Trail Blazers Run Into Buzzsaw in Loss to Celtics

📍PORTLAND, Ore. — Jaylen Brown didn’t play. Jrue Holiday didn’t play. Kristaps Porzingis didn’t play. It didn’t matter.

The Trail Blazers shot 50 percent from the field, 41 percent from three-point range, matched the Celtics in rebounds and only turned the ball over 12 times. It didn’t matter.

Boston only made four more three-pointers than Portland did (23 to 19), but it felt like they made 10 more. Seemingly every one was a wide-open look that came just as the Blazers were starting to make a run. One of these teams is a surprise competitor for a play-in spot; the other is the defending champions and one of three teams in the NBA that most people think has a shot at winning it this year. You can play them well and still lose by 13 points, like the Blazers did.

“That’s just a team that’s better than we are,” Chauncey Billups said afterwards.

Sunday wasn’t quite as demoralizing as the last time they played the Celtics, in Boston earlier this month. In that game, the Celtics were once again without Holiday, Porzingis and Brown, as well as Jayson Tatum, and got a combined 83 points from Payton Pritchard and Derrick White.

Tatum played today, and there were no 40-point outbursts from role players. Sam Hauser made eight of Boston’s 23 three-pointers, but it was still Tatum driving things.

“They’re going to get up a lot of threes no matter what,” Toumani Camara said. “You just want them to take the shots that we want to take, not open threes and uncontested threes. A lot of driving to the paint and easy catch-and-shoots.”

This version of the Celtics is the closest thing in the current NBA to the late-2000s/early-2010s Spurs teams that could plug guys like Danny Green and Gary Neal in when Tim Duncan or Manu Ginobili sat out. No matter who is or isn’t on the floor, Boston has no weak links and plays the way they want to play with roughly the same effectiveness. During their recent run of wins, the Blazers have had the fortune of facing several teams without key players—they beat the Grizzlies without Ja Morant and the Nuggets without Nikola Jokic earlier this week.

That doesn’t apply to the Celtics. They’re a machine.

“The way they’ve built their roster, they’ve just put nothing but shooting around a few guys that can create and break down the defense,” Billups said. “Everybody that touches the ball is a knockdown shooter. They make you pay all over the place.”

“It’s tough,” Shaedon Sharpe said. “They’re shooting a whole bunch of threes, they’re running around, and it’s not even like it’s at the three-point line. It’s two or three steps back. So just trying to contest that while trying to chase them around is tough. We tried today.”

The Blazers close out their seven-game homestand on Tuesday against the only team in the Eastern Conference with a better record than the Celtics, the Cleveland Cavaliers. On their road trip earlier this month, Portland blew an 18-point second-half lead to the Cavs and lost in overtime. Cleveland has been sagging of late, with four losses in a row before beating the tanking Utah Jazz tonight. They’ve all but locked up the top seed in the east; the Blazers still need every win they can get to keep pace with the Suns and Mavericks in the play-in race.

The loss to the Celtics was expected, but it doesn’t make that chase any easier.