One way or the other, Celtics will show their true colors against Warriors

It may be one of 82 games on the regular season calendar, but even Al Horford was willing to admit that Saturday’s contest against the Warriors has an asterisk next to it.

“I mean it’s a regular-season game, but at the same time I do think it’s different,” he said. “It’s just everything that they’ve done and how good of a team they are, it’s going to be a fun challenge for us.”

Amid an opening 50 games full of turmoil, team meetings, lineup changes and inconsistency, the timing could not be much better for the Celtics to test themselves against the league’s best. The Celtics have readied themselves for the occasion over the past week, giving Horford and Kyrie Irving a strategic night off on Wednesday to ensure they will be at full strength coming off four full days of rest.

The long list of excuses based on injuries and meshing new pieces together is gone as well now for this group. Everyone is healthy and the roles have been clearly defined for a couple months now after Marcus Smart and Marcus Morris were inserted into the starting five. The Celtics have found a rhythm, at least at home, over the past month, winning ten straight games at the TD Garden including victories over Toronto, Indiana and Philadelphia.

With two off-days heading into the contest, the spot is perfect for Boston to match up against a team playing the best basketball the NBA has seen all season. Golden State is currently demolishing opponents in the midst of their nine-game winning streak (17 points margin of victory average) and doing that while seamlessly adding DeMarcus Cousins to the lineup has everyone around the league in awe of what they are achieving.

“They look like they’re playing at an elite level right now,” Brad Stevens said. “I think any time you add a guy like that, and he’s on a minutes restriction still, or at least he’s playing limited minutes, it just looks like everybody’s got a little more bounce in their step, and, they’re tough. I don’t know that I’ve seen them play better during the regular season stretch since maybe the year they won 73.”

Saturday’s battle will probably be a little different than past showdowns between the two squads and could very well go a long way into establishing just what type of identity that this Celtics roster can lean on in the long haul.

For the first time in a matchup with Golden State, Boston has the firepower to go toe-to-toe with them from an offensive standpoint, at least while playing at the TD Garden. Over their 10 game home winning streak, they are averaging over 116 points per 100 possessions, a number that is higher than Golden State’s league-leading offense on the year (114 points per 100 possessions). This group has not been able to bottle up that offensive success on the road much yet, but it’s helped them turn the Garden back into one of the toughest places to play in the league in the wake of ugly early losses to the Knicks, Magic and Suns.

In recent wins over the Warriors during the past three seasons, the Celtics have had to lean on their defense to get them on the same playing field as the champs. They held the Warriors to a season-low 88 points in a victory last year. Two years ago it was a 99-86 win at Oracle Arena. That type of defensive grittiness has not been a trademark of this team much over the course of the year, making a final score like that an unlikely scenario on Saturday night. They have won tough battles against the East’s elite (6-3 versus top-4) on the strength of their offense much more than their defense.

Whether or not that is a winning formula against the best scoring team in the league remains to be seen, but it’s a prerequisite in the eyes of Stevens.

“First of all you have to run good offense, you have to get good shots,” Stevens said when asked about how to beat the Warriors. “You get beat in transition, you get beat on leak-outs, you get beat at the rim, you’re in trouble, it opens up everything else. You gotta get good shots. You gotta be opportunistic but also poised when those opportunities aren’t there. And then on the other end of the court, you just have to be as solid as possible. We always talk about the three’s make everybody say ‘ooh and ahh’ and they’re gonna get some of them but they just kill you with layups. If you give up layups it opens up the whole rest of the game.”

We know the starting five will be up to the task on this front, but the bigger x-factor on Saturday night looms with a bench unit that has been trick-or-treat all year long, kind of like this team as a whole. Every long win streak (four wins or more) has been followed up with a three-game losing streak. Boston has won four straight heading into Saturday night and the fallout from this game will also be as important as the result itself, according to Horford.

“I think we’re past the testing phase in my eyes,” Horford explained. “I think this is just us continuing to get better. It’s a regular-season game, like I said, but at the same time we know it’s going to be a much more intense game, because it’s Golden State.”

There’s no doubt the Celtics will come to play in this matchup but the manner in which they put their best foot forward will speak volumes about where this team is headed over the long haul. A shootout win will provide a confidence boost that they can go toe-to-toe with the NBA’s best offense. A low-scoring slugfest will help reestablish a defensive identity of a team who has shown more holes on that end of the floor than expected this year. Both possibilities are in play, as is a disappointing defensive performance. Whatever way it trends in matchups like this will go a long way towards Stevens figuring out what he has with this team and whether he can tap the remaining potential.

“We’re not as good as we want to be, but we don’t expect to be as good as we want to be,” Stevens said. “That’s part of being your very best at the end of the year and continually growing and improving. We’ll find more about ourselves on Saturday night.”