11 of their 13 3-point attempts.
With the rotation changes, the Celtics’ second-ranked offense could need time to readjust.
“We’re playing a little different,” said Derrick White. “Obviously got some new guys in new spots, so I wouldn’t say we’re as crisp as we were maybe a few weeks ago when we’d had the offseason and beginning of the year to kind of figure those parts out. But I think it’s exciting that we can continue to learn, grow and just understand it’s gonna take day by day, and get guys comfortable, get guys in the right spots. And we’ve got a lot of guys that know how to play, so I think we’ll pick it up quickly.”
Scheierman had a productive outing with 10 points, 13 rebounds and five assists. But even he shot just 2 for 7 behind the arc — and he was one of the better Celtics shooters on the day. The rest of the starters combined to shoot 3-for-16 from 3. The bench combined to shoot 10-for-29 from the field, including 2-for-18 from downtown.
White said his team needs to learn how to adapt to new defensive coverages.
“Obviously, you get guarded many different ways, and adding Vuc, you’ve got a whole different way people are guarding him,” White said. “So you want to break down those scenarios, but you also want to kind of be free, not think out there and kind of react. So you’ve got to find that balance of watching the film coming in, working on different scenarios, and you’ve also got to let people kind of figure it out on their own. So it’s kind of tough on the fly, but we’re two, three games in.”
In the lead-up to the game, Brown didn’t hide the importance of the showdown with the Knicks. He brought it up himself Friday night when discussing the TD Garden environment for Vučević’s Celtics debut.
“Sunday is going to be a big matchup,” Brown said. “So we need the fans to have the same energy. So I’m looking forward to it.”
Even with that much excitement beforehand, Brown was level-headed after the defeat.
“It came down to the offensive end, where we just had to make some shots,” Brown said. “Scoring 89 points (is) not gonna get it done. We gotta figure out how to put that ball in the cup.”
