Karalis: Celtics finally open up about season's challenges as they head to break

The Boston Celtics can finally breathe. 

A February somehow darker for the Celtics than the worst winter month New England has to offer has given way to a much brighter March and a four-game winning streak.

Brad Steven put tremendous emphasis on these four games, challenging his team both privately and through the media to win and end this half of the season on a high note. The process-oriented Stevens recognized how loud the noise had gotten around his team, and only winning was going to turn it down. 

“After the game in Atlanta, when you looked in everybody’s eyes, like, we talked about these next four games are important and you knew we were going to be ready,” Stevens said after beating the Toronto Raptors. “And I think that is a sign of a team that’s going to stay together. And I think it stems from, you know, our best players embraced that. I’ve heard Kemba say it multiple times this week: ‘Nobody’s going on break until we go on break.’ And I thought that that was really important. So you learn a lot about yourself in those moments.”

This season, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is playing King Eurysteus as he puts NBA teams through Herculean labors to prove their worth. The Celtics hope there are fewer than 12, though it could be said that every day has been a labor unto itself. Entering the All-Star break, and doing so after a few wins, has given the Celtics a chance to exhale a bit and finally be a little open about what the first half of this season was like.  

“It’s crazy,” 12-year veteran Jeff Teague said. "Not knowing when you were going to start playing, so not being able to really prepare your body for that. But also testing every single day, having to get up at weird times, some teams playing some games because of protocol, some guys are sitting out games. It’s just a whole different experience.”

Teams on road trips would routinely get into their team hotels late into the night and then need to wake up a few hours later for an early morning COVID-19 test. The grind of it all has tested players’ will.

“We knew it was going to be a challenge,” Jaylen Brown said. “The mental challenge of not being complacent. Sometimes when you separate from things, you're able to get that itch again. Not having an offseason, we didn't really have that chance. So we got it mentally as well. I think that we're in a good spot. We ended on a good note in the first half and I think we're ready to come out in the second.”

The second half will be very different from the first for a lot of reasons. Maybe the biggest difference will be some level of continuity teams can lean on as they go through another gauntlet to wind down the regular season. But for some guys who contracted COVID-19, like Jayson Tatum, there is going to be some carryover.

“It's a long process,” Tatum said. “I've talked to guys and they said it took months for them to kind of catch their breath, get their wind back and I'm kind of on the same, you know, track with that. I for sure feel better. I don't necessarily feel the same as before I got it.”

Teams have been put into unfair positions as the league tries to rush its way to normalcy. Boston is just one of many teams like the Raptors they faced tonight, the Dallas Mavericks, and Miami Heat, to their seasons take wild detours because of the pandemic. 

“I was out 18 days, we had to postpone four or five games, and there was a lot of that throughout the league in that time, at the time, there was some uncertainty,” Tatum said. “You think you got a game and you never know what can happen, they might have to cancel it and then guys coming back from testing positive, kind of integrating them back into playing shape. It's for sure been a wild first half of the season, to say the least.”

The Celtics have come out of it about as well as can be expected, considering the circumstances. There are some losses that will be lamented as the season presses on, which really is par for the course in the NBA. They are 19-17 and alone as the fourth seed in the East. All of the wild emotional swings have led the Celtics to just about the place they figured they’d be after all of these tests of will. 

Guys will now find their way to a beach or a pool somewhere and shut their brains off so they can get lost in the joy of not having to go through all of this for just a few days. But they can’t vegetate for long. 

There is more madness around the corner.

“You can’t completely disengage as much as you want to, as much as you want to take a deep breath,” Stevens said. “I’ll certainly spend time with my family and put the computer away for a day or two, but I think ultimately you have to stay in the season. I think the biggest challenge of the first half was not necessarily this stretch of games, which has been challenging, but it was going 0-to-60 with the quick turnaround. We handled that pretty well out of the gates, we struggled in the middle, hopefully we can build off last week.”