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Welcome back to Illegal Screen ☘️ A newsletter that is just here to talk about illegal screens
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Well, we promised a very panicked edition of Court Sense if the Celtics lost to the Pacers on Monday night, and we're people of our word around here.
So how should Boston respond to a loss to league-worst Indiana? Trade Jaylen Brown? Fire Joe Mazzulla? Sell the team again?
All excellent ideas, and probably necessary after the Celtics lost consecutive games for the first time in a month.
Jokes aside, it was a pretty frustrating loss in Indiana for Boston, which never got its offense going against one of the league's least stingy defenses.
The Celtics managed just 96 points, including a 19-point fourth quarter, on a night that highlighted just how dependent Boston is on Jaylen Brown's scoring.
In the absence of Brown, absent with back spasms (or out searching for a second job to pay off that $35,000 fine from the NBA, one of the two), the Celtics looked pretty short on ideas en route to their second-worst scoring output of the season.
The Pacers, meanwhile, showed a little more life than you'd expect from the worst team in basketball, particularly during a 20-4 run to open the second half that put Boston in a 13-point hole.
The Celtics climbed out of that hole to make it a 2-point game to start the fourth, but the final period was pretty ugly all-around. Boston shot 7 of 19 (36.8 percent) in the fourth, the last make coming on a nice drive and floater from Derrick White to tie the game with just under 30 seconds to go.
That brought us to the Pacers' final possession. Indiana's Pascal Siakam set a screen on White that forced White to stumble, before White recovered to guard Siakam in isolation at the top of the key. Siakam drove, spun, and banked in a floater to give Indiana a 2-point lead.
White missed a deep pull-up 3-pointer on the other end, and that was it.
Anyway, here's a complete transcript of every word Joe Mazzulla said in his postgame press conference (the six questions he was asked really are not important):
"Illegal screen. ... Illegal screen. ... Illegal screen. ... Illegal screen. ... Illegal screen. ... Illegal screen."
No jokes here — Mazzulla answered all six questions with "illegal screen" and left the podium.
The observant among you may be able to deduce that Mazzulla believed there was an illegal screen set on the final play. Take a look for yourself.
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Pascal Siakam's screen had Joe Mazzulla incensed on Monday. (NBC Sports Boston)
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Is that an illegal screen? By the letter of the law, as the rulebook puts it, probably. Does this also go uncalled all the time? Certainly.
I have to admit that it's an amusing gripe from the title-winning coach of Al Horford, who was, among many things, a great Celtic for whom I have tremendous respect and admiration, and also the perpetrator of about 13 illegal screens per game across seven seasons in Boston.
I can understand the frustration, but I also think if your evening hinges on one late call against the worst team in basketball, you've probably got bigger problems.
Perhaps frustrations with officiating are simply the flavor of the week. Mazzulla may have kept things so brief in his press conference to avoid the same fate as Brown, who was fined after a profanity-laced rant about the referees after Saturday night's loss to the Spurs.
Brown drove to the rim 23 times against San Antonio and took 28 shots without earning a single free throw. He was, uh, not thrilled.
"I'll accept the fine at this point, I thought it was some [expletive] tonight ... The inconsistency is crazy. I'll take the [expletive] fine. [The referees were] terrible tonight," Brown said, among many other things, before taking to Twitter to share a similar sentiment.
Remember when I said the loss to Indiana was Boston's second-worst scoring night of the season? It was second only to Saturday's loss to San Antonio, as the Celtics turned in consecutive clunkers on offense.
It's a touch more understandable against the Spurs, the league's third-best team by defensive rating, with elite rim protection anchored by some French guy, but also, much more importantly, by Luke Kornet.
Longtime readers of the newsletter will know of the fondness we have for Kornet, perhaps the goofiest player to suit up for the Celtics in recent years. He was a beloved fan favorite, enough to earn him a tribute video in his return to Boston on Saturday, an honor typically reserved for — respectfully, and I think he would admit this himself — significantly better basketball players.
The TD Garden crowd barked as Kornet was introduced, a reminder of how much love the fanbase still has for a guy that always made basketball a little more fun.
We miss you, Luke. Neemias Queta sure can throw down a dunk, but will he ever write and produce a slander ad against Derrick White for a laugh? Some things can't be replaced.
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Jaylen Brown aired out his frustrations with officiating after a Celtics loss to the Spurs. (Barry Chin/Globe)
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‘I’m tired of the inconsistency’: Jaylen Brown airs out frustration with officiating after loss to Spurs
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Derrick White walked to the podium after the Celtics’ 100-95 loss to the Spurs with a swollen lip so inflamed that it impacted how he spoke, and the redness from previous bleeding was glaring.
“It’s just the usual,” White said when asked what happened, “get hit in the mouth, it started bleeding. Fat lip.”
Then when asked whether a foul was called on that play, he quipped: “Yeah. You’re trying to get me in trouble.”
While White won’t get any early-morning texts from the league demanding immediate payment for criticizing officiating, the NBA will certainly summon Jaylen Brown, who wanted all the smoke and all the fines after he went nearly 44 minutes without a free throw.
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Other top stories we're watching ...
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Each week, we’ll be asking a piece of Celtics trivia to test your knowledge on the 18-time champions.
Congratulations to John Sabbagh of Hollis, N.H., the first person to correctly answer last week's question. As a refresher, we asked you to name the only Celtic to start each of the team's games this season (as of last Tuesday, but it's still true either way).
The answers is Payton Pritchard, who has now started all 39 games for Boston this year. That's a particularly notable fact for last year's Sixth Man of the Year, who had started just 17 games combined over his first five seasons (and whom Joe Mazzulla made a particular point of not starting over the last couple years).
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Payton Pritchard has started every game for the Celtics this season. (AP)
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Here's this week's question: Who is the Celtics' all-time leader in steals?
Know the answer? Send us an email at court...@globe.com, and the first person to write in with the correct answer will get a shoutout when the answer is revealed in next week's newsletter. Good luck!
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