Karalis: Celtics have come a long way just to have a long way to go

The Boston Celtics have certainly taken the scenic route this season. And while Evan Fournier’s COVID-19 battle still leaves the team less than whole, we have seen enough of him and of them recently to start to finally get a sense of where this team sits in the East. 

“It sure helps when we have more bodies healthy,” Brad Stevens said after the win over Portland. “I don’t think it’s brain surgery. I think we’ve got guys that have now played a little bit together, getting in a rhythm together. ... When (Marcus) Smart, Jaylen (Brown), Jayson (Tatum), and Kemba (Walker) are all out there, of course we’re going to look a little different.”

Their rhythm has pushed them into the fifth spot in the East. Their post-break offensive rating of 114.9 is more than two points better than their pre-break rating. They went from 27th in assists before the break to 11th after. Most metrics we can find will show the team starting to round the corner. 

“I think our players and coaches deserve a lot more credit for the atmosphere in which they're playing,” Danny Ainge said in his regular Thursday appearance on Toucher & Rich. “People don't want to give millionaires a break, but I think it's been a really hard year and a really challenging year. And I give those guys all credit.”

Now comes the tough part for the Celtics, and for the fans.

The Celtics were probably never going to be elite contenders this year. This team was always going to be in the “puncher’s chance” category of playoff teams; the guys who, against the right matchup and maybe with a little luck, can make a deep playoff run. But their play this season made a lot of people wonder if they were even going to be that much. 

Now, finally, this team has risen off the mat. What it hasn’t done, though, is proven anything other than they’re not as bad as they were before. We still don’t know how good they can be moving forward. 

This is where the view from the outside gets challenging. We’re not just content to watch basketball games, we need our opinions validated by them. And in the rush to run our victory laps (I’ve nearly pulled a hamstring running mine) the view of the team can swing too far the other way. 

It’s like looking at a stock chart and crowing about the 400 point rise, even though it followed a 400 point drop. They’ve fought this hard just to get back to even. They have been grinding away and finally that effort is showing, but all it’s gotten them a tenuous grip on a middle seed.

There is no doubt this team has improved a lot, but they’ve exhausted all of their wiggle room. 

“The defense is improving ...  that's something that you are always hesitant to say as the coach because you have to do it again night after night,” Stevens said. “But both the offense and the defense are nearing getting to a level where we're showing signs of getting better. So that's at least encouraging.”

Yes, the Celtics have the fifth-ranked defense and seventh-ranked offense through seven games in April. It is encouraging, partly because the circumstances under which their prior failures happened are mostly gone. The worst of their schedule is over and, when Fournier returns, he and Romeo Langford give Stevens new options off the bench. 

“That changes your dynamic because ... some of our better players early on in the season were small,” Stevens said in a recent radio appearance. “Now, across the board, you're big, long and versatile. And you can switch things, and you can be difficult to score on, you can be difficult to guard because you have versatility. Just those two simple additions ... that gives us a different look, in my opinion, as we move forward here.”

As of right now, that’s still just opinion. Fournier and Langford have played 10 minutes together in one game, so how well they work together is still a mostly theoretical concept. There are still timing issues to hammer out. There are still fit issues — when it comes to who takes shots and when — that need time to determine. 

The problem is the Celtics no longer have the luxury of time. There are 17 games left in the season and if any of these issues costs them a game, it could steer their entire playoff run in a different direction. This is the NBA equivalent of a mid-air refueling. 

The Celtics have turned things around, but they’re not where they want to be yet. Games like tonight’s against the Lakers are important because they’re opportunities for wins against shorthanded teams. Whenever the basketball gods reward them with these chances, they have to pounce. 

The early part of this season was dragged down by a number of factors, but that’s gone now. It’s put Boston in a tough position, and they seem poised to make some noise. But there is still a gap between being poised to make it, and actually making it. 

“This is only about peaking at the right time for us,” Stevens said. “We've struggled through it. We've had to tread water throughout the early parts of the year with all that we've been through and losing some games we shouldn't have lost. But we've also won some that maybe we shouldn’t have won. So we're where we are. And let's see if we can peak at the right time.”