CLEVELAND, Ohio — Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla doesn’t see what everyone is fussing over.

Mazzulla says he liked some of the possessions – a little over half, to be exact – that his team generated during a 17-point fourth quarter. He thinks Boston showed good composure while losing a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter (their biggest blown lead of the season). Actually, he thinks the Celtics’ 105-104 loss to the Cavs on Tuesday, which came without Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell and after Evan Mobley left because of an ankle injury, could be a good thing.

“I thought it was really good for us to be in that situation,” Mazzulla said. “Composure is one thing; execution is another. I thought we were composed; I just don’t think we had great execution on some of the possessions.

“On the possessions that we didn’t score on, there’s a couple of really good possessions there, but execution is about the results. So I’d say half, a little over half of the (fourth-quarter) possessions, we got really good looks on, executed well. And then the other ones, you’ve just got to get a couple better shots.”

I guess when you’re the best team going, you can minimize an embarrassing loss. Before their visit to Cleveland, Boston had hadn’t lost since Feb. 1, didn’t see a team within seven games of their league-best record and couldn’t do anything wrong, it seemed like.

But for 12 minutes against the Cavs, the Celtics couldn’t do much right. And even if Mazzulla liked their process, he can’t explain away the timing of their worst mistakes. If Dean Wade makes one open 3-pointer in the fourth quarter, whatever. Honestly, that might be part of the game plan given Wade’s status as a “decent” shooter (Mazzulla’s words postgame). Two open 3s? OK, creep closer. But four (out of five), including a go-ahead triple with 2:35 to play? Then the game-winning putback dunk, on which he faced zero resistance from Jrue Holiday and Jayson Tatum, both of whom were ball-watching close enough to box Wade out but didn’t?

What are we doing here? Because from where I’m sitting, the Cavs just highlighted Boston’s most glaring – and perhaps only – flaw Tuesday night. The Celtics don’t seem to care, but their end-of-game execution is a problem, just like it has been for multiple years. Boston is 4-5 in games decided by three points or less, and 14-26 in those games over the last three seasons (including 2-4 in the playoffs), during which the Celtics have made two Eastern Conference Finals appearances and one Finals appearance. That’s what the numbers-focused Mazzulla might call a trend, and that trend might be the only statistical evidence that these Celtics won’t win the championship.

Which is why it sounds weird to hear Boston say things like this:

“I think it’s healthy for us” center Kristaps Porzingis said. “… We do have a feeling that, pretty much, we’re gonna win every game, we’re invincible, we’re gonna win this game. No matter what happens we’re like, ah, we got this. A little bit of that feeling is always there. It’s maybe healthy, but it’s also healthy to get a loss here and there to kind of like, ‘Alright, here we go. Let’s recalibrate a little bit, have that attention to detail again.’ So it’s completely fine, and I think it’s necessary for us to keep going.”

By “keep going,” I assume the Porzingis means advance in the playoffs. And by most measures, the Celtics appear equipped to go all the way. They boasted the best net rating (+11.6) of this century before the loss. They’re 28-4 in 10-point games, which includes 13 20-point wins and three 50-point wins, most recently over the surging Warriors on Sunday without Porzingis.

But they also haven’t won a championship in the seven years since drafting Jayson Tatum (who, by the way, also played the “good shots, didn’t make them,” card Tuesday night). They’ve made one Finals appearance despite four trips to the conference finals (three losses as the higher seed). And they’ve lost two of those series in seven games.

Point being: Playoff margins are small, and old habits die hard. The Celtics can write off Tuesday’s loss as one wake-up call from one star-for-a-day on a team they might not see again this season. But Boston didn’t look so invincible during its fourth-quarter collapse, which, considering the Celtics’ track record, should be cause for their concern – and Cleveland’s hope. Because whether it’s March or May, and whether Mazzulla loved or hated the lead-up to all of his team’s misses, Boston couldn’t execute in crunch time (again) during its loss to the Cavs, which resulted in the biggest fourth-quarter blown lead by any team this season.

Among the Celtics who spoke after Tuesday’s loss, only one seemed bothered. Forward Jaylen Brown, coincidentally the longest-tenured player on Boston’s roster, said the Celtics got what they deserved for not matching Cleveland’s “gas” and taking little things for granted. He chastised the team’s “lax mindset” in the fourth quarter and called the result a “mentality loss.”

Does that sound healthy for a title contender? Does it sound like a good situation? Or does it sound too familiar for Brown, who has lost enough serious playoff series to know that every play counts?

“Today matters,” Brown said. “Whether everybody wants to throw it away or not, we’ve got to go look at the film and address some stuff because that matters. Your habits are everything; your mentality is everything – every game. You can’t waste no possessions, can’t waste no time out there on the floor. So no, today matters. We need to look at that.”

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