Every year, NBA marketing teams get together and figure out how to brand their upcoming season. The tag line for this Celtics season is “it’s different here.”
There's no way they could have known how perfect that was.
Through four games, it’s already clear that something is different with these Boston Celtics.
It’s not just that they're good. Everybody knew they would be.
It’s not that they're 4-0. Four-game winning streaks involving two potential non-playoff teams happen all the time.
But the way the Celtics have handled their business is certainly something we haven't seen from these guys.
Four games. Four different kinds of wins. Four times they’ve shown us something that probably wouldn’t have happened last season.
“They’ve been around a long time, they communicate with each other, and it’s kind of the standard they set for themselves,” Joe Mazzulla said after the game. “That is a testament to the toughness that you have to have to handle the things that go into the NBA. So we have to have the humility to be able to understand that it went well for us, and we’ve just got to be ready for the time that it doesn’t.”
There will obviously be a time when it doesn’t. In fact, it would have been very reasonable to predict that this game would have been one of those times. But it was pretty clear from the beginning of the game that this was different, thanks in part to a different Jayson Tatum.
Jayson Tatum was fully in his bag tonight pic.twitter.com/CX5JguVPrr
— John Karalis 🇬🇷🇺🇦 (@John_Karalis) November 2, 2023
“He's just a complete player,” Jrue Holiday said after the game. “He plays defense. He can lock up. He's athletic, he has length, he's able to move his feet and slide … Offensively though, he's got everything.”
The way Tatum is scoring is different this season. There's a little more force to it, more confidence it seems, and the result is not just big scoring numbers, but better efficiency. He’s seventh in the NBA in scoring to start the season, but he’s shooting at a higher overall percentage than anyone in the top 10, and anyone besides Nikola Jokic in the top 39 (damn you, Tobias Harris, and your hot start ruining my round numbers).
And when Tatum isn’t scoring, he’s out there setting picks to spring guys for good looks.
“I think JT’s one of our best screeners because everybody in the whole league (needs to think), ‘Where’s JT at?’” Derrick White said. “So for him to screen and cause that confusion for the other teams, it’s big time for us and those guys will do whatever it takes to help us win on both sides of the ball.”
This is how the Celtics offense is working right now. They are actually moving the ball, and when someone doesn’t have a shot, they just give it up and flow to the next thing.
That's a little different from the constant isolation we’ve gotten so used to around here.
“That’s how I think most people like to play basketball,” Holiday said. “Sometimes when it gets too stagnant or playing one-on-one it can get pretty dry. But the ball has energy. So when you’re moving like that and curling to the basket there is a good feeling of getting your man a bucket. So if I’m setting a screen and he scores off me setting a screen, it’s like I’m still making something happen without necessarily being in that play.”
And then there's the coaching, which isn’t just different in that he calls a timeout here or there that he might not have called last season. It’s that he’s able to follow through on a weakness from last season.
Near the beginning of training camp, Mazzulla admitted that he lost touch with the end of bench guys as he tried to coach up the top of the depth chart. Determined not to do that, Mazzulla is making sure everyone has the attention they deserve.
Even with the lead growing from 30 to 40 and then past 50, Mazzulla was not relaxed on the sidelines.
“It means he cares and he cares about one through 17 or 18,” Sam Hauser said. I think that's really important, to do and build relationships with everyone that's on our team because we're all part of it and we all play a role every single day.”
There's a lot we thought we knew about this team, but it turns out things can change from season to season. It won’t be all puppy dogs and rainbows for the Celtics, but they’ve shown the exact kind of growth everyone has been looking for.
“I think these first however many games we’ve played, each game’s been different,” Holiday said. “We’ve had a challenge thrown at us each game and then we locked into the tendencies, locked into the game-plan, that’s kind of how you challenge yourself. … In an away game playing a team you think you're better than, what do you do? Can you challenge yourself to lock in and just humble yourself and know that they're also an NBA team and go out there and execute the way a team is supposed to?”
Last season, the answer was no. But now things are different.
