Celtics lose 22-point lead in 4th, 11-game win streak ends - ESPN

CLEVELAND — For three quarters Tuesday night, the Boston Celtics were in cruise control.

Then, in the blink of an eye, their 22-point, fourth-quarter lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers was gone. After a Jayson Tatum fadeaway missed long, and the Cavaliers successfully overturned a foul called on Darius Garland on the play, Cleveland emerged with a stunning 105-104 victory, snapping Boston's league-leading 11-game winning streak.

«I think we are a much better team than we showed today,» Jaylen Brown said afterward. «Today was just a mentality loss.

»We had the game and then we got comfortable, so it was more of a mindset thing than X's and O's. We gotta just be the more disciplined, the more militant team. We weren't that. Usually we are that, and we felt that today and I think that's the reason why they were able to get back into the game.

«Our mindset was a little bit too lax, and we were too careless with the ball. We weren't intentional on offense. We kind of let guys get to tendencies that we were supposed to take away. We gave up offensive rebounds, stuff that all just comes with mindset.»

For much of the game, it didn't seem like any of those things were going to matter. Boston hit 50% of its triples through the first three quarters, It had a comfortable 16-point lead heading into the fourth — one that ballooned to 22 points when Tatum made a putback layup for a 93-71 lead with 9 minutes to go — and was playing a Cleveland team that entered the game missing Donovan Mitchell and Max Strus with knee issues and lost Evan Mobley to an ankle sprain late in the third.

Then the fourth quarter happened. Boston went 0-for-8 from deep, while Cavaliers forward Dean Wade went 5-for-5 from deep and 7-for-7 from the field —