The Celtics are home for the holidays, finally, after an incredibly long road trip. You haven't seen many six-gamers out there, but it’s something the league is starting to do more of to reduce the back-and-forth travel (the Lakers were home Tuesday night after their own six-game trip).
Make no mistake, the guys were exhausted by the end of it. Starting out in Brooklyn and finishing with a 3-in-4 set tests one’s mettle. So to that end, I’m perfectly happy with the end result of the 4-2 trip, even if it involved a ton of frustration in the Chase Center.
The regular season is about accumulating wins and data, and the Celtics have accumulated more W’s so far than William Wallace buying a bunch of Wawas in Westchester. With the Milwaukee Bucks hot on their heels (tied in the loss column, facing the Memphis Grizzlies tonight), every positive outcome is more than welcome.
When someone gets to your house for your holiday get-together, do you ask them what directions they took to get there, and criticize them for taking a bad route, or do you welcome them in and offer them a drink?
In the grand view of things, I’m definitely channeling The Rock’s bit, interrupting someone’s explanation by yelling “IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW THEY GOT THE WIN!” But at the same time, I’m acknowledging that it does matter that the Celtics don’t repeat their mistakes moving forward. That's the “data collection” part, and there was plenty of data
So my first reaction to the road trip is that I’m happy with the results. Could they have been better? Sure, but Boston is an elite team, so basically every time they lose we’re going to think it was a game they could have won. They have the talent and ability to beat everybody, even though we know it’s not going to go that way.
A few other thoughts from this trip:
- The biggest lesson they need to learn is how to navigate these long trips and minimize fatigue. That's hard because even though their travel is more luxurious than ours, it’s still travel. It’s still getting on and off planes and sleeping in different rooms every other night.
And let me stress here that I’m aware of how nice their rooms are, but it’s still not their bed, and they still only have the stuff they packed with them, so it’s still not home. And I’m aware of how nice their planes are, but it’s still a plane. They don’t make extra-tall NBA planes, so guys still have to duck, they're still in pressurized cabins, the engines still make a lot of noise, and the bathrooms still suck.
So finding a way, if there is one, to stay energized on these trips will be especially important because they open January on a four-game trip, and 10 of their 15 games are away. They also have another six-game trip coming up in March that starts in Atlanta, ends in Sacramento, and includes a Portland/Utah back-to-back with the Jazz game, in altitude, as the third game in four nights looming as a big ol’ frustrating schedule loss.
This season is full of long trips. I don’t know what they can look back on from this trip to say “we could do this better” or “we should avoid this,” but any time they can find extra rest, they need to take it.
- The Robert Williams fake-out was weird. I’ve been targeting this weekend for Williams’ return just like most people, which is why I was really thrown by last week’s big show of Williams being at practice and proclaiming him to be day-to-day.
Ultimately, he will likely make his return, as expected, sometime in this homestand. I think my plan to get him either a practice or a game with the G League Celtics still makes sense because it gets him real live action without impacting an NBA game to test his knee. But the Celtics' medical staff has a plan and apparently that's going well.
“He’s definitely made huge strides, especially in the last week and a half or so,” Joe Mazzulla said on his weekly 98.5 radio appearance. “We’re constantly just measuring how he responds to the five-on-five setting, then a day off, then a workout session, then a day off and five-on-five … he’s doing a great job, he’s making great strides.”
Still, I’m confused by the whole thing. Maybe it’s more on us than it is on the team because we all reacted to the news in a certain way, but it really felt like the team put that out there for a reason. I just don’t know what that would be.
- Jayson Tatum saw some defenses he’ll have to learn from. I highlighted it in this piece, with Tatum being baited into driving with his dominant hand and into help. It’s been the best way for defenses to push him into bad habits. This homestand will show us a lot about how quickly he processes this stuff and adjusts. That short processing time has been a hallmark of his, but so have the habits, so I’m curious to see what gives.
- Mazzulla knows defense, too.
This video really does a nice job of breaking down how Mazzulla used Luke Kornet as a help defender, much like he’d use Robert Williams.
When the Lakers took their turn collapsing down the stretch, the Celtics used Kornet to “scram switch” smaller guys who ended up on Anthony Davis in pick-and-rolls (the scram switch got the name because basically it’s a better defender coming over and telling his teammate to scram before the ball can get to the offensive player in a mismatch). Kornet is a legit 7’2”, and the easy buckets that Davis was getting in the lane earlier in the game suddenly started going away.
With Davis and LeBron James too exhausted to work harder to get him the ball, they basically let Russell Westbrook try to win it in overtime. He could not. Defensive adjustments FTW.
- Mazzulla’s biggest foible is his disregard for calling timeouts. There's a lot of discussion about it, but Mazzulla clearly feels like conventional wisdom might be wrong.
“I don’t think there's actual real evidence that it works. I think there's feel, and I think this is what people are used to seeing along the way,” Mazzulla told Zolak & Bertrand. “We were down 92-88 (vs. the Lakers) and I called one and we scored to go 92-90 and they went on another 6-0 run, so what did that timeout do?”
It’s both easy and difficult to criticize Mazzulla for how he handles timeouts. It’s hard to really get on his case because there are multiple examples this season of him letting his team play through opponent runs and finding their way. He can probably point to a handful of easy examples of not calling timeouts and coming out fine on the other end.
He’s also right about how what people are used to seeing influences their takes on his strategy, especially when they see Steve Kerr call timeouts after the Celtics barely start a run. That game ran in stark contrast to Mazzulla’s approach, and because the Warriors won, people can easily make the “see, timeouts help you win” correlation -- all the while forgetting that Kerr also calls those timeouts in what are now 15 Warriors losses.
The biggest argument for finding some middle ground is this quote from Jaylen Brown:
“In moments, a timeout can help us get settled a little bit, get our composure back. Because it seems like when that momentum gets the building up, people get tense, you get a little antsy with the ball,” he said.
This is where, in some situations, you can argue that giving the guys a breather and a chance to regain their wits might be helpful. Does it always work? No, but there are times where it’s helpful. If I can argue for anything, it’s that I think Mazzulla can probably soften his stance just a little bit, especially in the late-game situations when guys' legs might be a little wobbly. Let them get a couple of minutes of rest, remind them of the task at hand, and send them back out.
There's room for both things in games. Mazzulla can let them play through runs, but also understand that some runs might require a quick reset.
The rest of Brown’s quote is important for Mazzulla’s case, so in fairness to him, here it is:
“Joe trusts that with the experience that we have, we've been in big moments, we've been in moments when we've seen a lot of different things, so just get ourselves composed while we're on the floor. Get ourselves together, get ourselves in the right actions, in the right place and have the same effect that timeout would while in live play. And that's something that we’re continuing to develop.”
Sometimes there won’t be a timeout to use, or they’ll only have one left for the last few minutes. In those situations, these early-season navigations through rough patches will be when we see the results.
Like I said, there's a middle ground, I think. It’ll be interesting to see if they find it.
- Tomorrow night’s game will be tough. The Orlando Magic are not great but they’ve won four in a row (against decent competition), they have talent, and the Celtics are playing the dreaded first game home after a long road trip.
You’ll hear Mike Gorman mention that a few times during the broadcast.
Maybe the Celtics will buck the trend, but I expect a sloppy game and Orlando’s best shot. I’m just preparing you now so you can set your expectations appropriately.
For more thoughts from this past road trip, check out the latest Locked On Celtics podcast with me and Tom Westerholm: