The Celtics are 6-2 after eight games, but the number that jumps off the page is the one attached to their fourth quarters: 2-6. Their only wins in the final period have come in a 35-point rout of Chicago and an 11-point road victory in Orlando.
That split is enough to raise an obvious question about whether Boston has started to develop a fourth-quarter problem. The sample is tiny, of course, and eight games won’t define a season.
The Celtics could beat Charlotte and Milwaukee on Friday and Sunday and change the entire picture. But the early pattern is hard to ignore.
Boston has been building big cushions early. The Celtics are a cumulative plus-41 in first quarters and plus-69 in first halves, and those minutes involve the full rotation, so there isn’t much point in singling out one player there.
The trouble starts after halftime. Boston is only plus-8 in third quarters and then drops to minus-30 in fourth quarters.
A lot of the damage has come in games where the Celtics have let large leads slip away. They’ve held 20-point advantages in four games, and only once did that lead hold all the way through, in the 134-99 win over Chicago.
In the second meeting with the Bulls, Boston led by 32 before finishing with a 14-point win. The Celtics also had 22-point leads against Detroit and Milwaukee and ended up trailing in both games.
They lost to the Pistons on opening night, then turned around and beat the Bucks on Wednesday night.
The Detroit collapse was especially ugly. After the 7:34 timeout in the fourth quarter, Boston had a lineup of Jayson Tatum, Derrick White, Paul George, Mitchell Robinson, and Baylor Scheierman on the floor and gave up a 12-0 run before Joe Mazzulla called another timeout.
The Knicks chipped away at a 10-point Celtics lead between the 6:53 timeout of the fourth quarter and the 1:41 mark, with Tatum, White, Robinson, Payton Pritchard, and Jordan Walsh in the game to start that stretch.
Brooklyn’s push came with 7:49 left, when the Nets ripped off a 9-0 run. Three of those points came before the 7:39 timeout, and Boston came out of that stoppage with George, White, Sam Hauser, Walsh, and Robinson.
Milwaukee’s run was more gradual, but it still did the job of tightening the game. Boston had George, Scheierman, Luka Garza, Robinson and White/Hauser on the floor during that stretch, with Neemias Queta and Walsh checking in at 7:21 and Scheierman returning for Walsh at 4:22 as the Celtics closed the quarter out 18-11.
The Houston game doesn’t really belong in the conversation because Boston never led, and the garbage-time minutes in the 35-point Chicago win don’t tell us much either. What does stand out is the timing of the swings. The worst stretches keep showing up around the first timeout of the fourth quarter, somewhere in that 9:00-to-4:00 window, when opponents seem to make their move.
Robinson keeps appearing in those lineups, which naturally puts a spotlight on him. Boston’s fourth-quarter issues look less like one isolated failure and more like a mix of missed shots, trouble stopping runs, and the kind of transition breakdowns that lead to open threes. Those threes have been a problem: the Celtics are allowing the fourth-highest fourth-quarter three-point percentage in the league at 38.5%.
Robinson’s role is part of that picture. He’s there to screen, free up teammates, and crash the glass for second chances that can slow down an opponent’s momentum.
So far, though, the fourth-quarter production hasn’t been there. Robinson has just two offensive rebounds in fourth quarters through six games.
Baylor Scheierman has five, and Luka Garza has three. Robinson’s offensive rebound rate is 11.1% overall, just behind Garza’s 12.8%, but in fourth quarters it drops to 4.9%.
Garza is at 10% in fourth quarters, and Scheierman is at 9.1%.
The plus-minus numbers are rough, too. Robinson is minus-32 in fourth quarters and minus-28 in close games.
But he’s hardly alone. Tatum is minus-19 in fourth quarters and minus-14 in close games, White is minus-16 and minus-15, Hauser is minus-17 and minus-14, Walsh is minus-17 and minus-19, and Pritchard is minus-14 and minus-3.
Boston’s problems aren’t limited to one player or one lineup. The team is also sending opponents to the line too often, allowing 8.1 free throws per fourth quarter, which ranks ninth-worst in the league. That’s a team issue, not an individual one.
Still, Robinson’s fourth-quarter minutes are hard to miss, and the Celtics have to decide whether they want him to play through it or whether the lineup needs to change. Queta has logged more than 40 fourth-quarter minutes compared with Robinson’s 28, and Queta is plus-6. Garza, in similar minutes to Robinson, is minus-4 in fourth quarters.
After the Bucks game, Mazzulla made it clear he isn’t interested in turning Robinson into the scapegoat.
“The greatest thing that you can give a guy like Mitch, who's been in the league for nine years and played on a championship team, and decided to come to our team, is to empower them and to ask more of them, and that just takes a little bit of time,” he said after the Bucks game. “He's one of the best rebounders of all time.
So any chance there is a little bit of a dip, we all have to hit the panic button, and it's just not the case. His process has been great, and it'll continue to be better and better for us.”
The Celtics’ fourth-quarter issues clearly go beyond one man, but Robinson’s play in those moments matters. Boston needs stops and points when the game tightens, and that means either getting more from him or adjusting the lineup around him.
It’s still too early to say which fix makes the most sense. For now, the numbers only point to a trend.
The Celtics have survived most of these rough stretches, which is the encouraging part. But the pattern is there, the pressure points are visible, and now the question is how Boston chooses to respond.
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There is a reason the Celtics have not been knocked off course by it, though. Whites overall shooting from the field has improved, and Bostons offense remains strong enough to absorb a cold stretch from one of its most important perimeter pieces. The bigger question is what happens if White finds his previous form again, because even a modest rebound there would give an already dangerous attack another layer defenses have to account for. [Read more 🡒]
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