Jayson Tatum had about as bad a first half of basketball as you can have Wednesday night, a 0-point stat line that would be unthinkable under any circumstances, never mind Game 4 of an Eastern Conference finals his Celtics wanted so desperately to tie at two games apiece.
Tatum had about as good a second half of basketball as you can have, a 28-point awakening that nearly delivered on that desperation. But like the Celtics he plays for, Tatum’s effort proved too little too late, good but not good enough, impressive but ultimately futile. And now, in a 3-1 series hole following a 112-109 defeat to the Heat, Tatum and his Celtics are facing elimination from the playoffs, one more loss Friday night and they’re packing their bags out of the NBA bubble.
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On a night that was a total team failure — flat out of the gate, sloppy across the finish line — there is credit to be given to Tatum for waking up from his personal nightmare. But don’t save him from criticism for the early sleepwalk that necessitated it. He certainly didn’t.
“I wasn’t aggressive enough I didn’t score in the first half. That’s unacceptable,” Tatum said. “I know I have to play better. That’s what I tried to do [in the second half].”
He did — but while the shot that wasn’t falling finally starting to fall and the game that wasn’t flowing finally started to flow, the Heat had already found their groove, busting with enough confidence the wouldn’t be shaken. Behind their own hero ballplayer in rookie Tyler Herro (game-high 37 points off the bench), Miami brushed off a second-half Celtics surge, laughed off the brief Celtics lead, dusted off the defense that forced the Celtics into a bevy of bad turnovers (19 in all), and busted out the celebration when the final buzzer sounded.
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“It’s tough,” Tatum said. "They played better than us in the first half. In the second half we picked it up but they were already in a rhythm, feeling good about themselves. It was tough to come back from.
“I wish we would have played like that from the start. I take a lot of blame. I didn’t play like myself in the first half. I got to be better to start the game off.”
He’s only guaranteed one more try.
“We got to be better,” he said. “We know what’s at stake, what’s on the line, we’ve got to be better. We’ve got to play a complete game.”
Like the one they played over the weekend, when the game billed as the biggest of the Brad Stevens era was a convincing Game 3 victory, erasing the shock and disappointment over back-to-back big blown leads in Game 1 and 2? That was certainly an important win, but really, all it did was set the stage for the next biggest game of the coach Stevens era. That’s the way it is in playoff basketball.
Of course these playoffs are like none we’ve seen or will ever see again.
The Celtics went into the night rested if not relaxed, tamed as they were by a break of more than one day for the first time since the playoffs began, but vexed as they, along with so many of their NBA brethren, were by the no-indictment outcome of the Breonna Taylor investigation in Kentucky. The immediate result on the court was some of the ugliest basketball we’ve seen this series (and maybe this bubble), a first half that was equally sloppy on both ends. But there was no doubt who gave us the most egregious example of futility, and Tatum’s 0-point output represented one of the worst halves of his young NBA career.
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It was one of those moments that make you remember there is a flip side to early stardom, how rising to the top of the game so quickly doesn’t just elevate your own profile, but elevates the expectations around you as well. Tatum was recently named to the All-NBA third team, which translates into being one of the top 15 players in the league.
At just 22 years old, that’s a meteoric rise, and he has more than earned it with his multidimensional, all-around game. But it also leaves only one place left to go up — to a title. And after last season’s second-round flameout to the Bucks was such a disappointing follow up to the breakout playoff run in 2018, the one that fell one agonizing game short of the NBA Finals in a Game 7 loss, at home, to LeBron James and the Cavaliers, and after this year’s unprecedented pandemic-delayed bubble tournament pushed the top-seeded Bucks out early, it felt like Tatum’s time.
Instead, it was that first-half nightmare.
“It’s basketball,” Stevens said. “I don’t want to oversimplify it, but we’ve all had nights where you just don’t feel like it’s going for you, you go into the break, you see great players do it, and you just reset. You see one go through the net, and then they go. I think that’s all Jason needed to see. I thought he was way more assertive in the second half.”
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Indeed he was, but it was too little too late, and now, time is running out on the Celtics' season.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @Globe_Tara.
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Though Jayson Tatum was spectacular in the second half, the Celtics were done in by his horrible first half - The Boston Globe
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