The Boston Celtics may have been inconsistent and maddening on the floor, but they’ve been pretty good all season long at talking a good game.
The Celtics were back at it after a Monday practice before their late Tuesday night matchup against the Washington Wizards in the first (and the Celtics hope, only for them) play-in tournament game.
“The regular season’s over,” Kemba Walker said. “At this point everybody is 0-0. All you can do is try and get this next win.”
There is scant evidence that suggests Boston will, in fact, get that win. Their body of work has not earned them any confidence from outside observers. Yet, they have confidence in themselves, and so it’s easy to still get caught up in the potential for this team.
“I thought practice on Friday was good and I thought practice today was good,” Brad Stevens said. “Guys seem to be engaged, they're ready, they know that the task is large. We're not playing a typical eighth seed. We're playing a team that was not healthy, but that's super talented, that hit its stride once they got everybody back. And so it's going to be a challenge, we know that, and so you could tell that our guys were locked in and ready to practice.”
Locking in has been a quality this team has lacked for most of the year. This is the most confusing part of this year’s Celtics because there are a lot of possible reasons why, and not all of them are Boston’s fault. There’s blame to be portioned out for how things have gone, but there’s also some shrugging about it.
Health has been their biggest issue, and while they’ve lost Jaylen Brown to season-ending wrist surgery, there’s a chance the rest of the team will be ready to go when the ball tips just after 9 o’clock.
“Everybody practiced, so that's encouraging. And the hope is that we will have everybody available. I think (Robert Williams) will still be a game time decision. But (Marcus) Smart looked great, Kemba (Walker) was good, Tristan (Thompson) is still dealing with some soreness, it looks like he'll be good.”
And here’s where the talk starts to talk people into believing in something.
The Celtics, when mostly healthy, have some great wins on their resume. This season has been such an aberration from their norm that there’s still a feeling, based on some of those wins, that a motivated, healthy group can play stronger, faster, and better. With most of their key guys getting some extended rest over the past week, there’s a feeling that maybe they’ll have a little extra oomph to start this game.
“I’m feeling great. The time off with the rest definitely helped, especially with the way this play-in tournament and everything is going,” Smart said. “These extra days, it counts. Every last bit of it. So I’m feeling great. The training staff has done a good job of making sure to keep me in shape with this amount of time off and to stay ready.”
That had better be true because he’s going to get time guarding an All-NBA level player in Bradley Beal or Russell Westbrook, who has returned to playing some of his best basketball.
“They beat you different ways,” Stevens said. “Obviously Russ's ability to overpower people, his passing, his rebounding. Beal’s just ascension through the game has been amazing to watch with his ability not only to come off screens and shoot, but then pick-and-rolls, and he's one of the best cutters in the league off hand-backs and DHO’s. You can say all day long, ‘don't get back cut or don't get off his body,’ but he'll get you off his body and he'll get to the rim on some of those things he's just great at.”
Beal isn’t 100% because of a bad hamstring, so Boston might be catching a break. That would mean that, for once, the injury luck would be on their side. Still, the Celtics know that while things flow through Beal and Westbrook, it’s their impact on their teammates that makes the Wizards dangerous.
“They can go small and big, they can also go with guys that 85% of their shots are 3’s, or they can go more power-oriented with guys that spend more of their time in and around the paint,” Stevens said. “This is a really good team, and (the game) is going to be really tough. But it's that time of the year, and it should be a lot of fun, and I know our guys are looking forward to it.”
It all sounds good, but this could just be a game of basketball three-card monte that gets us just enough confidence to bet on them again. The Celtics have been talking a good game all season. Now let’s see if they can back them up.