Boston Celtics
“I wanted to be perfect and First Team All-NBA Jayson, but it’s going to take time. I didn’t rush the rehab process, so I can’t rush this. It’s all going to work out.”
Timberwolves guard Bones Hyland dribbles the ball past Celtics forward Hugo González. AP Photo/Mark Stockwell
March 23, 2026 | 7:44 AM
6 minutes to read
The Celtics struggled for the second game in a row, and this time they couldn’t rally, falling to Bones Hyland and the short-handed Timberwolves in a 102-92 loss.
Here are the takeaways.
Bones Hyland led the way (and talked an otherworldly amount of trash).
Hyland had perhaps his best game of the year, matching his season-high with a team-high 23 points on 8-for-14 shooting that gave the Timberwolves the scoring punch they needed on a night without Anthony Edwards.
Hyland punished the Celtics’ second unit in particular, and he helped the Timberwolves recover from a double-digit deficit in the first quarter and a nine-point deficit in the third.
Hyland also talked an incredible amount of trash, letting Sam Hauser and Hugo González in particular know how little he thought of their defense. Hyland visibly called for a matchup against Hauser at the end of the first half, and then made sure to note to NBC’s sideline reporter Zora Stephenson that he got the matchup he wanted.
When he buried a jumper as González flew by in the second half, Hyland pointed at González with a quizzical look as he jogged back up the floor as if to say, “who was that guy?” before hitting a three and aiming an odd, finger-wiggling celebration at the Celtics’ bench.
And finally, when González wrapped him up in the paint and Hyland hit the deck, he pointed and yelled “YOU” at the rookie when he asked who the foul was on.
The Celtics never really reacted to Hyland’s provocations, but that might be because they did very little to counteract them in the second half. It’s hard to talk much trash when you haven’t scored in a long while, and it’s even harder when you let a historic streak slip to a team without its best player (more on this below).
The Celtics went icy cold at a costly time.
With 10:12 remaining in the fourth quarter, Derrick White drove to the basket and finished a layup that pushed the Celtics’ lead to three, which was the last time the Celtics scored anything for more than five minutes of game time.
During that stretch, the Timberwolves scored 16 points, taking a 13-point lead that seemed to leave the Celtics without answers.
The Timberwolves defended with a ton of physicality, and they forced nine turnovers in the second quarter alone (although the Celtics committed just one more the rest of the way and finished with 11 overall). The frustrated expressions on the faces of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown as they advocated for foul calls were very familiar.
Joe Mazzulla said the physical play “messed up the timing of our offense, messed up us getting the ball in the scoring area.
“I thought it impacted our screening, it impacted our creating advantages,” he said. “So I thought that was the tale of the fourth quarter from an offensive standpoint.”
As Brown noted, the Timberwolves made it difficult for the Celtics to even complete simple hand-offs, which are a key part of their offense.
“In that second quarter, we were too lackadaisical with the ball,” he said. “I was too lackadaisical with the ball. We just weren’t good enough. It’s definitely a game you’re going to look back and wish you could have some possessions back because I feel like you’re in a position to win that game.
“We didn’t play Celtics basketball tonight.”
Jayson Tatum looked rusty again.
Tatum shot just 3-for-15 against the Grizzlies in the Celtics’ win on Friday, and he struggled again on Sunday — 6-for-16 from the floor for 16 points, and outside of a brief takeover at the start of the third quarter, he looked very much like a player who has recently returned from rehabbing a devastating injury.
That is, of course, appropriate, and Celtics fans would do well to remember that as seamless as this season has felt, Tatum’s return was never going to be perfectly smooth. The initial games were a honeymoon period when the rest of the league was as stunned by Tatum’s sudden return as the Celtics. Now teams have some film on Tatum and know both what to expect and where he is at with his recovery.
That, of course, might not make it feel better for fans when they see Tatum drive to the hoop, beat every defender and come up short on a layup while falling to the side like he did in the first quarter, or when he settled for a tough fallaway jumper against Ayo Dosunmu out of the post rather than beating the smaller defender to the hoop.
The progress is there, however, even if it isn’t always linear.
Tatum said his struggles are “mental.”
“I mean, I ain’t know how this s*** was going to be,” he said. “I mean, it’s tough. In the moment, you try not to think about it, you just want to be Jayson Tatum and feel like yourself again. I’m not Superman, so it’s obviously going to take some time.
“I think the next day I can give myself a little more grace over certain things, but in the moment, I mean, it’s frustrating.”
“I wanted to be perfect and First Team All-NBA Jayson, but it’s going to take time,” he added. “I didn’t rush the rehab process, so I can’t rush this. It’s all going to work out.”
Jaylen Brown ended the game icy cold.
Brown scored a game-high 29 points on 9-for-26 shooting, but notably, he shot 2-for-12 down the stretch, as the Timberwolves pulled away.
Prior to that, Brown appeared to be handling the highly physical Timberwolves’ defense — with Rudy Gobert’s long, waving arms in the middle — pretty well.
He is strong enough to get to his spot and create a little space even against Jaden McDaniels, one of the league’s better wing defenders, and Brown used a variety of nifty moves and finishes around the rim (as well as his newfound familiarity with the free-throw line) to stack points.
But Brown was not immune to the Celtics’ ice-cold stretch. He blew a layup in transition that he would normally make with ease, he left several mid-range jumpers on the rim, he got swatted by Naz Reid on a fourth-quarter drive, and on one of the last possessions that the Celtics took seriously in any meaningful way, he tried to score over Dosunmu in the post and appeared to simply blow a makeable layup.
“I feel like I had some good looks at the basket, but even being a little bit more patient,” Brown said. “I don’t feel like I was as patient as I needed to be in this game for my team, and I feel like that ultimately cost us.”
The Timberwolves broke a long cold streak.
The last time the Timberwolves won in Boston, “Candy Shop” by 50 Cent was the No. 1 song on the charts, “Million Dollar Baby” had just Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and Bob Iger had just taken over at Disney.
The score of that 2005 game was 99-97. Kevin Garnett (if you’ve heard of him?) nearly finished with a triple-double with 21-13-9, while Wally Szczerbiak scored 20 points off the bench.
The Celtics, meanwhile, were led in scoring by Ricky Davis, whose 22-point, 1-assist statline sounds incredibly on-brand. Paul Pierce — who attended Sunday’s game and sat alongside Evan Turner — scored 12 and dished out nine assists in the loss.
What’s next
After Cade Cunningham was ruled out for several weeks due to a collapsed lung (get well soon, Cade!), a number of analysts wondered whether the Pistons might actually slide out of first in the Eastern Conference.
Not only did Monday’s loss put a massive dent in that discussion, the Celtics also slipped to just a half-game above the Knicks with a tough showdown against the Thunder looming on Wednesday.
The Celtics have the third-toughest strength of schedule remaining according to Tankathon, although it’s worth noting that 1) the Knicks will also have to face the Thunder and 2) part of the reason the Celtics’ strength of schedule is difficult is because they have a head-to-head against the Knicks themselves on April 9 in their third-to-last game of the season, which could have massive implications for the standings.
Still, the Celtics have their work cut out for them over the next week. After Wednesday’s game against the defending champions, they face the scorching-hot Hawks on Friday before traveling to Charlotte to take on the Hornets (who are now comfortably over .500 and have won three in a row) on Sunday.
Hayden Bird is a sports staff writer for Boston.com, where he has worked since 2016. He covers all things sports in New England.
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