“We just have a choice to make: what team do we want to be? The team we were in the first half or the second half.” - Joe Mazzulla
I could just end this piece here. I could center it on an 8x10 screenshot and submit it to Greg and tell him this is a conceptual art piece. And in a lot of ways, it really tells the whole story of the Celtics right now.
Call me crazy, but the Celtics are actually pretty relatable at the moment. Who isn’t falling apart the week before Christmas? Whose worst habits aren’t on full display in the month of December? They're just pulling the basketball version of our Thanksgiving-to-Christmas self-inflicted meltdown. It’s just that instead of eating Chipwiches and Pringles (not a real example), they're settling for 3-pointers and making lazy passes.
Except when they're not. And that's the part that's either encouraging or infuriating, depending on your general demeanor. Obviously, there is a pretty big sample of them playing really well -- so well, in fact, that they can hit a skid of three in a row and five of their last six and STILL be tied for the most wins in the NBA. They gave themselves such a lead that they can fall completely apart for a couple of weeks and still have the league’s second-best point differential, the league’s second-best offensive rating, and seventh-best defensive rating.
The good side is really good. The bad side is really bad.
“It's also hard when you play the way you did at the beginning of the year and you set such a high standard,” Mazzulla said. “It's hard to play to that all the time. So we have to learn how to make that standard a habit.”
That comes with confidence -- but real confidence, not the chip on your shoulder kind. Real confidence comes with being comfortable in one’s skin; knowing who you are and being okay with who you’re not. I’m still not sure every member of the Celtics has that mindset. You can see it in the moments when someone tries to do too much and it doesn’t always go well.
The real confidence will come when this team accepts what it takes to be great. Really living up to the standard will take the full understanding of what fuels the long strings of success. It begins with the simple acknowledgment that no matter what their talent level, they are very ordinary if they don’t work to live up to it.
“I think we got down on ourselves a little bit, didn’t play hard enough,” Malcolm Brogdon said after the loss to his old team. “That’s a young, energetic team that plays well together over there, so they put out the effort, especially in the first half, and I thought we were the harder-playing team in the second half. I really do. I think we were the better team in the second half, but we dug ourselves too deep of a hole to really pull it all the way through.”
It was very easy to see. Before halftime, Boston’s passes floated out of reach, into the hands of young Pacers eager to run. After the half, the Celtics were attacking, getting to the rim, pushing the pace themselves. They worked harder, focused on the little things, made cuts, and defended well.
The second half Celtics are the team we’ve known. The first-half Celtics are the team that showed up out of nowhere to crash on your couch and drink your liquor straight from the bottle (again, not a real example).
“We gotta learn how to win again,” Tatum said. “Everybody wants to make every shot, myself included. Our body language when we miss shots and things like that is contagious. And that's just part of it. We’re not going to make every shot, we’re going to turn the ball over, it’s all about how we respond. And as a group, we can’t let it snowball. And that's what happened tonight. We let it -- it’s a domino effect. I think just not playing so tight, get back to just relax, take a deep breath, and remember we’re playing basketball.”
Playing basketball in the NBA can get overly complicated at times. Picks can be set at different angles and if you don’t do it right then the entire play can break down and plans B or C might not look so pretty. A defensive rotation made a little too aggressively can lead to easy layups, even if four other guys are on point.
But also, basketball is pretty easy if you want it to be. Pass the ball, move, make quick decisions, and don’t worry about anything besides getting the best shot possible. On defense, know your personnel, stick to the plan, and pay attention to where everyone is. These are all choices guys can make.
That's what life is all about anyway -- just a day-to-day grind of choice after choice, hoping that the cumulative impact of those choices leads you to a positive place when you go to sleep at night. It’s no different for the Celtics.
It’s just right now they're not making great choices at all. Maybe they're like some people I know at about 1 a.m. when the writer’s block is real and some chips ahoy might just be what they need to break through (okay, fine, real example).
The problem is that bad choices pile up, and if you’re not careful, the cumulative effect can take things once in your control away from you. The Celtics have choices now -- it’s still only December and they're a half-game out of first place -- but wait too long and those choices will go away.
“I think us, as a team, we’re disappointed in ourselves, but I don’t think there’s concern,” Brogdon said. “I think we need a sense of urgency, and I think we’re starting to get that. I think that second half shows us we can have and play with a sense of urgency, and I think we will.”
