Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum took the blame on his shoulders after his struggles over the first two games of the team’s playoff series against the New York Knicks.
The Celtics lost the second game of the series by 91-90 and could not capitalize on the lead. The Celtics outscored the Knicks by 11 points in the first quarter but the latter took the final quarter by 30-17 to win the thrilling contest.
“I take full ownership of the way that I’ve played in this series and can’t sugarcoat anything,” Tatum said Thursday. “I need to be better, and I expect to be a lot better.”
Tatum made just 12 of 42 shots (29%) and has frequently settled for 3-pointers.
“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,” said Tatum, who is part of a Celtics offense that has gone collectively cold and made just 25 of 100 3-pointers. “But you can’t lose your confidence.”
The Knicks have bounced back from 20 points down in the second half of both games and outscored the Celtics by 22 points in the final quarter so far.
“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 said. “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 head coach added that they need to accept their current situation and bounce back stronger.
“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 said. “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.”
The third game of the series will be played on Saturday.
