We’re close enough to the trade deadline where it can legitimately be measured in hours no matter what time of day you read this. Brad Stevens knows that this team needs help and they need it soon.
The question now, though, is exactly what kind of help Boston really needs.
“It's hard to gauge where we're at or what we really need without seeing everybody until now,” Ime Udoka said after his team steamrolled the Brooklyn Nets. “We are happy with how we're playing, happy with what the guys are doing and seeing our full group together now. I'm sure it changed some of the conversation based on what we're doing lately.”
What the Celtics have been doing lately is obliterating lesser teams on their schedule. They're 8-1 since Marcus Smart's return to the lineup made them fully whole. The eight wins have been by almost 22 points per game, and they’ve outscored opponents by a total of 159 points in those nine games. The Celtics now have the East’s best point differential, the league’s second-best defense, and fourth-best net rating.
That's not “since” anything. That's for this season.
“Well, when you have your full roster available and what they can do, size, length and versatility defensively,” Udoka said. “Offensively, it's going to take a little more time to come around to do some of the things that we're asking of them to change some certain habits at times. That's not going to happen overnight.”
That's true. Boston’s offensive rating is still firmly in the middle of the pack, currently 18th in the league. It speaks to the help the team needs and what Stevens is looking for … and also the delicate balance of trying to fix one thing without breaking the other.
There are tons of rumors at this time of year, and calls upon calls upon calls for Stevens and his front office to handle. The Celtics' mediocre start to the season started the vultures circling above the Auerbach Center hoping to pick important pieces from Boston’s deteriorating roster. If it was true the pieces didn’t fit, then the Celtics needed to get pieces in that do.
But this run has shown that it’s possible that some pieces fit better than they had appeared, and that maybe some bad luck and growing pains exacerbated the situation.
“We built big leads that we lost or we were in close games that we lost. I understand it's not going to happen overnight,” Udoka said. “I was optimistic because of that -- that when you get the full complement back, some of those lulls offensively won't happen. Defensively we'll be stronger. It's not hard for me to understand that with the guys we had in and out. And me coming in as a new coach and then learning them as well."
This is where the screams about the level of competition come in. It is valid to note that most of these results are coming against bad teams. There is certainly some level of “prove it” for the Celtics in these coming days. There will certainly be some reaction to this notion that a well-timed streak will psych the Celtics out of doing what’s necessary to improve this team.
However, it’s not just that Boston is winning these games, it’s how they're winning these games. They are running and racking up assists. They have seven games with 30 or more assists, four of which came during this streak. They're not playing the same way and just beating bad teams, they're playing better basketball and they're dominating bad teams.
“We're playing basketball. Shots are falling. That wasn't happening early on in the year for us,” Smart said. “So it made things look worse than what they really were. The chemistry, trying to incorporate new guys, a new coach, a new system. We have time to do that and get familiarized with it. So yeah, it's a statement for all of us individually and for us as a team.”
It’s hard to remember that the knock on this team was they played up or down to their competition, and that they needed to start beating up on the bad teams to prove themselves. They're 17-12 against teams below .500. Only Detroit and Orlando have more losses against bad teams than Boston in the East.
Now that the Celtics are catching up to the rest of the pack, the question isn’t whether they’ve proven enough to the fans, it’s whether they’ve proven enough to the front office to keep some of the pieces they’ve assembled and are starting to come together.
It’s still expected that Stevens will move on the fringes. There will be a deal to get under the luxury tax somehow. There will likely be a deal to move Dennis Schröder for something. But beyond that, how much will the Celtics push for help? Will Friday’s game against Denver feature a new face off Boston’s bench?
There's a good argument for keeping someone like Josh Richardson rather than make some sort of lateral move that also adds a draft pick to the mix. While that extra pick could be useful, and while a flier on a talented young player could be tantalizing, would that return for a player who has proven his worth to the team’s established stars be worth the hit to the locker room? Would Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, after all their work to expand and grow, see this as a message that this season truly doesn’t matter at all?
If Stevens is on the fence about any kind of moves coming into the Thursday deadline, this recent hot streak might just push him into a more conservative approach for this season and turn his focus to using his assets this summer.
That might have been the plan all along. If not, it might be the plan now. The team is defending at its highest level and playing with the best pace we’ve seen all year. The ball is moving and things simply look more like they are supposed to.
And the team has learned hard lessons, maybe making that first 60% of the season or so somewhat worth it in the big picture.
“Our mind is still focused on the future rather than looking back to see what happened in the past,” Brown said. “But I am proud of our guys. They’re continuing to be persistent, to keep going, like navigating through the pressure of being in Boston and the expectations levels. It’s not an easy thing to do. So I’m proud that we are finding ways to win games now, but we really ain’t got nothing to be proud about. We’ve got a lot of games left. We’ve got to keep going.”
