Celtics' Joe Mazzulla Apologizes to Bulls' Billy Donovan, Andre Drummond for Fouling
The Boston Celtics continuously fouled Andre Drummond in the second half of Tuesday's 124-97 win over the Chicago Bulls in an effort to keep their point differential high enough to advance to the quarterfinals of the In-Season Tournament.
The ploy worked—Boston won a three-team tiebreaker with the Brooklyn Nets and Orlando Magic and will be the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference, next facing the 2-seeded Indiana Pacers—but Chicago head coach Billy Donovan wasn't happy with the strategy of repeatedly hacking Drummond, and Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla apologized to both him and Drummond after the contest:
"Andre is a veteran guy and I told Mazzulla, 'What are we doing here?' Donovan said to reporters after the game. "I get keeping your guys in, wanting to get in [to the next round]. The league's made it a big deal. But [the Celtics] also, in fairness to them, they gotta deal with the rules too. If they're trying to get into Vegas [where the semifinals and final will be played], there's things they gotta do. For me, it was just the fouling. And Joe was great when I talked to him. He understood."
The Celtics sent Drummond to the line for six free-throw attempts in the game, where he made just one. He came into the game shooting 64.3 percent from the charity stripe, and 47.7 percent on free throws for his career.
In-Season Tournament tiebreakers for advancing to the next round were head-to-head matchups when two teams finished with the same record. For three teams, however, both point differential and total points became relevant.
The Celtics came into Tuesday with a wild collection of tiebreaker scenarios for either winning Group C or getting in as a Wildcard, with many of them taking point differential into account. Hence, the team resorted to hack-a-Drummond in an effort to run up the score.
It's hard to imagine the NBA will be thrilled with those sort of tactics and may have to revise the format for the In-Season Tournament going forward if it wants to avoid them.
The Celtics were well within their rights to go the route they did, but it isn't surprising that Donovan and a Bulls team already submerged in a frustrating season—having lost eight of their last nine games and now just 5-14 overall, with a Zach LaVine trade on the horizon (and possibly a full roster reconstruction to follow)—were annoyed at the strategy.
