Trusting Your Bench

Jrue Holiday entered tonight's game with 3:39 left in the third quarter. At the time, the Celtics were down four. The margin would quickly balloon to 11 before settling back in at 7 at the end of the third. At that point, he had nine points on 3-for-9 shooting, three assists, and three rebounds. One sequence was particularly unflattering. Holiday missed a three, and then left Buddy Hield on other end to help Luke Kornet on TJ McConnell, something that should never have happened. Kornet would actually block the shot, but because Holiday was out of position, the ball ricocheted right to Buddy Hield, who drained a three, to push Indiana's lead to nine.

Despite this, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla left Holiday in to start the fourth, and would let him play the entire quarter, only removing him from the game with 29 seconds when him and Jaylen Brown appeared to bump knees during a scramble for the ball. Holiday pulled down three rebounds in the fourth quarter, but was otherwise ineffective. He took no shots, and was burned badly on defense twice late, when he was clearly gassed. Both times, the Pacers buried a three.

The first time was with four minutes left. Haliburton crossed him over and Holiday badly overreacted, giving Haliburton tons of space to get off an easy three. The second happened at the :55 second mark. The Pacers had an inbounds pass and Holiday again lost Hield. On the replay, you can see him futilely pointing for someone else to pick up Hield, but no one does. Hield gets a clean look at the top of the three-point line and buries it, for a seven-point Pacers lead, and it was basically academic from there.

There were two other ways that Holiday staying on the floor impacted the C's in the fourth. The first was that with Holiday's effectiveness on the ball slipping, the C's turned to Jaylen Brown to guard Haliburton a bunch down the stretch. Part of the reason for this is because Aaron Nesmith kept setting screens, and Brown would switch onto Nesmith. But a couple of times he didn't, and Haliburton battled Brown in ISO. The first time, he missed a long three, but he made up for it with a minute and a half left by hitting a three and getting fouled for a decisive four-point play. It wasn't Jaylen's fault, in my opinion, he was trying to step up because Holiday was cooked.

The second way it affected the C's was it gummed up their spacing. The Pacers knew they didn't have to worry about Holiday shooting, and that made life a lot harder for Brown and Jayson Tatum, who both consistently had to hit tough mid-range shots in the fourth.

In a game where no one else had it going, maybe you could see the justification for letting Jrue Holiday play nearly 16 minutes without a breather, but Sam Hauser was cooking. He was 5-for-9 from the field, for 15 points, one of four Celtics to be in double figures along with Tatum, Brown, and Derrick White. What's more, he was making the right plays. His +9 was easily a team best tonight. And since Indiana already knew that Al Horford wasn't going to shoot, with Horford and Holiday out there, and Hauser on the bench, the C's spacing became compact. They would go on to put in 34 points in the quarter, but they needed a lot more than that.

It's unlikely you'll see anyone critique Mazzulla for leaving Holiday in any game. Holiday is an all-world defender and great player overall. But tonight was not his night. One thing that a great coach recognizes is when guys are having off nights and trusts the other players on his team to pick him up. Joe Mazzulla didn't do that tonight (he also let Tatum and White play the entire fourth quarter, and didn't make any subs the final 8:28 except for when Holiday banged his knee with 29 seconds left). Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but it just smacks of bad process. No one should be out there for nearly 16 minutes straight unless they're really playing tremendously, and Jrue Holiday did not play tremendously tonight.

Other Things That Worry Me

• Jayson Tatum's free-throw shooting: It feels odd to nitpick a guy who just won Eastern Conference Player of the Month, but with tonight's 4-for-7 performance from the free-throw line, Tatum has made just 21 of his last 29 free throws. Yes, that is cherry picking, because in the prior game he hit 12 of 13, but for the season he is now shooting .792 at the line. He's never shot below .800, and the last three years, he's shot .868, .853, and .854. I'm sure he'll figure it out, but it has me concerned.
• Three-point Shooting: The C's keep beating themselves in these losses. Tonight, they were 34-for-56 on two's (60.7%), and 12-for-41 from three (29.3%). Only Hauser hit his threes (5-for-7). Tatum (2-for-8), Brown (2-for-7), White (2-for-9), Holiday (1-for-5), and Payton Pritchard (0-for-4) were ice cold from distance. On the other hand, Indiana could not guard them when they took the ball to the hole. But too often the C's would give up on their drives and kick it out, or settle for jumpers. If it never stops, the C's will continue to live and die by their three-point shooting, and I worry that that will cost them a chance to win a championship.
• Kristaps Porzingis Being Ready for "The Next Game": We already are on the merry-go-round of "next game" with Porzingis. The C's really could have used him tonight, both to stop Indiana's drives to the hoops, and for getting easy paint points on switches, something that Horford was not able or willing to do. It's a long season, and what's most important is Porzingis being healthy for the playoffs, but it is exhausting for me to see him say "it's not a big injury" and then keep missing games under the guise of "ready next game, promise," so I can only imagine how exhausting it is for the players. Especially for guys like Tatum and Brown, who you basically have to drag off the court.
• Eddie House running his mouth: Eddie House is, to put it bluntly, a bad analyst. He's also never in studio, which makes for bad TV. Poor Amina Smith has to sit in the studio on camera by herself and basically yell at a TV screen. But House also says some outlandish stuff, and apparently the Orlando Magic noticed. I remember when he said this last year, and he doubled down on it even after Orlando beat the C's. It was exasperating. It's real cute when he shows up sometimes on the game broadcast and him and Brian Scalabrine swap stories about the 2008 Celtics, but that's where his value ends. It's hard enough to win in the NBA without your sometimes studio analyst creating bulletin board material for other teams. Smith, Abby Chin, and Chris Forsberg all do a wonderful job of breaking down each game, NBC Sports Boston does not need to lean on the "expertise" of a former player like House, especially since he apparently doesn't even live around here.

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This is the first time this season I've written after a loss, so I hope you'll forgive the negativity. If you want a silver lining, it's that the team now has an extra day of rest before their next game, and doesn't have to board a long, cross-country flight to Las Vegas. This is especially nice since they have a long west-coast road trip coming up in two weeks that culminates with the Christmas day game in Los Angeles against the Lakers.