Stevens blames loss on flat 2nd half start; ‘just one of those games’

For Brad Stevens, the Boston Celtics’ last-second loss to the Toronto Raptors actually started much earlier in the game.

It was an absolute gut punch to lose a game at the last second just moments after making what seemed like the game-winning basket.

But, to Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens, the hail-Mary shot that won the Toronto Raptors Game 3 in their Eastern Conference Semifinals series wasn’t even the issue the head coach would point to for what cost them the win.

For Stevens, the problem started considerably earlier in the game.

“I thought we started the third quarter really low,” he explained. “I just didn’t think we played well; we gave up four layups right out of the gate.”

“They’re switching up defenses, and they’ve got long athletic guys that can do it. They’ve got really smart guys, the way they play [man-to-man defense]; they’re used to rotating and scrambling and doing all that stuff, so I thought that we’d attack that a little bit better as the game went on. But they mixed it up; they played some triangle, they played some zone. They’ve got the guard in the middle of the zone, they played … a lot of [man-to-man and] mixed up their matchups.”

“It’s just one of those games — just like the previous — to where you’ve just got to be on your toes and ready to attack the different things at different times,” Stevens added.

All in all it took a miracle pass followed by a miracle shot for the Raptors to come away with the win, and the Celtics are still up two games to one.

With the way they have played so far in the series, the team should be able to learn from their mistakes and come out with renewed focus and intensity in Game 4.

It’s not, as Stevens points out, the last second shot that kills you, after all — it’s not putting yourself in position to win with the other 2,879 seconds in the game.

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