“That was a beating. That’s it. They just beat us. Not by much, honestly.”
Sam Hauser summarized the comments from all the Celtics following the Dallas Mavericks kicked them out of the building in Game 4 on Friday nighta 38-point rout that was the third-largest margin of victory in Finals history.
Boston praised Dallas and his one-man effort, but there was also an air of shrugging and moving on.
“They played well tonight and we didn’t,” Jayson Tatum said. “We had the right mindset and the right intentions. We wanted to go out, play really well and win, but it wasn’t like that tonight.
“But, you know, we’re lucky. We will have another opportunity on Monday.”
That was Boston’s other theme after Game 4 — moving on to Game 5 and the chance to close it out at home on Monday.
“We just regrouped. We kept our same mindset and went out and got ready to fight another battle in our home,” said Jaylen Brown.
“You guys have to do this together, as a team,” said Jrue Holiday, the only guy in the Celtics locker room with a ring. “Everyone has to click and be, again, the most desperate team. We just have to come home. I think lock in the tendencies, lock in the game plan, and I think we’ll be fine.”
That was one of the other themes of Boston – watch the film, learn some lessons and then come back better.
“You know, we always say you lose by two or you lose by 30, they all count the same,” Tatum said. “But we need to be better. We’re not making excuses. We need to be better, and we will. We will be better.”
“There’s a lot of things we can control,” coach Joe Mazzulla said. “We’ll go back to the film and watch it, and really try to be disciplined and control it.”
The Celtics said it all right after one of the ugliest losses of the season. On Monday, we’ll see if they can put those words into action.
