Celtics didn't take Thunder seriously and they got embarrassed

BOSTON -- Well that was embarrassing. The Boston Celtics entered Tuesday night's road tilt against the Thunder in Oklahoma City with the NBA's best record. They still, technically, own the NBA's best record by mere percentage points over the surging Brooklyn Nets, but very few believe the Celtics are the best team in the NBA on Wednesday morning.

That's because Boston was absolutely trounced by an undermanned Thunder squad, 150-117, on Tuesday night. Despite OKC being without their star player in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (a guy who has averaged over 30 points a night this season), the Thunder still dropped 150 points on the Celtics.

That's not just a lot of points, it's a record-setting amount of points for Oklahoma City. It's the most points ever scored by the Thunder since the team moved from Seattle 15 years ago. Thunder teams with the likes of Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Russell Westbrook never scored as many points as the Thunder team with Josh Giddey (who led the charge with a team-high 25 points), Lou Dort, Isaiah Joe, and Tre Mann did against Boston on Tuesday night.

The Celtics didn't take the Thunder seriously on Tuesday night, and it showed throughout. Boston's defense shifted from lazy to non-existent throughout the contest, with no one really giving much of an effort on that side of the ball. After giving up a 40-point second quarter, the Celtics came out of halftime and looked even worse, surrendering a 48-point third quarter. A 20-point halftime deficit soon ballooned into a 31-point deficit, and that was that.

The Celtics walked off the Paycom Center floor with the franchise's most lopsided defeat in 20 years. And they deserved every second of it for their lackadaisical defense -- and mindset in general -- throughout the game.

"You come out and you take it for granted, that's what happens," Jaylen Brown said after the loss. "We probably had it coming to us. We pick and choose when we want to play. We weren't connected, we didn't have each other's back out there. No help-side defense. We didn't guard our yard. ... They embarrassed us. They kicked our ass, and that's what happened."

The Thunder did just about anything they wanted for 60 minutes on Tuesday night. Boston allowed five different Thunder players to score 20 points or more, with OKC shooting nearly 60 percent (58-for-98) for the game. They shot 50 percent from three, making 20 of their 40 attempts. The Celtics were also trounced in the paint, outscored 70-46 around the basket. The Thunder dominated in every way, shape, and fashion against the Celtics.

The C's were on the court, but they appeared to be sleepwalking throughout the game. Jaylen Brown (29 points) and Jayson Tatum (27 points) did their thing, but they were just sort of there. Marcus Smart had just 7 points and 8 assists in his 26 minutes before he was ejected for berating an official. Grant Williams missed his only shot of the night, and was a minus-20 over his 16 minutes off the bench. 

It was ugly all around for the Celtics, who have now lost the first two games of a four-game road trip. Boston is a .500 team since Dec. 2, with every impressive win (a road win over the Nets, home victories against the Bucks and Clippers) matched by a disappointing loss (two home losses to the Magic, Tuesday night in OKC).

It's not time to overreact, but it is time to react a bit. The Celtics, plain and simple, need to have much better focus and much better effort than they've been showing lately, especially against "lesser" opponents. While the C's tend to get up for big matchups, they've been getting bit in the butt by the teams they should be beating with ease. Four of those instances have come in the last eight games.

After they made racking up wins look easy in the opening months of the season, the Celtics have hit a bit of a bump in the road. It happens to just about every team, and it's better for them to experience these struggles in December and January than in March and April. Interim head coach Joe Mazzulla hopes Tuesday night's loss will serve as a humbling lesson for his team.

"You have to play with a sense of humility every night knowing that your opponent wants to beat you," Mazzulla said after the loss. "We have to match that and we didn't, and we got outplayed in every aspect of the game."

Simply put, records don't matter. If you don't take the floor with the mindset to win, chances are you aren't going to win.

Tuesday night stung for sure, but Mazzulla and Boston's players aren't going to overreact to the lopsided result. They can quickly assuage any concerns on Thursday with a win over Western Conference Player of the Month Luka Doncic and the Mavericks in Dallas. 

"This may not be the most popular thing to say but you've got to go through some [stuff] if you want to get to where we want to get to, whether it's good or bad," said Mazzulla. "So we have to go through it and we'll be judged by how we handle it."

Everyone in the Boston locker room is aware of the best way to put a bad -- a really, really, really bad -- loss behind them.

"You respond," said Brown.

There was a table full of humble pie in the locker room waiting for the Celtics on Tuesday night. Expect a much better effort, and a lot more life, out of the team in Dallas.