The Celtics’ opening night against Detroit produced two very different kinds of accountability.
One came from the league office, which reviewed a fourth-quarter collision at midcourt with the Pistons’ Duncan Robinson and issued Paul George the NBA’s first flopping fine of the season. The other came from inside Boston’s locker room, where the loss was met with a blunt assessment of what went wrong — and a reminder that one game is too early to draw a full-season verdict.
George was fined $2,000 after the league reviewed the play, even though no call was made during the game. Under the NBA’s new enforcement system, a flop can bring a non-unsportsmanlike technical foul and a free throw for the opponent, with escalating fines and even a one-game suspension possible after six or more penalties.
NBA executive vice president and head of basketball operations James Jones said the league’s view of the issue is straightforward.
“It’s just something that we’ve seen that doesn’t present well in-game, live or on TV, and it’s not the fabric of NBA competition,” Jones said.
The fine was only one part of a night that swung hard in the other direction for Boston.
The Celtics led by 13 at halftime, then were outscored 72-41 over the final 20 minutes and watched Detroit put together a 23-0 run in the fourth quarter. Boston also blew a 22-point second-half lead in a 121-113 loss, a result that made the opener feel less like a single bad stretch than a reminder of habits the team has already identified as a problem.
That was the tone after the game, too. Joe Mazzulla said it will take 10 to 20 games to get a real read on the team’s strengths and weaknesses, and Sam Hauser kept the reaction from drifting into panic.
“It’s the first game of 82,” Hauser said.
There was still a bright spot Boston could point to, and it was a big one.
George finished with 38 points, 5 steals, 5 rebounds and 3 assists, going 12-for-21 from the field and 7-for-12 from three-point range. The 38 points set a new Celtics record for a debut, surpassing Kristaps Porzingis’s 30-point first game in 2023. George also moved past Kyle Korver for eighth on the NBA’s all-time 3-pointers made list.
Derrick White called George’s performance “fun to watch” and pointed to the way he created problems for Detroit.
“He was unbelievable,” White said, describing George’s ability to cause turnovers and be disruptive.
Boston’s first half had looked more like the version the Celtics wanted to show. The team created gaps in the defense, hit shots, and finished the night at 40.5% from three-point range, making 17 of 42 attempts. The Celtics also recorded 23 deflections, another sign that the effort level was there even if the result unraveled late.
That contrast is what made the opener so layered: a league discipline story, a team-wide collapse, and a debut that was both record-setting and impossible to separate from the loss around it.
The Celtics now move on quickly, with the New York Knicks next on Friday. For one night, though, the opener left Boston with a little of everything — a fine, a collapse, and enough good play to keep the game from becoming a total indictment.