After a second team meeting, Celtics show best version of themselves against Hornets

Team meetings happen all the time in the NBA. Sometimes we hear about them, sometimes we don’t. Two meetings in a 24-hour period is a bit unusual, and that’s exactly what happened ahead of the Celtics’ 119-103 drubbing of the Hornets on Sunday night.

“To be quite candid, we walked out of there and we said we’re going to continue this tomorrow,” Brad Stevens admitted on Sunday night of the team’s postgame meeting from Friday. “We spent another hour and a half yesterday, and again, those are the moments in coaching that you can’t explain, that’s what it’s all about if it's well-intentioned and if it’s not off the rails. And it was the furthest from that.”

The Celtics had seemingly righted the ship during an eight-game winning streak, but it was evident that old habits were starting to creep back during a three-game slide capped off by Friday’s ugly loss to the Bucks. Guys were fighting for themselves and their stats instead of the team in sections of the game while letting their defensive focus wane, and the results were indicative of that type of attitude. On a national stage, the Celtics were embarrassed at home and tensions finally rose to the surface. A frank discussion was warranted, and it’s clear egos were not spared, even if things ended on a positive note.

“I think the best thing you can be is a listener, as long as you can be a listener,” Stevens said before turning a classic Seinfeld reference. “I always say that a lot of those meetings start off like Festivus, then they end with like hugs, right? So it’s just like any other family meeting. That’s where we were. We never got to the feats of strength.”

“It’s interesting because every time I read about a team meeting it’s like, ‘Yeah, everybody has teams meetings all the time,’” he continued. “Yeah, and every day we have closed-door meetings. But some are obviously more impactful, more transparent, and a little bit more raw than others. I think those are probably the most memorable, enjoyable, and purposeful times when you reflect back on them. My point with that would be: If done right, those are really good and our guys did it right. Well-intentioned.”

Marcus Morris hinted that the team should have chosen to do it in a more private setting to avoid the microscope of the media in the aftermath.

“I wish we would have had it not after the game so we wouldn’t have had a whole bunch of questions about it,” he said. “Could have just kept it to ourselves, but it happens. It’s very important for a team that’s trying to accomplish something as we are. I think they are beneficial for us.”

Still, the airing of grievances seems to have led to a happier mentality for this group, both on and off the floor, as the postgame locker room on Sunday was one of the most jovial scenes I’ve seen all year. Jaylen Brown referenced the need for guys to be rooting for each other and the team above all else on Friday night, and that was a refrain that Kyrie Irving continued harping on after scoring a team-high 25 points in the victory.

“We have so much depth,” he said. “We’ve always talked, it’s been well-publicized, as well as us coming to grips with us not playing the roles that we would exactly want, the perfect [role] our families would want or anything like that. But getting past those things, the ego-centric things, this is a chance of a lifetime for us. And I think that, in order to achieve what we want to, we have to be closer as a team and really understand that when someone takes a shot, it’s our shot, we feel good about it, now we get back on defense and we prepare the right way and we do the right things for one another and not just for ourselves.”

When this group plays together, they have the talent to blow away most teams in the league, and that was on display on Sunday night. The Hornets’ offense had given the C’s defense all kinds of problems last month in the midst of putting up 117 points. Charlotte could muster no more than 67 points in three frames in the rematch. Boston’s defense was flying around, making strong closeouts and covering more for each other’s mistakes. The game was effectively over after three quarters with the entire starting lineup getting the rest of the night off.

“They just wanted it more,” Kemba Walker declared. “They came out hungrier. They came out on a mission and they accomplished it.”

While assessing any change in attitude, its also worth noting the impact of the returns of Al Horford (10 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists) and Marcus Morris (12 points, eight rebounds). While Boston had shown they could win without both players at points during their eight-game winning streak, there’s no question that everyone’s life gets a lot easier with them back out there, particularly Horford.

“You know, you take a lot of comfort in having him out of the floor,” Stevens said of Horford. “There’s no question about that; it’s good to have him back. It’s too bad that (Aron) Baynes goes out right before Al’s coming back, because I think both those guys just – they just, they steady the ship in so many ways on both ends of the floor.

"You can play through them, they don’t need to touch it, but when they do, they usually make effective plays and then defensively they’re usually in the right spots and great communicators. I thought Al looked good. He felt good, which is encouraging, and I thought it was good that we didn’t have to go four, five minute stints. I thought going a little bit longer in the third quarter was probably better for him. But I thought he looked good.”

So will we look at this potential turning point in the Celtics season as merely the spot that Horford and Morris got healthy? Or did the team summits allow for a clearing of the air that was needed to get this group playing hard and together on both ends? The inconsistency this group has shown all year makes it fair to wonder just how long it will last. A matchup with the revamped Sixers on Christmas Day should give us more of a clue about the lasting impact. In the meantime, Stevens sounds like someone who believes that this group is finding itself in the midst of a tough two months.

“I mean, I said, the whole deal was really well-intentioned, and it was a really – you look back – we’ll look back on it as a great experience," he said. "Because it was a bunch of really high-performing players in there just being really being transparent, young human beings, and I think that’s a pretty cool thing to be a part of. So, whether that affects how the ball goes in or not, how much looser you look on the bench, I don’t know. But it was a – it was a good experience, and I think that that’s part of a team’s journey.”