It’s funny how many people casually accepted the notion that, after Boston’s monster blowout win over the Phoenix Suns for their third-straight win, already locked up a successful road trip. The thought was shared by many people, and it made sense at the time. At 3-0, even three straight losses would mean a .500 road trip, which is perfectly acceptable.
We were so naive back then.
A dud that triggered Finals memories and a disjointed mess of a loss later and suddenly a murmur rises from the masses. The talk of this acceptable road trip has evaporated. The Celtics suddenly find themselves in their first truly challenging situation of the season. Yes, they lost three of four games to start the season, but expectations weren’t where they are now.
It’s kind of appropriate that this high-powered offense stalled out like so many cars in the middle of a cold snap like this. They’ve turned the key and started to hear things try to move, but that damn engine just won’t turn over.
Boston’s monster offense has been the league’s worst over the past two games. Their 99 offensive rating in the combined losses to the Warriors and Clippers is the only rating below 100. Their true shooting percentage is a league-best 62% for the season, but the sixth worst in their last two games at 53.8%
Translation: They can’t hit squat, not even at the line.
“We didn't have the spacing. We didn't have the pace. We didn't have things that you need in order to play as a team like that,” Grant Williams said afterwards, but he doesn’t see this as a trend.
“It’s the outlier that these two games happened,” he said. “We’re going to have off nights. These two nights happened, and we can’t let it stay in our minds.”
This is the challenge of this stretch right now. For now, Williams is right about this being the aberration. History has told us this Celtics offense is too good to look this bad. We’ve seen a season full of evidence that the Celtics are closer to juggernauts than the jokers they’ve looked like recently.
“Whether it’s fatigue, maybe we’re playing too tense, but we’re not perfect. We’re not going to be perfect,” Jayson Tatum said. “I think we want to be perfect so bad, we’ve been playing so well this season, that when we haven't these past two games, it’s felt a little bit worse.
“I mean, that's a good thing, right? When we lose, we’re not brushing it off. Everyone in that locker room is mad because we feel like we should win every game.”
There are levels of confidence in basketball, and the Celtics have yet to truly reach that top step. They have yet to hit the absolute pinnacle of human confidence: Zero F’s given.
Right now, they care a whole lot about certain things. Jaylen Brown admitted the Warriors game was circled for a long time, which is nice in a sense because we like hearing that guys get up for games the same way we do. But the emotional effort put into that game backfired on the Celtics, causing them to get out of their normal, free-flowing offense and back into the bad habits and the team’s stars trying to do too much.
If they had actually given zero F’s, they would have been the Mad Men Don Draper meme with the Warriors saying they feel bad for Boston and the Celtics responding that they don’t think of the Warriors at all.
That's confidence. That's where the real power comes from. And that's what leads to another f-word that I can actually print.
“We gotta get back to having fun,” Tatum said. “It wasn’t fun in Golden State. It wasn’t fun tonight, just the way we was playing. We’re gonna lose some games, but we gotta have fun. This is basketball, we get paid a lot of money and we shouldn’t be that tense. It’s not the Finals, it’s December 12. This shit won’t matter in four months, but we gotta have fun along the way.”
Fun means playing free. Free means the mind has been uncluttered of all the distractions and trappings of success. Free is still in Phoenix, enjoying some golf and some great Tex-Mex and margs.
They put too much emphasis on the Warriors game and now they're in a funk. They now have to find their way out of it. Congratulations Celtics on graduating to the next stage of the season where your mentality and focus (I never realized how many F words were relevant to basketball until I went down this path) are going to be tested. Welcome to the first taste of adversity.
“I wouldn't even look at this right now as adversity,” Brown said, disagreeing with the premise. “We lost two games to two teams that played really good basketball and we played average. That's what happens when you play average. You lose. We're gonna have ups and downs and adversity during the season, and I am looking forward to responding to those moments. We’ve got to come out and play with some urgency. We got to come out and play like we're at the bottom of the pack and not the top, and I think we’ll be a little bit better.”
If Brown is right, then Tatum will also right about this not mattering in four months. Joe Mazzulla has let these guys play through runs without calling a timeout in most games this season. Now they're going to have to navigate through this and find their way out of it.
Find your focus and this is a two-game blip no one cares much about by MLK day. Let these bad times linger, though, and the murmurs about this team will get louder.
Tatum has talked about this Celtics team making the choice to play better. This would be a good time to choose wisely.
