NBA playoff scores 2016: The Celtics’ shooting, not star power, was exposed in series loss

Atlanta beat up Boston by ignoring their shooters, who proved they just couldn’t make enough shots to win.

Apr 29, 2016, 1:00 PM UTC

Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports

Avery Bradley was the Jenga piece that sent the Boston Celtics' tower tumbling. On Thursday, the Celtics' season ended in a 104-92 defeat in Game 6 to the Atlanta Hawks, and it was the loss of one player that exposed all their flaws.

The knock on the Celtics all season was their lack of star power, with people scoffing at 5'9 Isaiah Thomas being an actual leading scorer on a successful playoff team. In the first round, though, it wasn't Thomas but the rest of the Celtics who were exposed.

Bradley’s injury caused everything to unravel. After a hamstring injury in Game 1, Bradley missed the rest of the series, taking away the Celtics’ second-most reliable three-point shooter and immediately limiting the team’s wing depth. In return, Atlanta decided to ignore Boston’s shooters, smother Thomas and just gamble that the Celtics wouldn’t hit enough shots to beat them.

It worked. In Game 2, the Celtics shot 5-of-28 from behind the line in a loss. In Game 5, they were 7-of-29 from three. They won Games 3 and 4 despite shooting below 35 percent in both contests. On Friday, Boston only managed to shoot 7-of-32, and several of those makes were in the fourth quarter with the game already put away.

On the other hand, despite Atlanta’s punishing defense keying in on him, Thomas was able to produce throughout the series despite being limited by an ankle injury in the final game. His shooting numbers were understandably down -- again, the Hawks are a very good defense trying to stop him -- but Thomas still averaged 24.2 points for the series with five assists. In the series finale, Thomas went for 25 points on 9-of-24 shooting with 10 assists. As Boston collapsed the paint and the Celtics bricked shot after shot, Thomas still found openings and ways to be effective.

Bradley taking a few more of those three-pointers instead of Marcus Smart or Evan Turner may have helped, and his absence contributed to Boston's total collapse in the final two games -- blowouts decided by double-digit points. But really, his absence highlighted the bigger, systematic lack of shooting that Boston has been trying to hide all season.

What critics have said about Boston’s star power may be true if the Celtics advanced deeper into the playoffs, but in the first round, Thomas was one of the few things that went right for Boston, while their shooting held them back. However they approach this offseason, answering that problem needs to be near the top of their list.

2 more things from Game 6

Boston’s Jae Crowder problem

Crowder was a revelation for the Celtics last season when he arrived from Dallas as part of the Rajon Rondo trade, and they happily signed him to a $35-million contract during the summer for keep him in Boston for five years. Around the All-Star break, a few people mentioned that he was far from deserving a spot on the 2016 Eastern Conference team, and a few select people even argued that Crowder was the Celtics' best player.

In the series against Atlanta, though, Crowder was just straight up bad. Some of that clear need for a shooter fell directly on Crowder’s shoulders, who averaged slightly less than 10 points on 28 percent shooting from the floor and 24 percent from behind the line. Even more worrisome, in Crowder’s last two months of the regular season, he shot under 25 percent from behind the arc, after hovering around 35 percent all season.

Crowder does a lot of things, many of them small and unseen, but the reason he was worth $35 million was because he did all those things while hitting jumpers. The simple explanation is that the fatigue of being a full-time starter for the first time in his career got to him in the final months, and another summer of conditioning will solve him falling off late in the year. Still, if Crowder isn’t a league-average shooter for any reason going forward, perhaps his importance to the Celtics’ future isn’t what they once thought. Watching for him to bounce back will be a big question for Boston next year.

The Hawks get a Cleveland rematch

Last year, Atlanta entered the playoffs playing their worst basketball of the year. They made it to the conference finals anyway where they lost to the Cavaliers, but it wasn't the brutally efficient Hawks we had seen all year that swept through the Eastern Conference to secure the No. 1 seed.

This year, it's the opposite. Saying the Hawks are on the same level as they were at the peak of last year, when they went undefeated for an entire month, is probably too big of a stretch. But make no mistake: this Atlanta team is playing fantastic right now. Their defense is suffocating, their offense is crisp and the players they rely on are all showing up, whether it was Paul Millsap's 45-point explosion in Game 4 or Kent Bazemore steadily chipping in four double-digit performances throughout the series.

Will this matchup against the Cavaliers be different? Right now, you’d be inclined to say no, because Cleveland is still clearly the favorite for the entire conference. But surely, Atlanta should be more competitive than a four-game sweep like last May. Watching the Cavaliers get tested by a team playing some of their best ball should be incredible.