I don’t know either.
On one hand, games like this happen sometimes. The 2008 Celtics lost to the Charlotte Bobcats. The 1986 Celtics lost to the Knicks and Pacers. The 1984 Celtics lost to the Bullets and Clippers. Good teams lose to bad teams all the time.
On the other hand, it’s the middle of March and the Celtics are presumably fighting for the top seed in the conference. They should see every game in this stretch as a step closer to the top. Overlooking a team shouldn’t be an option for these guys at this point.
Maybe the Celtics just think they're better than they really are?
Those other teams won 66, 67, and 62 games, respectively. The ‘08 Celtics won the conference by seven games. Boston was 10 games better than anyone in the East in ‘86 and ‘84. They had multiple Hall of Famers in their starting lineups.
This team? This team hasn’t won anything. They have one trip to the Finals under their belt and a hard lesson learned from it, but I’m not sure these guys really remember what that is right now.
Let’s look at the reality of who this team really is right now. Over the past few weeks, this team has taken every chance to relax in the middle of games that it could. It hasn’t mattered when in the games the opportunity presented itself -- it was the second quarter against Brooklyn, the third against New York, and the first against Houston -- but the instant the Celtics were given the chance to determine they, themselves, were hot and the other team wasn’t, they dialed their effort back.
“We kind of played with the game and tried to win at the end instead of playing how we're supposed to play the entire game from start to finish,” Jayson Tatum said after losing to the Houston Rockets. “We just got to be more consistent throughout the course of the game, and we will be better and learn from it.”
I applaud Tatum for being forthright there. That's an honest assessment of how things went. However, the “learn from it” part rings hollow after a loss to Brooklyn where the Celtics did the exact same thing.
They're not learning from this.
This is simply who they are. This is who they’ve been. This is a team that has always made life harder on themselves. They started out last season mired in this kind of play and then they turned it on late. They had chances to close out series against Milwaukee and Miami in less than seven games but didn’t.
They just don’t do it, and we should stop expecting them to.
“I just think we need to come out and play the way we know we should play each and every night. We can pick and choose,” Jaylen Brown said. “Some days, it’s not going to be your night offensively, and that's okay, you can still add to winning. We can't pull away from our team by getting into it with the officials while the other team is running back, putting the ball in a basket. We should be mature enough to just persevere through, but it just seemed like at times, like today, it was a tough mental game … we didn't have a sense of urgency. So we wasn't rewarded tonight.”
What Brown was clearly referencing in this game was Marcus Smart not getting back on defense after a missed 3-pointer in the early third quarter that resulted in a Kenyon Martin, Jr. dunk. Although, that line could be referring to any number of plays all season long, or last year, or the year before that, that matched the same description. Asking Ime Udoka about guys not getting back after arguing calls was pretty common.
It’s appropriate that Tatum loves golf because golf is a great way to sum up what life is like with this team. They are that annoying slice or hook that is just naturally part of your swing. You can work hard to eliminate it, and maybe you can go a few weeks where it’s not there and you feel like you can join the Senior Tour. And then you go out there tired one day and the next thing you know you’re scaring woodpeckers off tree trunks.
They simply don’t have it in them to play good basketball all the time. And I’m not saying this in a way that expects them to win 82 games or even to avoid losing to bad teams. What I’m saying is it’d be nice if playing down to the competition was an aberration rather than the expectation.
Because I always expect them to play down to a bad team. I always expect them to get away from all the little things they need to do to win easily.
“Those are concerning -- the margins. The free throws, the rebounding, the turnovers, the second chance,” Joe Mazzulla said. “Regardless of who you play, that's playoff basketball at its finest; it's the ability to win those situations. So it's concerning that we're inconsistent in that and we have to be committed to those. Regardless of who we're playing, regardless of the situation, regardless of how many games are left, it doesn't matter. You have to be committed to those.”
They have to be, but they're not. They never have been, really. They have stretches where they do those things, but those things are hard for these Celtics. The ball movement, the rebounding, the playmaking, all that stuff is out of their comfort zone.
Tatum is an isolation player. He’s not a ball mover. He is, by nature, not a fast player who makes quick decisions. He doesn’t really, at his core, want to play how the Celtics preach. Brown certainly plays faster than Tatum, but he’s not exactly conjuring images of the 2014 San Antonio Spurs -- the pinnacle of offense in the modern NBA.
The rub here is that both of those guys CAN play that way. And when they do, the Celtics look amazing. When Boston is playing that point-5 style of ball, they look like they’ll never lose another game. When Tatum is getting off the ball quickly, relocating, and catching it again, he looks like someone who’ll rewrite every one of Boston’s records.
Maybe that's why I keep falling for it. It’s the classic Charlie Brown/Lucy with the football scenario. I know how it’s going to go every time, but I keep thinking things will be different this time.
It’s not. I wonder if it ever will be.
None of this precludes the Celtics from winning a championship. They certainly still are very capable of winning it all this season. Like I said, they're unbeatable when they're playing their best.
But the lesson I’m finally accepting is that their best basketball is a lot of hard work for them. It pulls too much at who they are at their core, and therefore it’s unsustainable. Whatever road Boston takes to wherever they go this season, it will be the hardest one available, because that's the road they always take.
Becoming a champion takes sacrifice. Everyone from that ‘08 team will tell you that. And maybe this team is willing to sacrifice some, but no one is willing to go all in at the level to make this thing inevitable. I don’t know if it’s money, awards, or respect that these guys want, but none of them is willing to truly put that stuff aside for the bigger picture.
When push comes to shove, everyone wants to do it his own way first, and then the team’s way second. And as long as that's the case, everything will be a bit harder for this team than it has to be.
