Brian Windhorst
BOSTON – The star of Celtics Jayson Tatum took the blame for his difficulties during the first two games of the team’s eliminatory series with the New York Knicks and swore an improvement for the Vital 3 match on Saturday.
“I am fully owner of the way I played in this series and I can’t do anything sugar,” said Tatum on Thursday. “I need to be better, and I expect to be much better.”
The Tatum sweater has so far abandoned it in the series; It only made 12 of the 42 shots (29%) and frequently designed for 3 points, where it is 5 out of 20 (25%). He only took nine free throws in two games and has eight reversals, especially on the Knicks 91-90 victory game in match 2.
“The guys work very hard on their game and their profession and are preparing to be in these moments to strike open blows, and that did not occur the last two games,” said Tatum, who is part of a Celtic offense which has become collectively cold and has only made 25 of the 100 to 3 points. “But you can’t lose your confidence.”
The teammate of Tatum and Star Jaylen Brown is a combined shot of 2 out of 19 in the fourth quarter of the series. The Knicks have returned from 20 points in the second half of the two games and have ahead of the Celtics of 22 points in the last quarter so far.
“It’s a credit for (Tatum), I don’t think I appreciate the fact that he was going (assume responsibility), but I think it’s on everyone,” said Celtic coach Joe Mazzulla. “We could all be better. I could be better. The things that I can help our team to execute in our entire team can be better. And yes, he can also. So, simply says who he takes responsibility for it, and I expect it to be better.”
The Celtics met for a cinema session on Thursday, and one of the points of accent was that the team keeps their confidence and not letting shots pass. Tatum said it was stressed at the meeting not to let the difficulties affect the aggressive approach that the Celtics adopted when they rewritten the 3 -point shooting record book by winning the championship last season and winning 61 games this regular season.
Mazzulla, which has long been dogmatic in his conviction that the 3 -point volume shooting is the key to the team’s offensive success, stressed that the team must adopt a realistic and workers’ approach to its difficult situation.
“You cannot just have a pride and a right that we are holy than now, that we are not allowed to be down 0-2,” said Mazzulla. “This is the situation in which we are. We must therefore understand why we are there and we must repair it, and we have the opportunity to solve this problem.”
Mazzulla also approached the worrying situation with the center of Kristaps Porzingis, which left match 1 due to an illness and could only play 14 minutes from the bench in match 2. Porzingis missed eight games in February and March with mysterious respiratory problems that the specialists had a difficult diagnosis.
Since then, he has been dealing with the disease, and his condition has worsened during match 1 with Porzingis describing him as having a “big accident” of energy. He had eight points and four rebounds in limited minutes but effective on Wednesday, but said that after the match, he did not feel well.
“He gave us everything he has, and with these two days off, I hope he can recover a little more,” said Mazzulla. “Each match will depend on the situation of the quantity he can go. But I’m just grateful for what he could do for us.”
