This Celtics season is like a bad camping trip -- The one where it’s been raining the whole time, You have no cell signal, the food you brought has gotten soggy, the fish aren’t biting, and every fire you try to build just fizzles out.
It’s miserable. Halfway through the trip, everyone is starting to get really crabby and there's a real chance someone is about to say something they can’t take back. Relationships are on the line.
Every break in the clouds is a chance for things to turn around. If only the sun could break through for a day, people can hang up their soaked socks and actually take a walk through nature and feel good.
The Celtics have a long way before they can salvage this season, but an actual blowout win was that first ray of sunshine that gives the team any chance of doing so. Nothing is fixed. Nothing has even really changed. But just like standing there in a camp site with a fire going, clothes drying, and well-earned beer in your hand makes you feel good after how things started, so too does this win for Boston.
“It was good,” Ime Udoka said after the game. “I mean, we’ve been there, we know that, I don’t have to say anything. … We set the tone in the third quarter. I think Marcus (Smart) really did that coming out and getting those few steals, aggressive and everybody kind of followed suit.”
Jaylen Brown led the way, and he did so in a manner that, frankly, was very necessary for him. After so much was made of his passing when he took 36 shots without an assist against the Clippers, it was cathartic to come through and break Boston’s embarrassing losing streak with a career-high 11 assist night.
“Ah man, thank you! Thank God!” he said, finally getting a chance to joke around in a postgame media session. “Nah, I'm just kidding, it felt great, man. It felt fantastic. It felt good, for sure. Just gotta keep working and keep getting better, that's it.”
More than anything, Brown and the Celtics pulled the reins back on the fear and panic that dominated the conversation after their collapses against San Antonio and the Knicks in New York. The manic “BLOW IT UP” conversation is as much about frustration with the course of the season as anything, but each call to trade Brown or Jayson Tatum is like a midge. Get enough of them together and we risk a Joba Chamberlain situation. A night like this, at least temporarily, swats them away.
“I think we can play together. We have played together well for the majority of our career and things like that,” Brown said. “The last year or so hasn't gone as expected, but I think a lot of the adversity that we're kind of going through now is going to help us grow and get better in the future. If we get over this slump and continue to learn, I think there's a lot of good basketball on the other side of this.
“I only can control what I can control. I understand everybody has to do their jobs, but me and JT talk. We talked after the game, communicated with each other and things like that. So we're on the same page. I get where all the other frustration comes from, but as long as I'm on the same page with him and he's on the same page with me, that's where we're most focused on.”
Brown’s triple-double has the potential to be a breakthrough for him. Like Tatum, Brown is being pushed to expand his game to a new level, and it comes with some growing pains.
“He has been great as far as wanting to learn and grow, and really get better in that area,” Udoka said. “Some of the games you could see him over-thinking it at times, when to pass and when to shoot, and he’s starting to figure out that rhythm of simplicity and making the easy pass and trusting your teammates and not playing to the crowd - all of the things we preached all year. But it’s a balance when you’re a natural scorer, and you’re trying to shift your focus to how teams are defending you.”
The team is full of guys with similar mentalities. Most of these guys are scorers, and when the excrement hits the spinning blades, they revert back to being just that.
“It's a learning curve for everybody,” Josh Richardson said. “Everybody here has been the man on the team before. Everybody here has been the guy who everyone looks to score. So just learning how to get those quick swings and quick one-two’s for a shot for someone else is a learning experience. But I think that today was a step in the right direction.”
Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but the sun is shining today for Boston. The rain could knock out the fire tomorrow and there might be a bear ready to rampage through the camp site and just ruin this whole trip at some point.
Or, maybe there will be more sun. The only difference between the camping and the Celtics is that Boston controls the weather. If Brown can build on his big night, maybe something good can come of this after all.
"I'm asked to do different things, so it's challenged me in different ways,” Brown said. “I feel like, at the end of the day, I feel like I'm pretty good at the game of basketball. So I'm confident in myself, and I appreciate the coaching staff and my teammates for putting confidence in me as well. So I just try to come out every day, play, put my best foot forward and play good ball and let the chips fall where they may. Every year is different. This year has challenged me in a different role than I did last year. So I'm excited, really, to get better at the game. It's a beautiful sport, so I love it."
