The Boston Celtics need to bounce back with a win in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday night if they want to have a chance of winning the title.
After Boston's 107-97 loss to Golden State in the fourth game of the series on Friday night, Tatum gave the Warriors credit. The team is a great one. The players are playing well. A game plan is what they have.
It is on me. I need to improve. I know I'm impacting the game in other ways, but I need to be more efficient and shoot the ball better.
I take responsibility for that.
The standard he has set for himself has not been met. Although he has passed the ball well in Boston's two victories, he has nine assists and 10 turnovers in their two losses.
The rest of the Celtics didn't make a shot in the final seven minutes of the game. The outcome of the game was flipped in Golden State's favor as the Warriors closed the game with a 21 6 run.
Tatum was 1-for-5 in the fourth quarter, but he felt like he put himself in a good position to win. We wish we'd done things differently on the offensive end. We got stagnant late in the fourth from everyone.
The face of the Celtics is Tatum, who was named the Most Valuable Player in the Eastern Conference playoffs. Curry has been peerless on the court but he has been shown as the opposite number.
In the fourth game of the series, Curry had 43 points, 10 rebound and four assists, and he was unstoppable. For much of the game, Boston's poor decision-making was an example of the problem. He was a big part of the stagnant offense down the stretch.
When asked if he is putting too much pressure on himself, he said no and that he just needs to be better.
He said that it was as simple as it could be. I need to be better." I know I can be better, so it's not like I'm being asked to do something I'm not capable of. I know the level that I can play at, because they know it.
I have to do that more often than not to help my team in the best possible way. It's not a lot of pressure. It is similar to my job.
Ime Udoka pointed to his hunting for fouls instead of trying to finish through contact when he was asked what he had seen from Tatum so far.
Udoka said that he is looking for fouls. They are a team that plays a lot. He is looking for the outlets. Three guys were shot over. It's a balancing act of being aggressive and picking your spots and doing what he's done in previous games, which is kicked it out and got wide-open looks.
The ongoing theme is that. He is a scorer as well as a player. Their rotation is a good one. Sometimes it's better to hunt fouls instead of finishing. In a few games, I have seen that.
The Celtics need to see the player who showed up in big spots earlier in the playoffs, such as his 46-point effort in Milwaukee in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinals to stave off elimination.
A similar performance in San Francisco on Monday night could allow Boston to close out the series in Boston next week.
He is confident that the Celtics can bounce back from their recent loss.
"We don't do this for the sake of doing it," he said. I promise you we won't. We're doing everything we can to get the job done. Some things need to be cleaned up. There were turnovers on the offensive side. Is it possible that we would have liked to have won and been up 7-1? It would have been the best case.
It is the finals. They felt like they had to win. It was difficult. It's not going to be easy, that's the beauty of it, that it's going to be hard. That shouldn't be.
We both want it and we have to take it.
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