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The Boston Celtics' road woes continue in the 2018 Playoffs. They are 9-0 at home in Boston but away from the TD Garden, including this Game 3 loss, they are now 1-5 in this postseason. For some reason, they have just struggled to get things going away from home and even their one win was a 3-point OT win in Philadelphia.
Irrespective of whether their road record was on their mind or no, the Celtics just suffered one of their worst losses of this season in Game 3 - 30 points. They still hold a series lead (2-1) but it will be another high-stakes contest in Game 4 because if they lose that too, it essentially becomes a best of 3 where LeBron James and the Cavs will fancy themselves with it being a shorter series.
There were hardly any silver linings for the Celtics, to be honest. Maybe Brad Stevens could mention a few but from purely an analysis standpoint, Boston didn't do a lot of things right. They didn't play their game (defense or offense) and got outplayed by Cleveland energy and intensity wise.
We rate every Celtics' player that took the floor today:
Al Horford - 6/10
Stat line: 7 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists on 2-4 FG's and -23
Well, Al Horford didn't do anything tragically wrong, he just didn't do enough. He was never known to dominate a game and steer it in any direction single-handedly but even by his standards, four field goal attempts is far too less to impact the game.
He's the veteran that everybody on the team looks up to. Individually, he did not have a bad game - just 1 turnover and 50% shooting - but Horford has got to be more assertive.
Having Tristan Thompson in the starting line-up was to negate the Celtics' small starting line-up but unlike Game 2, Boston couldn't recover after the Cavaliers' early punch. The Thompson-Love is a huge mismatch for Horford especially with the Canadian's activity on the glass.
Jayson Tatum - 6/10
Stat line: 18 points, 1 rebound, 1 assist, 1 block on 6-10 FG's
Jayson Tatum, the latest subject of Kobe Bryant's analysis show on ESPN "Detail",top-scored with 18 points but his activity on every other stat category was close to non-existent. Apart from his points tally, he only had 1 rebound, 1 assist and 1 block to show for in 31 minutes on the court.
The number of attempts he got up, he made quite efficiently and it wasn't outside the confines of the team's offense so it's really difficult to fault him, individually, for anything.
But when you get blown out by 30, it's difficult to give any player on the losing team a good grade. All through this, we haven't even mentioned the fact that boy is a rookie.
Jaylen Brown - 5/10
Stat line: 10 points, 2 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 block and 5 fouls on 3-8 FG's
In comparison to the performances he put up in Games 1 & 2, Jaylen Brown had one to forget in Game 3. Through 2 games, he was the team's highest scorer in this series and Tyronn Lue pointed out that the Cavaliers paid extra attention to ensure he doesn't get another hot start early.
Hot starts in the first quarter have been the reason for his back-to-back 23-point showings in this series.
With the additional defense, Brown also had foul trouble to overcome which he eventually did, only finishing with 10 points on a decent 3-of-8 shooting. Considering the fact that he might not have had any rhythm to fall back on, that's a decent percentage to shoot from the field.
Marcus Morris - 5/10
Stat line: 9 points, 5 rebounds on 2-8 FG's and -23
Again, as an individual, there was nothing Morris did dramatically wrong other than missing 6 of his 8 field goal attempts. The Celtics' as a whole got completely outplayed by the Cavaliers and if they share the credit when they win, they should share the blame when they lose.
Unlike Games 1 & 2, there was no trademark Morris on LeBron possession that could be replayed for the highlights section of Sportscenter. So no defense and no real substantial offense for Morris in Game 3.
This holds true for every player on the Celtics on Saturday - nobody played bad but they played very poorly as a team and when their strength is playing together, their margin for error is far lesser. Thus even a few bad decisions here and there could have cost the team the game.
Terry Rozier - 5/10
Stat line: 13 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal on 5-12 FG's
Again, like I mentioned earlier, nothing dramatically bad here.
The C's just didn't have enough offense as a whole on Saturday night in Game 3. All of their rotation players missed slightly more shots than they normally would and the same can be said for Terry Rozier (missing 7 of 12). Add to that two turnovers and that's pretty much all that he did wrong.
He did jack up a couple of pull-up 3s that were clearly not part of the offense but can't fault for trying to pull a little back. If those would have fallen, we would have credited him for taking the initiative. So it's a two-way street.
Marcus Smart - 6/10
Stat line: 7 points, 6 assists, 2 steals, 3 turnovers on 2-9 FG's
Even in a bad game, Smart seemed to have filled the stat sheet but only few box scores look great with a 2-of-9 shooting from the field. He also committed 3 turnovers. Similar to the rest of the guys, he had one shot too many outside the team's offense, which obviously didn't help the C's chances of making a comeback.
There were some tactical changes the Cavaliers made to push Smart out of his comfort zone. They started putting LeBron on the Smart post-ups, to negate the latter's strength in the post, which he could use with ease to any other Cavalier.
Aron Baynes - 5/10
Stat line: 7 points, 6 rebounds, 2 blocks, 1 assist on 3-7 FG's
A majority of Baynes' 24 minutes are to combat Cleveland's big line-up and give Horford rest as well. He was effective in his time on the court but today was just not the night for anything to go right for the Celtics.
Primarily as a roller to the rim, you would want him to make more field goals than miss rather than the other way around. On one of his attempts, he got rejected by the rotation defender - who was none other than LeBron James
Greg Monroe and Semi Ojeleye - 4/10
WIth their primary line-ups not making the desired impacts, Brad Stevens had to go to Greg Monroe (16) and Semi Ojeleye (20) quite a bit. Still, a lot of the minutes this duo faced was inconsequential because the game was out of hand halfway through the third quarter.
The duo combined for 12 points, 5 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal.
Abdel Nader and Guerschon Yabusele - Not Rated
Both Nader (7) and Yabusele (11) played far too few minutes to be rated. The duo combined for 3 points and 5 rebounds on 1-of-6 shooting.
Guess the Lakers players!
