BOSTON — Celtics star Jayson Tatum shouldered the blame for his struggles over the first two games of the team’s playoff series with the New York Knicks and vowed improvement for Saturday’s vital Game 3.
“I take full ownership of the way that I’ve played in this series and can’t sugarcoat anything,” Tatum said Thursday. “I need to be better, and I expect to be a lot better.”
Tatum’s jumper has abandoned him thus far in the series; he has made just 12 of 42 shots (29%) and has frequently settled for 3-pointers, where he is 5-of-20 (25%). He has taken only nine free throws in the two games and has eight turnovers, including on the final play of the Knicks’ 91-90 victory in Game 2.
“Guys work really hard on their game and their craft and prepare to be in those moments to hit open shots, and it just hasn’t happened the last two games,” said Tatum, who is part of a Celtics offense that has gone collectively cold and made just 25 of 100 3-pointers. “But you can’t lose your confidence.”
Tatum and star teammate Jaylen Brown are a combined 2-of-19 shooting in the fourth quarters in the series. The Knicks have come back from 20 points down in the second half of both games and outscored the Celtics by 22 points in the final quarter thus far.
“It’s a credit to [Tatum], I don’t think that I appreciate the fact that he would [take responsibility], but I think it’s on everybody,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said. “We all could be better. I could be better. The things that I can help our team execute on our entire team can be better. And yeah, he can too. So just says who he is taking responsibility for that, and I expect him to be better.”
The Celtics met for a film session Thursday, and one of the points of emphasis was for the team to keep its confidence and not pass up shots. Tatum said it was stressed in the meeting not to let the struggles affect the aggressive approach the Celtics have taken as they’ve rewritten the 3-point shooting record book in winning the championship last season and winning 61 games this regular season.
Mazzulla, who has long been dogmatic in his belief that volume 3-point shooting is the key to the team’s offensive success, stressed the team has to take a realistic and workmanlike approach to its predicament.
“You can’t just have a pride and entitlement that we’re holier than now, that we’re not allowed to be down 0-2,” Mazzulla said. “This is the situation that we’re in. So we have to have an understanding of why we’re in it and we got to fix it, and we have an opportunity to fix that.”
Mazzulla also addressed the concerning situation with center Kristaps Porzingis, who left Game 1 due to illness and was able to play only 14 minutes off the bench in Game 2. Porzingis missed eight games in February and March with mysterious respiratory issues that specialists had difficult diagnosing.
He has been dealing with the ailment ever since, and his condition worsened during Game 1 with Porzingis describing it as having a “big crash” of energy. He did have eight points and four rebounds in limited but effective minutes on Wednesday but said after the game he was not feeling well.
“He gave us everything he has, and with these two days off, hopefully he can recover a little bit more,” Mazzulla said. “Every game will be situationally depending upon how much he can go. But I’m just grateful for what he was able to do for us.”
