Joe Mazzulla isn’t entirely concerned about the Boston Celtics’ 130-111 horrible defeat against the Washington Wizards on Tuesday.
The Celtics, courtesy of Malcolm Brogdon, announced that they intend to be back atop the Eastern Conference on the final stretch of the regular season. But as they head to the D.C. area and were sizzling with a three-game win streak, they were walloped by a Wizards team without its stars in Bradley Beal and Kyle Kuzma.
“It’s not something we can overly control,” Mazzulla told reporters about the Celtics’ chase for the East’s top one. “We could have won this game and still not get the No. 1 seed. We can lose this game and get it. I don’t really know how it’s going to happen because we can’t control that. Like I said, we’ve been playing really good basketball for a stretch of time.
“Tonight was just an off night. Very rarely has that happened to us, so we just have to continue to move on and kind of just control the things that we can.”
With the loss, the Milwaukee Bucks (54-21), current owners of the East’s first seed, now got 2.5 games of margin over them (52-24). With six games left, their chances to reclaim the top spot got even slimmer in probability.
Per Tankathon, Boston got the fourth strongest regular season schedule remaining, with Milwaukee following them on the board.
As such, Jayson Tatum can only agree with his coach, as he is also not showing any urgency with their hunt toward the overall homecourt advantage in the conference getting narrower.
Tatum, who dropped 28 points on the abysmal performance of the C’s, took a reference on their last year’s run towards the NBA Finals.
“In the playoffs, you’re going to have to win games on the road at some point,” Tatum said. “Last year we beat the Bucks in Game 6 and last year we beat Miami in Game 7 on the road. At some point, you’re going to have to go on the road and get a win.”
In the end, Tatum made it known that what matters the most is how they will deliver a bounce back following a horrendous downfall.
The Celtics are set to travel to Milwaukee for a highly anticipated, title heavyweight showdown with the Bucks on Thursday, and this may seem the ultimate test for them on how to respond from a disappointing finish.
“I think that’s the most important is we gotta respond,” Tatum said. “I feel like we will. We’ll play better, we’ll come out with more pop, we’ll come out with more energy, more focus. Just learn from this game, not carrying on and move on to the next one.
“All I care about is how we respond, and I’m sure that we will.”
