What do you say when the Celtics keep losing in infuriating ways where it’s obvious they’re good enough to win but they still don’t?
For three quarters, the Celtics handled the Chicago Bulls fairly well. Chicago, off to a 6-1 start now, certainly had its moments, but the Celtics battled and built a lead up as high as 19.
“It was toward the end of the third. Coach kind of stressed to us to make sure that we didn’t let the foot off the gas,” Al Horford said, describing the moment before the Celtics took their foot off the gas. “As a team, we didn’t start with the urgency that we needed. We kind of gave them some life there. They just got it going, they were confident, and we didn’t respond.”
We have to give the Bulls their proper due. Wins and losses are always judged locally by what the home team did right or wrong, and the Bulls certainly deserve the recognition for forcing the will out of the Celtics.
It’s just that Boston, all too often, just sort of rolls with it.
The team swears things are different behind the scenes, and that even though the result is very reminiscent of what we’ve seen, the process behind it is different and will yield different results.
“I do think we do have some new pieces, new guys coming in, and we’re all trying to figure out how to play different positions, different roles and it’s something that we have to figure out,” Horford said. “In that regard, all I can say is we need to - we can’t let our guard down, we need to continue to play. And when we put teams down, we have to keep them down.”
We’ll have to believe it when we see it, I guess.
Everyone knows this loss sucks. They looked like they panicked throughout the whole fourth quarter. It’s as discouraging a collapse as you’ll see in the NBA.
At the same time, the team is going to try to take proper perspective here, which is they have a three-game-in-four-night stretch coming up on the road that includes facing Miami and Dallas. They need to carve whatever lessons they can off this carcass and press forward.
Still, this team is struggling with so much right now that it’s hard to believe a true turnaround is imminent. At 2-5, with the work left to do, and the road so long in front of them, it’s fair to cringe at the thought of how bad the team’s record can get.
Do yourself a favor, don’t look at the December schedule.
The Celtics have a ton of problems, but almost all of them seem to stem from some mental inability to perform the task at hand. Be it refusal or lack of comprehension, the Celtics' litany of problems has little to do with the actual ability to do it. This is why Ime Udoka compared this to parenting in a way.
Brad Stevens seemed to approach the team by working with guys’ strengths and figuring out how to best accentuate them. Udoka seems to say ‘it’s great that you can do these things, but we need you to do less of that and more of this.’
If this is like parenting, then Udoka is the new stepdad throwing the candy bars out and stocking the fridge with kale. Even if everyone can agree it’s better to eat the kale ... I mean, yuck, right?
There’s not even any ranch dressing to cover up the taste.
I guess this makes Horford the oldest brother who is home from college. He’s cool with kale. He’s also the guy who can stand in front of the whole family and take responsibility when someone sneaks in a bag of fun-size Snickers.
(I’m writing this the day after Halloween. These are the analogies you’re going to keep getting.)
“At the beginning of the fourth, I take some blame there because I don’t feel like I kind of brought that urgency,” Horford said. “And as a team, we didn’t start with the urgency that we needed. We kind of gave them some life there. They just got it going, they were confident, and we didn’t respond.”
It’s nice to hear Horford taking responsibility. Of the four Celtics leaders, Horford was the only one to step up and take some level of accountability. Smart said “I can only do so much just standing there in the corner or when I give the ball away. I do everything I can on the other end to try to combat that. I try to talk, I try to make plays, get those guys the ball where they need it, where they want it.”
Not great.
Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum didn't say anything. They didn’t speak to the media.
It would be nice to hear what the pillars had to say after a loss like this. The crappy part of their job is having to stand there and face people like me asking questions that they might not like or think are stupid. Maybe some of our questions are, but the best of the best can find ways to deflect, disarm, and accept some of the slings and arrows to protect the collective back in the locker room.
The Celtics are certainly very capable of passing the ball to the right people at the right time. They are very physically able to run back on defense and stop the relentless transition baskets. They have the actual basketball talent to do everything that is asked of them.
But a human being’s greatest strength is a human’s greatest weakness, and our ability to feel and express emotion is both what makes us special, and what makes us horrible.
At the heart of it all, these Boston Celtics lack the ability to keep their emotions in check. Whether it’s ego, or pride, or insecurity, or something else, too many of these young men succumb to their emotions when they are tested. When the going gets tough, whatever that emotion is in each guy takes over and derails everything the intellectual side of the brain has tried to accomplish.
I really do hesitate to use the parenting analogy because I don’t want to be disrespectful to grown men, but the reality is that we should never expect anyone in their mid-20’s to be fully mature, emotionally. I know I sure as hell wasn’t. And I also know giving me $30 million dollars would have made it worse, not better.
That’s why there are only a select few truly special players in NBA history, because they’re true aberrations. They are not only supremely gifted physically, but they can channel their emotions into something fierce. It’s damn near impossible to do, but the truly great greats did it.
That’s their challenge. It’s not about cutting to the basket, it’s about wanting to cut because it’s the right thing to do for the team. It’s not about making the right pass, it’s about putting ego aside to understand the pass is the right play.
Emotions suck sometimes because they make you do things you know aren’t smart. But until these guys can control those emotions and use their basketball brains to do the smart things, this is what we’ll get.
