There's nothing like walking into a spot wearing the perfect outfit.
Stepping out of the car at the valet feels like you’re starting a music video. You toss the keys to the valet, you tug at your lapels to straighten out your blazer, pull your cuffs out so they show juuuuuust enough, and you walk through the doors humming Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic …
… “put your - pinky - rings up - to the - moon!” …
What they see when you walk in is pure confidence. You look good, you feel good, and you know in that moment that can’t nobody tell you nothin’. You own that room, and everyone knows it.
It doesn’t matter what room the Boston Celtics are walking into these days, they are entering it with maximum swag and leaving with the other team’s dates.
“I do think we kind of embrace playing against the home crowds,” Ime Udoka said after his Celtics wrecked the Nuggets in Denver. “Our thing is be who we are, regardless of home or on the road we want to come out and set a tone. I think getting off to these really good starts defensively, teams know what we’re about now and the numbers show that. Our thing is to come out and prove that.”
Oh they’ve proven it. Since the All-Star break, Boston is the best road team in the league, going 6-1 with an NBA-best 14.8 net rating. They're 13-4 on the road since January 1, with an even better league-leading net rating of 15.5.
Simply put, they are scoring a ton of points, and holding their opponents to very few. They're winning road games by 14.6 points this calendar year. That's why the MVP chants at the Ball Arena were for Jayson Tatum, not reigning MVP and current frontrunner for the award, Nikola Jokic.
“It’s a great feeling,” Tatum said. “Like I said, you expect that or get that at home, but when you travel and see all the Celtics jerseys and t-shirts and hoodies, and hear them chanting for you on the road, that’s an incredible feeling.”
Tatum has earned those chants by, in part, fueling this monster run. He and Jaylen Brown have been as potent a duo as you’ll find in the NBA during this stretch, which has been punctuated by 122 combined points over the last two games. This was their sixth game scoring at least 30 points apiece this season, most in franchise history.
They're the main pieces of this Celtics outfit, and just assembling the right look, it takes time, and maybe some trial and error.
“I think obviously you grow and learn as you lose, but I think Jayson has continued to be aggressive being himself, I’m being myself at the same time,” Brown said. “Playing the game the right way, drawing doubles and making the right plays and the ball is falling in the net. … Teams are guarding you certain ways, you just have to play basketball, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Tatum and Brown are taking to their expanded responsibilities better as the days go by. They’ve been challenged all year long, with some mixed early results. But as time went on, and they understood the requirements better, the results got better.
“I think just going through the experience, like, we had a new team, a new front office, new coaching staff,” Brown said. “Things were different, so we were trying to figure it out. And while we were figuring it out, you know it was a lot of x, y and z. But now we made adjustments, we watched film, we've had time to take some L’s that we felt like we shouldn't have lost, that hurt. And you learn from those experiences.”
But the key to any good outfit, of course, are the right accessories and embellishments. A pocket square, a nice belt, a watch, maybe a chain. The outfit I’m picturing is probably different than yours, but that's the beauty of good fashion. As long as you’re rocking it with confidence, you can pull it off.
It’s the kind of confidence that you might find in Payton Pritchard shooting perfectly for two straight games. Or in Grant Williams demanding Brown relay the message that he, Williams, now be called Batman for his slowing of the Joker in Denver. As the team’s pillars grow more comfortable in their roles, so too do the role players.
“A big piece of it is the guys that are playing with them,” Udoka said of unlocking the Jays. “When you have Marcus (Smart), Derrick (White), Payton, let alone the bigs that can make plays, that’s where you have all the options out of it. …Credit to Jayson and Jaylen continuing to be aggressive and make the right plays, but also delivering the ball to guys that can make plays as well or make shots, so it’s a combination of both, them doing what they do, but everybody else being confident and aggressive behind it.”
That includes Al Horford, who connects so many dots for this team. Or Robert Williams, whose threat of catching more lobs struck such fear in DeMarcus Cousins, that he watched Grant Williams dribble from the 3-point line to the rim without daring to leave Rob’s side to challenge.
With ill-fitting pieces now gone, Boston’s outfit makes so much more sense. And while they could add a couple of pieces, maybe a tie or some new glasses, to really punch up the whole look, what they’ve got right now is wowing the crowd.
It’s a far cry from what they used to look like. It would be easy to say “look at me now” and get cocky considering the turnaround. But this story isn’t really about a turnaround. This isn’t about throwing out ratty clothes and buying a fresh new suit.
This is a story about taking a good, hard look at what they had and how to use it all better; how to try some new things and maybe take some chances. This isn’t just about looking the part for the Celtics. This is about being the part and owning the whole thing, from top to bottom.
“No satisfaction whatsoever, and I'm not just saying that to say that,” Brown said. “Just because we won some games doesn't mean anything. We still got a lot to do. We haven't proven ourselves. … it took a little time to figure things out. And we still got a lot of room for improvement, so don't -- yeah, just wait.”
