We like coming up with monikers for teams. Like when the Celtics vibes were in the toilet in Kyrie Irving’s second year, a west coast swing that seemed to turn things around for a bit led to them being dubbed the “plane ride Celtics.”
This year’s team already picked up the “team meeting Celtics” branding after the early-season swoon and Marcus Smart calling out of teammates led to a bit of a turnaround after a team meeting.
Obviously that didn’t last long.
Now, we’ve got a new name for these guys.
The “film session Celtics.”
Ime Udoka first brought it up on Sunday, referencing “a long, long, long film session to emphasize all the areas we could clean up.”
OK. It’s a film session. Everyone has film sessions. After morning shootaround, Smart emphasized the “long, extensive” breakdown.
Alright. We’ll bite. What was this big film session, anyway?
“We showed them film of (Russell) Westbrook getting down the lane and flexing and doing his antics there, we showed them LeBron with guys basically moving out of his way,” Udoka explained. “I had a very animated film session off of that trip showing all five games. Whether it was Donovan Mitchell in game one to Phoenix in game five, we showed a lot of film, 100-plus clips. Transition, isolation was one of them, one long section and I didn't love how we didn't fight at times.”
A hundred-plus clips is a lot.
“We came back from a 1-4 road trip, so you can imagine there's a lot of things to be shown, a lot to be talked about,” Jayson Tatum said. “And 1-4, wasn’t going to be pretty. It was honest, it was direct, it was open, and it was what we needed. It wasn’t time to sugarcoat anything. We didn't play how we wanted to, especially those last three games.”
Honest, direct, and open. Sounds heated, Grant Williams.
“It was animated. He got on guys down the line, he didn't let anybody off the hook,” Williams said. “We all respect and love that. We took that to heart and had a lot more fun. You could see it on our faces as well as that same type of intensity that we carried over through walkthrough. Guys were prepared from the jump, had great conversations, great dialogue then allowed that film session to carry over to today."
That it did.
The Celtics put together their most complete game of the season facing a Bucks team they struggled to beat earlier this season without Khris Middleton and Giannis Antetokounmpo. This time around, Milwaukee had both their stars, but a freshly motivated Celtics team used their defensive refresher course to render them almost useless for much of the game.
“Defensively, really did a good job on Antetokounmpo, especially in the first half, seven points,” Udoka said. “Taking him out, being the focal point there, we knew he was going to be aggressive in the second half. But not only did we score 30 in the last three quarters, we defended them well and held them into the 20s.”
The Celtics film room is pretty nice with big comfortable chairs, but nothing makes the Snyder Cut of a five-game disaster of a road trip fun to watch. The team was scolded for betraying their principles and early-season training and reverting to their worst selves. They weren’t just losing, they were playing ugly.
“You’re not going to win every game, but you can live with the ones you lose when you play the right way and you give yourself a chance,” Tatum said. “But those last three, we didn't give ourselves a chance, and a lot of careless mistakes. And he showed it to us and we had to own up to it.”
This is part of why Udoka was hired. The players said they wanted this kind of hard coaching, but I always wondered how it would be received when it actually happened. We can all say we want to be challenged but cringe when we actually are.
This time around, the Celtics took things to heart.
“I put it out there, guys responded well but there is no way to sweep it under the rug,” Udoka said. “You show them what it is and how ugly it looks when you see five games in a row of those clips. The big picture of seeing that trip and where we ended up defensively, we didn't like that feeling. We got back to who we were tonight.”
Of course, the key qualifier here is “tonight.” If there's one hallmark to this team, it’s that once you’ve settled on an opinion of them, they go out and do the opposite. A lot of us were buying the good vibes after a tough win over the Sixers, and then the Celtics changed time zones and attitudes. They came into the Bucks game reeling from that trip and with sports talkers dreaming up trades to start from scratch, and then went out and executed a nearly perfect game plan.
I wouldn’t be shocked at two or three more great performances that get the “Film Session Celtics” vibes really cooking, and then give us an absolute stink bomb to ruin the fun.
Yes, this film session sounds like it was an epic one. It's worth these thousand words after a really great win for a team that was desperate for a really great win. Hell, if nothing else, it gives us a fun, new thing to talk about for a day or two.
The trick for these Celtics, as it has been for a while now, is to build on this. Can they learn how to handle success and keep this level of effort and execution after a few nice performances?
“It’s a short-term memory. You almost forget about it. It’s just one game,” Jaylen Brown said “Obviously we’re coming back from a tough stretch. Today was a big win. We’ve got, what, 15 out of 20 home games coming up? We’ve gotta just take care of business and take it one game at a time and just get back to playing basketball the right way and keep moving in the right direction. I felt like we were doing that before I got hurt. I felt like even when I was out, we were moving in the right direction. But we’re coming off a tough stretch and trying to get back on track.”