Robb: With Celtics skidding, Brad Stevens faces his biggest challenge

The Boston Celtics are not a good basketball team right now.

That’s a weird thing to say about a team with the fourth-best record in the league, but it is the ugly truth. The Celtics lost their third-straight game Wednesday night, a 129-119 drubbing by the Los Angeles Clippers, in which they allowed a season-high in total points for the second-straight game (121 vs. Cleveland on Sunday). Over the last month, Boston has dropped nine of their last 15 games, which has knocked them out of the top spot in the Eastern Conference.

“I think teams have outplayed us,” Brad Stevens said of the last month. “I’ve said all along I don’t think we’re all that we were cracked up to be during our 16-game winning streak, and its probably hit us more in the last month than it hit us before. Teams have outplayed us; good teams have outplayed us and that was the case again tonight. Couldn’t get a stop at any point in time during the game, and we are generating good looks the whole game even when we weren’t scoring in the first quarter. Just been outplayed.”

There have been a variety of extenuating circumstances that have been at play over the dismal stretch. Boston has had one healthy point guard for the last three weeks with both Shane Larkin (knee) and Marcus Smart (hand) on the shelf for the past 11 games. They will be back in action after the All-Star break and their presence will certainly help, particularly on the defensive end for matchup purposes. However, expecting both of them to be the savior of this group is foolish. Boston was struggling when they were on the floor in January before both were sidelined (Celtics lost four-straight before Smart sidelined himself).

“I think that’s hoping rather than knowing,” Stevens said of the potential for Larkin and Smart to solve Boston's issues. “I think we’ll see what those guys bring to the table when they are ready to practice again on Wednesday, and we’ll see what everybody else brings to the table.”

The fact of the matter is we are seeing the flawed group many of us expected after Gordon Hayward went down on opening night. After a stellar first two months, we are seeing a regression to and below the mean. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have both fallen back to earth with their shooting and defense the past few weeks. Al Horford is an All-Star but he certainly looks like a 31-year-old a lot. Semi Ojeleye can defend, but he can’t shoot. Greg Monroe can score, but he can’t defend. Aron Baynes can’t stop fouling. Marcus Morris and Terry Rozier take too many shots. These issues don’t emerge every night, but they are becoming more prevalent lately on both sides of the court.

This team certainly needs the All-Star Break from a fatigue standpoint after playing a league-high 58 games in the lead up to it. However, regression has emerged on both ends of the floor lately and that’s a troubling trend for the coach.

“Every team has played since October 17th,” Stevens said. “We have no excuses. I told our guys excuses are contagious. Everybody else has been playing too. LA has been on the road for five days. At the end of the day excuses are contagious, go play. ... It’s going to be a tough ending if we don’t change a little bit and I’ll look at what I can change as well. I think we’re probably due for some of that.”

While change is certainly needed to get this group of its funk, Stevens’ options are incredibly limited when you look at the complexion of this roster. He’s a head coach that likes to play small and yet Danny Ainge used the team’s disabled player exception on a one-dimensional big man (Monroe) who can help, but can’t spread the floor with shooting or play strong defense in the interior. There is no reliable depth at the end of the roster either with rookies (Ojeleye, Abdel Nader, Guerschon Yabusele) who all have limitations on one or both ends of the floor.

With the trade deadline having passed and the buyout market for shooters looking pretty thin after Joe Johnson (Rockets) and Marco Belinelli (Sixers) signed elsewhere, it’s on the head coach now to find some solutions internally and it’s hard to see exactly where he turns to for those to cure a 21st ranked offense.

“We’ll look at everything,” Stevens admitted. “Obviously, you’re always looking for small tweaks defensively and offensively, but we haven’t gotten enough out of our rotations and subs and all those things. We’ll take a deeper dive into that into the next week.”

A look around the Eastern Conference indicates things could get ugly for the Celtics in a hurry. The Raptors (seven-straight wins) are surging as the new top seed in the East, while the Cavs have looked rejuvenated after their trade deadline deals. A second-round matchup with LeBron could be in the cards at this point and that could produce an early exit for this group if Stevens can’t find a way to right the ship.

He hasn't done much to rock the boat all year long, understandably so given the team’s success in the standings. They’ve overachieved with their talent and he is a big reason why.

The tide has shifted, however. It’s time for him to push some buttons and shake things up. Whether it’s Smart starting (for Tatum), Daniel Theis starting for Baynes (or some other adjustment) he hasn’t maximized his roster and rotations for the past few weeks. The players have failed to perform, but a lot of them haven’t been put in the best positions to succeed either.

With the playoffs just two months away, time is running thin. Stevens doesn’t have the roster he wants, but he needs to find a way to make it work. This is arguably the biggest challenge of his Celtics career and he's going to have a long week trying to find some answers.