Celtics vs. Cavaliers: Things to Take Away from the Celtics' Loss

The Boston Celtics lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers 88-87 in the final seconds. Although the Celtics were in control for the majority of the second half, they could not close out the game. The Cavaliers played well down the stretch while the Celtics faltered.

The game ultimately came down to one final possession for each team. For the Cavaliers, the ball was in the hands of Kyrie Irving and he took the ball to the hoop and finished to give the Cavaliers a one-point lead with two seconds left (although I thought it was a travel, but hey, this is the NBA). With two seconds left, the Celtics couldn't even get a shot off with Pierce's errant shot after the buzzer.

This loss was certainly not meaningless, though; there are many things that the Celtics did well and other things that they need to improve upon.

Ray Shines in His Return

Usually, in a player's first game back from injury, it is unlikely for them to immediately perform like they did pre-injury. But then again, it is also unlikely that a 36-year-old is able to run around screens for 40 minutes and knock down threes.

So when you think about it like that, should we really be surprised that the ever-efficient Ray Allen did not skip a beat in his return from an ankle injury? He connected on four of his six threes and shot 9-of-14 overall from the field to score 22 points in a classic Ray Allen game.

It was great to have him back in the lineup and he will likely continue to bring his shooting touch which, although they never lost without it, was missed by the Celtics.

Poor Play Down the Stretch

If I told you at the four-and-a-half minute mark of the fourth quarter when the Celtics were up 87-76 that all they needed to do to win the game was score one more basket, then you would probably think the game was in the bag.

Well, that was exactly the case for the Celtics and they couldn't put the ball in the hoop for those final minutes. During that time, the Celtics had three turnovers and went 0-5 from the floor, including one blown wide-open layup by an otherwise spot-on Ray Allen.  

The Celtics have not played well down the stretch so far this season, and this may be an all-time low for crunch-time performances. Zero points in the final 4:30 of the first quarter is bad, but zero points in the final 4:30 of the game is unacceptable.

Winning Streak over

They say that all good things must come to an end, but I don't think that is really the case here. The Celtics were absolutely rolling with dominating wins in a row against good teams up until this game. Then, when you least expected it, the Cleveland Cavaliers, of all teams, came into town and ended the winning streak.

It is certainly a tough way to end a winning streak and now it seems like it is back to the drawing board for the Celts. If it's any consolation, though, now that the Celtics have lost, we can finally play the injuries card as an excuse and that's always fun.

They Did Everything...Except Win

Despite the fact that the win/loss column will have a big L in it, the Celtics really did play well. I'm not usually one for moral victories, as winning or losing is really all that matters, but in this case, I don't think there is much to be discouraged about this loss (besides that four-and-a-half minutes span when I'm confident I could have scored more than the Celtics did).

I mean, just look at the score. The defense was there; they held them under 90 points. And even though the Celtics themselves only managed 87 points, they still shot over 50 percent from the field and 45 percent from the three.

Poor Interior Play

The Celtics were still without Jermaine O'Neal, but that is still no excuse for how the Celtics played inside tonight. Throughout the whole game, the Celtics couldn't stop anyone in the paint, and the Cavs knew it.

The only place the Cavs could efficiently score from was in the paint, and they exploited the Celtics' weak interior defense, scoring 54 of their 88 points in the paint.

It was not only the interior defense that was weak, though; the defensive rebounding was weak as well. 11 offensive rebounds were surrendered by the Celtics and, more often than not, the Cavaliers turned those extra shots into points.