Robb: Why it's not time to panic about the Celtics' slump

NEW YORK -- The Celtics lost back-to-back games Thursday night for the first time this season since the second night of the year. They have now dropped five of their last nine overall. Against the Knicks, they were beaten by a player in Michael Beasley (season-high 32 points on 13-of-20 shooting) that has played for six different teams over his ten-year NBA career and is playing on a veteran’s minimum contract this year.

On the surface, all of these issues are cause for concern. However, Brad Stevens didn’t sound like a coach that was bothered by his team’s play during Thursday’s 102-93 defeat at Madison Square Garden.

“It’s a long year,” Stevens acknowledged when asked about Boston’s recent struggles. “It’s a marathon. We know that. I just told our guys: Listen, there’s a lot of things we can improve on, but that was the kind of fight that we can build off of. The last couple (before Thursday night), not so much. This one, we’ll be OK if we play like that more often than not.”

Stevens hasn’t been one to mince words this year about the team's effort so it was noteworthy to see him speak positively about a sound defeat to New York’s second unit down the stretch. He’s been warning anyone who will listen all year that this team was playing above its head early (even during a 16-game winning streak) and with injuries up and down the roster (Marcus Morris, Jaylen Brown and Shane Larkin missed Thursday’s game), guys are being forced into spots they aren’t ready for just yet and that was evident in the defeat.

Out of the 11 active players on the Celtics roster Thursday night, six of them were rookies and three of those were second-round picks. You aren’t going to win a lot of NBA games when your talent pool is that shallow coming off the bench. Abdel Nader, Guerschon Yabusele and Semi Ojeleye (on the offensive end) just aren't ready to help yet.

“We’re banged up,” Stevens said. “We needed the next guy to step up and make plays. Obviously, coming in here without Morris, without Brown, that’s two more guys you might throw on Beasley, if you get a chance. Hey, we’re going to need everybody. We’re going to need everybody here, everybody in Maine, everybody around. Because it doesn’t stop anytime soon.”

The refrain in the Celtics locker room was also surprisingly upbeat. The veterans saw a team that could have folded after trailing by 13-2 in the opening moments of the game, but they fought back to take a nine-point lead in the third quarter. They shut down Kristaps Porzingis (0 of 11 from the field) and kept the Knicks off the offensive glass (two second-chance points in the second half). They did a lot of things well except a) shoot (38 percent from field) and b) slow down Beasley.

“I thought we defended (him) really good a couple of times,” Stevens said. “And we have really good individual defenders. But, as they say, better offense – the guy that gets into a rhythm and is a great offensive player can get going like that. This is something that I don’t lose too much sleep over, to be honest. It’s, you know, you make it as tough as you possibly can.

"And sometimes guys make baskets. And that was the case tonight. I thought we played really hard, I thought we really competed. I thought we missed a lot of offensive opportunities but defensively we were locked in. And, you know, credit them. Hats off.”

“I felt like tonight we played really hard,” Al Horford added. “We were very engaged. We played well. We put ourselves in a position to win the game. So I honestly don’t think there’s much of a concern. I think we need to regroup, get as much rest as we can and get ready for a tough game on Saturday. Chicago’s been playing well. And I think we’re going to be OK. I don’t think we need to overreact.”

The bottom line about this stretch is that December was always going to be rough, even if the Celtics had a full roster. Eight games in 12 days is a tough ask for any team and the Celtics’ weaknesses have become a lot more glaring during the heavy slate. It’s not clear what this team is or can be just yet, but it is evident they are nowhere close to the best team in the East when missing an All-Star and two other rotation players. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone and it’s certainly not a reason to get worked up over five losses in nine games

“It's basketball, man,” Kyrie Irving explained of the recent woes. “It's going to happen. It's a long season. I know everybody else in the world is going to hit the panic button, so it doesn’t make any sense for us to hit it. It's part of the game, second back-to-back loss of our season. You know, just consistently learning, and that's what it's about, especially in a developing group like we have here. So it's not going to be perfect. There's going to be lulls and weeks where we go up and down. I've been saying it throughout the season, even when we had the strong start. It's part of the NBA schedule, part of getting better as a team."

The results weren’t there on Thursday night, but the effort was. That’s something that had been missing in recent losses (Utah) and appeared to be most important thing to Stevens Thursday night. The head coach simply doesn't have the manpower right now to get worked up about these types of losses. He's just going to have to hope this group gets healthy (Brown and Morris expected to be back by Christmas) or Danny Ainge gives him another veteran piece to work with in the coming weeks.