Celtics face an uphill battle in NBA Cup after loss to Hawks

BOSTON — Just one game into this year’s NBA Cup, the Boston Celtics are already facing an uphill battle in their quest to make it to Las Vegas. The Celtics were completely outplayed by the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday night, and have a lot of work to do to simply make it to the Knockout round of the NBA’s second annual in-season tournament.
The Celtics built a 15-point lead in the second quarter on Tuesday night, but let the Hawks hang around instead of keeping their foot on the gas. In a setting where running up the score is encouraged, the Celtics were out-hustled and out-muscled by the Hawks throughout the 117-116 loss. It was a disappointing — and slightly devastating — result on that extremely green NBA Cup-edition of the TD Garden floor. 
“They outplayed us in every facet of the game,” head coach Joe Mazzulla said after the defeat.
Tuesday night was not the kind of effort you expect from a team that was eager to win this year’s Cup. Boston was crushed on the boards, 54-34, and Atlanta held a 20-6 edge on the offensive glass. The Hawks dominated the Celtics in the paint, outscoring them 68-32 underneath the hoop, and tallied 18 second-chance points.
“They got rebounds and layups on everybody,” said Mazzulla. “Big, small, medium — they just outplayed us.”
The Celtics were the best team in the NBA in terms of taking care of the basketball entering Tuesday night’s tilt, averaging just 11.9 giveaways a game. Boston then went out an turned it over 20 times in their NBA Cup opener. The Hawks’ pesky defense was responsible for many of the Celtics’ miscues, but a lot of them occurred because of their own sloppiness.
Jaylen Brown turned it over six times on his own, while Jayson Tatum had five giveaways. The worst turnover of the night came on Boston’s second-to-last possession, when Tatum let Derrick White’s inbound pass bounce off his fingertips and out of bounds.  The C’s got the ball back one more time when the Hawks turned it over, but Brown’s desperation shot didn’t fall.
Tatum struggled for much of the night, finishing with 30 points off 5-of-16. He hit just two of his nine three-point tries on the night.
Atlanta’s Dyson Daniels was a menace throughout, swiping six steals on his way to a career-high 28 points for Atlanta. Brown led the way for Boston with 37 points while White poured in 31, but that wasn’t enough considering the Hawks shot the ball 25 more times than the Celtics.
“You let a team outshoot you by a shot margin like that and you’re not going to win,” said Mazzulla.
The Celtics can still advance in the NBA Cup, but it’s dicey. Step 1 is to win out in Group Play to finish 3-1, and hope that Atlanta goes 2-2. 
But the next time the Celtics take that funky green court for NBA Cup play, they’ll be hosting the currently undefeated Cleveland Cavaliers next Tuesday. The Cavs have three games between now and then, and could be 15-0 when they come to Boston.
The Celtics will also have to win road games against the Wizards (Nov. 22) and the Bulls (Nov. 29), and they’ll have to win all three of their Group C games in blowout fashion to put themselves in the best position to advance. Blowout wins over the Wizards and the Bulls seems realistic. A blowout win over the Cavs seems unlikely.
The Celtics also have a bit of a scheduling disadvantage. The Cavaliers will face the Wizards in the final game of Group Play on Dec. 3, while the other three teams in the group will have already wrapped things up. That will let the Cavaliers do what the Celtics did in last year’s In-Season Tournament, when they knew the margin of victory they needed against the Bulls in order to advance.
Last year, while the Celtics were pulling a “hack-a-Drummond” in Chicago to get the point differential they needed to win Group C, the Magic sat hopelessly at home. The Celtics will now be the ones sitting at home watching this season.
There’s still a chance the Celtics can make it out of Group Play and potentially make it to Las Vegas. But it’s not going to be easy, and the Celtics are going to have to play a lot better than what we saw Tuesday night to open the tournament.