Houston Rockets lucky to capitalize on Celtics' mistake

While almost everything has been going perfectly for the Celtics over the past year, losing Garrison Mathews to the Rockets is one move that they probably want back.

Does anyone else think that the Boston Celtics wish that they had Garrison Mathews on their roster right now while they struggle to get points off the bench? Perhaps they should've evaluated him in the same way as the Rockets.

The Celtics are running into a bit of a wall during the NBA Finals as they struggle to get any sort of offensive consistency from their bench players.

In the loss in Game 5, the Boston bench accounted for 10 points versus 31 from the Warriors. While better in the loss in Game 4, the Celtics bench was still outscored by the Warriors bench.

There is a reoccuring theme here that only gets worse when one of the starters for the Celtics, who are obviously going to play the vast majority of the minutes, goes cold. We've seen this happen plenty at various points during the playoffs.

Wouldn't it be nice for the Celtics to have a consistent shooter like Garrison Mathews coming off the bench to put those points up when one of the other guys slows down?

This was one of the few mistakes that the Celtics made en route to their impressive playoff run.

While the different situations obviously lead to different end results, it's not like Mathews has exploded as a Rocket. He is largely the same player that he was last season with the Wizards, minus a tiny bit of efficiency.

Despite seeing this, the Celtics weren't willing to give Mathews the commitment that he deserved, and now the Rockets are better for it.

Assuming Garrison Mathews can keep up his current pace and continue meshing with this Rockets team, this mistake by the Celtics is going to pay off in Houston for quite some time.

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