Like it or not, everything the Celtics do is going to be compared to last season.
In a way, it’s not fair because it’s a new team, with new players and a revamped coaching staff, including a head coach who has grown a bit from last season. This season should be treated as its own thing.
But also, the only way we can see if there's growth is to compare what we see to something. You can’t chart how many inches your kid has grown if you erase the lines on the wall every year. This is a team that needed to grow, and so we have to look at where they were compared to where they are.
A year ago, we watched this team, with much of the same core, spend a lot of time playing down to the competition. They’d come out testing the 3-point waters, searching to see who might be hot and whether they could get by with out-scoring a bad team.
This time around, they busted down the door to Capital One Arena, ransacked the Wizards home, and left town with a dominant win.
“Someone could say we learned from our mistakes,” Jayson Tatum said with a wry smile.
Ureka! Progress!
The sample is too small to celebrate, but it’s big enough to take notice. Fourth-quarter issues (not counting the garbage time melting of a huge lead in this game) haven't shown themselves so far. Prolonged meltdowns haven't happened. And their first chance at taking a bad team lightly was ignored in favor of a thorough butt whipping.
“Just because it's a sign of growth now, doesn't mean it may not happen at some point,” Joe Mazzulla said. “But we're definitely aware of that. And it's something we think we can control, is the way we come out and start games. We just have too many good players and we have a chance. And so I think we're really trying to make sure we come out with the right mindset every single game. It doesn't mean it's gonna go our way, but I really liked our approach to the game.”
The approach to the game is one thing, but sticking with it is another. Sometimes someone will break ranks when it’s clear the matchup is out of whack; a player looking to pad some stats generally loves getting greedy in blowouts. But no one really did that. Not only did Tatum and Jaylen Brown generally get their 69 combined points in rhythm, Kristaps Porzingis never tried to put on any kind of show for his former home crowd.
Porzingis only took nine shots. He took seven in the first quarter, but once Brown started cooking, he backed off.
“On any night, it can be anybody's night,” Porzingis said. “Tonight it was J.B., and we’re just supporting there, and sometimes it’s going to be one of us or whoever. So I think it's important that we keep building that chemistry, keep trusting each other, and keep playing selflessly like that. Like, whoever gets it going, we just rock with it, we go with it, and we have fun and play as a team.”
The Celtics didn’t even get tripped up by another classic trap: The late scratch of a key player.
Daniel Gafford, Washington’s only true big, is nursing a sprained left ankle, and he was ruled out before the game. That left the Wizards forced to play small, and Boston actually took advantage of it by attacking the rim like hungry wolves cornering a wounded deer.
The Celtics were 17-22 in the restricted area in the first three quarters. They were 24-32 overall in the paint.
“We found out that Gafford was out tonight, KP was the tallest guy on the court by a mile,” Tatum said. “So we was getting stops, he was running the floor, and he makes it easy. You just kind of throw it up. Throw it anywhere close to the rim and he’s going to make a play.”
The comparisons point us in a very positive direction, despite a lot of people wondering if there's another shoe to drop. The Celtics are definitely a work in progress, but they’ve closed out two games with strong play and now they waxed a bad opponent, all things that were iffy last season.
They opened the season in New York, which is going to get an automatic rise out of everyone. They played the home opener against Miami like a playoff game, refusing to let the Heat conjure bad memories right way, Tatum’s minutes be damned. A game like this on the road is a perfect opportunity to relax, and it’s an opportunity last year’s team rarely passed on.
But it’s a new season. And these might actually be the new Celtics, because they understand the task at hand
“KP was on the team last year when they kicked our ass,” Tatum said, referring to a 130-111 drubbing on this same floor. “Just knowing that this is the NBA, any given night, guys can get hot shots, things might not go the way you want. So don't leave it up to chance. Come out and play the right way, play as we were playing Miami at home for the season opener.
“That is the challenge of the NBA, trying to approach every game the same. So we just got to talk about it to have the right mindset more often than not.”