Five games is too early to make conclusions. I think last year’s Celtics proved that.
It is, however, enough time to spot trends. It's enough time to notice that the pen you put on the table is starting to roll, and maybe something is not exactly level.
The Celtics have had trouble guarding on the perimeter. They let too many guys get where they want to go with too little resistance. Once those players get there, it often doesn’t matter if they miss because the Celtics also allow too many offensive rebounds.
The Celtics knew the issues coming in, and they know all about them on their way out of the Garden because the Cleveland Cavaliers took full advantage of those weaknesses on their way to a 132-123 win.
“I’m not super concerned. It’s something that we obviously need to work on, something we need to fix, just get on the same page,” Jayson Tatum said. “Obviously, we know the level of defense that we can play as a unit and it's just about finding ourselves and getting back to that place. Obviously, it will help when we get Rob back, but even before then, we got enough to be a really good defensive team. We just got to continue to make that effort every single play, or more often than not, than we are right now.”
Robert Williams sat on the bench, still weeks away from sniffing the floor, reminding everyone of what might be defensively. Maybe he would have corralled the rebound late in the fourth quarter, instead of it falling into Caris LeVert’s hands for a go-ahead 3-pointer. Al Horford, one of the coolest heads in the NBA, was livid after the shot, and let his teammates know about it during the ensuing timeout.
“Every year, even though you have experienced guys you have a good group, you have to learn how to figure things out and learn how to win games,” Horford said. “Right now I just felt like we gave them life and they took advantage and they did good with that. With the offensive rebounding I felt like they had some timely offensive rebounds down the stretch that really hurt us. That one in particular was a big one for them. We’ve got to keep piecing it together but I know that we can with the kind of group that we have. I know that we’ll do that.”
It’s easy to believe Horford and the Celtics when they express that kind of feeling. They have proven themselves to be good defenders, so turning good individual defenders into a cohesive, good defensive unit seems like something that will happen in time. But time isn’t a great luxury this season.
There aren’t many gimmes on the schedule this season, and teams like the Cavs have made things even tougher. Donovan Mitchell is putting on a show, but he was getting to the rim with too much ease. Without their All-Defensive center, the Celtics need to cut those drives off, and they're simply not doing it well enough or often enough. They let Mitchell and LeVert drop 41 points each. That's hard to do.
“We didn't close out certain possessions,” Mazzulla said “I don't know if it's as much of an issue as it is just being more consistent on both ends of the floor and not relaxing and just understanding we have to earn every win. I think that's what the focus is."
For now, the Celtics have the league’s fifth-worst defensive rating. They are behind the Sacramento Kings, which should be embarrassing enough news to shock them back into some stronger defensive effort. It’s much worse than the Philadelphia 76ers, who have taken plenty of bullets for the Celtics by opening the season 2-4 and being a shiny distraction for the national media.
Of course, it’s early, and these numbers will make wild swings before settling somewhere for the rest of the season. For all we know, the Celtics will string a few gems together and we’ll all forget this was a thing by Thanksgiving.
But they aren’t exactly close to those gems right now. They are giving up too many points for their offense to cover. Putting up 123 should win you a lot of NBA games, and when it doesn’t there has to be at least some soul-searching as to why.
“It’s on us. We’ve gotta come out and those are all controllable things,” Jaylen Brown said. “So we’re not concerned. I think that we’ve done it before and we can do it again. It’s just, like, re-locking in, refocusing and emphasizing on things that we should be prioritizing right now … We’ve got some different lineups out there but we can’t let that be an excuse. We’ve gotta not let teams get second-chance opportunities and we let them get a lot of second-chance opportunities, especially late in the game.”
