Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum struggled in the fourth quarter of Game 5 against Golden State, a ... [+]
The box score for the fourth quarter of Boston’s Game 5 loss to the Warriors in the NBA Finals reads as though one team had just awoken refreshed from a soothing afternoon nap and the other had decided to play 12 minutes while wearing concrete sneakers.
The Warriors shot 50.0% from the field and committed no turnovers, shot 9-for-12 from inside the paint and tallied 29 points. The Celtics, meanwhile, shot 4-for-15 from the field and missed four free throws, added four turnovers and made just two of their seven attempts from inside the paint, for a total of 20 points. Boston was gassed.
Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum played 44 minutes in the game, and all of the second half (until the final garbage-time minute). They were 2-for-9, combined, in the fourth quarter and each was a minus-15. After a third-quarter rally in which Boston was nearly flawless, posting 35 points, there was little left for the fourth for the two Celtics stars.
Ime Udoka was asked after the game whether that was the crux of the Celtics’ problem.
“Could have been,” he said. “We ran them obviously a longer stretch to get back in the game in the third. Looked like our decision-making waned a little bit in the fourth. Could have been from that. Weren't getting a whole lot of production off the bench. Went with them a little bit longer, being they got us back in, and tried to use the timeouts for their rest. Got away from a little bit what got us back in the game in the third. Decision-making and fatigue could be a part of it, the reason why.”
A Limited Celtics Bench, All Season
Credit Udoka, as always, with his honesty—most coaches would refrain from admitting at the NBA Finals podium that his stars were tired, and when asked about it themselves, Brown brushed off the topic and Tatum only mildly acknowledged that, yes, players are more tired at the end of a game than at the beginning. But Udoka should get some of the blame here, too, not just for the decisions he made in Game 5 but for the way he’s handled the nether regions of his team’s roster all throughout the playoffs and throughout the season itself.
In his year as a head coach, perhaps because he was too focused on the immediate and feared piling up losses, Udoka was especially reticent about using his reserves. It’s one of the few criticisms of the job he has done this season that has some validity to it. He started the season with veterans Dennis Schroder and Josh Richardson on the bench, and the Celtics swapped them out for Derrick White and Daniel Theis at the trade deadline. But both before and after the swap, Udoka was cautious about bench minutes.
The Celtics bench was a plus-1.5 for the year, according to NBA.com/stats, and that ranked fourth in the NBA. Still, Udoka played the bench an average of 16.3 minutes, 27th in the NBA. The Celtics got 30.2 points from the reserves, 26th in the league. Along the way, there was not much development from two key Celtics second-year players, Payton Pritchard and Aaron Nesmith.
Pritchard saw his playing time drop from his rookie year to this season, from 19.2 minutes to 14.9 minutes. Nesmith went from 14.5 minutes to 11.0 and rarely was much of a factor for Boston this season. Those two have the potential to be offering the Celtics some help but only Pritchard has seen the floor regularly in the playoffs, and even that has come in spurts.
Pritchard has had some good moments in this postseason, but in Game 5, he had a poor start, missing three 3-pointers and committing a turnover in 4:41 of playing time spanning the end of the first quarter and the start of the second. He did not go back into the game. In all, Udoka has tightened up his already limited rotation in the playoffs, as all coaches do. But he has one of the tightest, with bench players getting an average of 13.2 minutes, 15th in the postseason.
The Celtics looked like a tired team to close out Game 5, especially their star players, in what was arguably their most important quarter of the season to date. Udoka played Brown and Tatum because they were his best options, even while fatigued. He might have had some more help on the bench, though, if he’d only given it more of a chance throughout the year.
