Celtics’ Jayson Tatum shoulders blame – ‘I need to be better’

BOSTON — Celtics star Jayson Tatum shouldered the blame for his struggles over the primary two video games of the crew’s playoff collection with the New York Knicks and vowed enchancment for Saturday’s important Recreation 3.

“I take full ownership of the way that I’ve played in this series and can’t sugarcoat anything,” Tatum mentioned Thursday. “I need to be better, and I expect to be a lot better.”

Tatum’s jumper has deserted him up to now within the collection; he has made simply 12 of 42 photographs (29%) and has regularly settled for 3-pointers, the place he’s 5-of-20 (25%). He has taken solely 9 free throws within the two video games and has eight turnovers, together with on the ultimate play of the Knicks’ 91-90 victory in Recreation 2.

“Guys work really hard on their game and their craft and prepare to be in those moments to hit open shots, and it just hasn’t happened the last two games,” mentioned Tatum, who’s a part of a Celtics offense that has gone collectively chilly and made simply 25 of 100 3-pointers. “But you can’t lose your confidence.”

Tatum and star teammate Jaylen Brown are a mixed 2-of-19 taking pictures within the fourth quarters within the collection. The Knicks have come again from 20 factors down within the second half of each video games and outscored the Celtics by 22 factors within the remaining quarter up to now.

“It’s a credit to [Tatum], I don’t think that I appreciate the fact that he would [take responsibility], but I think it’s on everybody,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla mentioned. “We all could be better. I could be better. The things that I can help our team execute on our entire team can be better. And yeah, he can too. So just says who he is taking responsibility for that, and I expect him to be better.”

The Celtics met for a movie session Thursday, and one of many factors of emphasis was for the crew to maintain its confidence and never cross up photographs. Tatum mentioned it was burdened within the assembly to not let the struggles have an effect on the aggressive method the Celtics have taken as they’ve rewritten the 3-point taking pictures file ebook in successful the championship final season and successful 61 video games this common season.

Mazzulla, who has lengthy been dogmatic in his perception that quantity 3-point taking pictures is the important thing to the crew’s offensive success, burdened the crew has to take a practical and workmanlike method to its predicament.

“You can’t just have a pride and entitlement that we’re holier than now, that we’re not allowed to be down 0-2,” Mazzulla mentioned. “This is the situation that we’re in. So we have to have an understanding of why we’re in it and we got to fix it, and we have an opportunity to fix that.”

Mazzulla additionally addressed the regarding state of affairs with heart Kristaps Porzingis, who left Recreation 1 resulting from sickness and was in a position to play solely 14 minutes off the bench in Recreation 2. Porzingis missed eight video games in February and March with mysterious respiratory points that specialists had tough diagnosing.

He has been coping with the ailment ever since, and his situation worsened throughout Recreation 1 with Porzingis describing it as having a “big crash” of power. He did have eight factors and 4 rebounds in restricted however efficient minutes on Wednesday however mentioned after the sport he was not feeling effectively.

“He gave us everything he has, and with these two days off, hopefully he can recover a little bit more,” Mazzulla mentioned. “Every game will be situationally depending upon how much he can go. But I’m just grateful for what he was able to do for us.”