Boston’s loss at Madison Square Garden last night to the Knicks hurt a lot. The greens started by stepping on the accelerator and gained great advantages. To be exact they were 25 points up in the second quarter and 20 in the third. It was insufficient. The New Yorkers came back and RJ Barrett sentenced them with a triple on the horn. After the match, Ime Udoka stressed that the team is failing mentally.
“I think it is a lack of mental strength to fight in these adverse moments. It is a generalized thing. A loss here, a bad shot there, some defensive assignment that is lost, rebounds that escape… They are many different things. And then, as I said, a presence that transmits calm is missing to slow down and get what we really want and need in those moments. Sometimes we all get caught up in the same dynamic, “says the head coach of the greens.
Either for one reason or another, the truth is that Boston this season has lost four incomes of at least 19 points; that is, two more than any other team. In addition, in the final quarters they rank 26th in offensive efficiency and 25th in defensive efficiency. It is a fact that the performance of the Celtics suffers a significant drop at the decisive moment of games.
Returning to the difficulty of closing matches, Udoka believes that his boys lack to understand that they have to adapt to different moments of the game and that sometimes what works at the beginning will not work at the end.
Boys get nervous when it’s not the end of the world. You still have a comfortable 12-point lead and have to end that streak. We have to understand timing and score, we just need a solid shot and not just get caught in the game. You have to play the game differently in the first quarter than in the last. You can’t play the same way the whole game. So we have to understand it better and get the shot we want to stop a rival streak and break it. When four or five guys make the wrong play, everything starts to grow like a snowball, “says the coach.
It is obvious that those in Massachusetts have room for improvement, but it is no less so that they must change now. They are currently eleventh in the Eastern Conference at 18-21; that is, they are not even in jobs play-in. If they stayed in such a place, the season would be a resounding failure and they would perhaps make drastic decisions.
(Photograph by Maddie Malhotra / Getty Images)