The Celtics are certainly testing some boundaries right now.
Maybe it’s their great start to the season, or maybe it’s just that the daily grind is catching up to everyone who follows the team religiously, but it doesn’t feel like this Celtics team is measuring up to the standards they’ve set.
At the same, time, they're winning. Yes, they lost to the Lakers without LeBron James and Anthony Davis. That sucked. And getting blown out at home like they did against the Clippers will always leave a bad taste in our mouths. But they're winning.
Since we flipped over to 2024, the Knicks (16 wins), Cavs (15), and Clippers (15) have all caught fire. Boston, with 13 wins is right behind them. Boston has the ninth-best offense and fourth-best defense this calendar year, and the fourth-best net rating.
Of course, the 2023 portion of the schedule saw Boston lead the league in wins (26) and put up the league’s second-best offense and third-best defense, which added up to the best net rating.
Boston has been great since January 1. Most teams would kill for those stats. But because of how the first two-plus months went, there's a less-than-enthusiastic feeling about the team.
When Joe Mazzulla talked about being happy that things could get ugly, this is the exact feeling you’re feeling is why he wanted it. When he talked about entitlement, it’s to erase the feeling some of you are feeling after this win over Atlanta.
Maybe the Celtics made it look too easy, and this is them settling into reality. Maybe the honeymoon phase is over with this team, and this is the stage where the couple realizes they’ve gotten a little too comfortable and they need to start buying new, bigger clothes.
This means right now we’re wondering what the hell to do with all of our skinny clothes.
Do we get rid of them and accept our new reality? Do we accept that the natural progression of things means dad bods and muffin tops? That doesn’t change a couple’s love for one another, and as we know, that's the most important thing. A good, solid foundation to the relationship can get it through anything.
Or do we stuff the skinny clothes into the back of the closet because we’re going to get back to good habits and actually use the gym membership that's been auto-debiting for a year without a single visit? Maybe you can motivate yourself with the idea of a nice beach vacation where you wear the old skimpy swimsuits.
The Celtics know they need to be better. They get it. They have mirrors too.
“I think there is some slippage there, and it's something that we have to be better at,” Al Horford said of Boston’s defense, specifically against the Hawks and in general lately. “We’ll have an opportunity obviously on Friday to come out and try to be better there. But the Hawks, they have been playing very well, and they put a lot of pressure defensively on us, and they did that tonight, and I felt like when we really needed to separate, we did that we got some key stops. And then our guys hit some big shots.”
That's true. They did. And they’ve mostly done that even through a homestand where they lost twice. They're eighth in the league on offense, seventh defensively, and seventh in net rating since coming home for six (soon to be seven) games. Again, great numbers in general, but not when the whole body of work is considered.
“We’re going to have ups and downs, gonna hit some adversity, and I think it’s good that our group is experiencing these things,” Horford said. “We obviously want to be playing good basketball. We want it to be smooth. It’s something that we’re dealing with right now.”
Horford isn’t wrong, even though we don’t want to see it. Sometimes you need to put on 10 pounds to realize how much you hate being 10 pounds heavier and then swear off beer and pizza (I know I’ve used this analogy before. I know I’m telling on myself here). But the risk is that those bad habits have a tendency to linger if you’re not careful. If the Celtics don’t catch themselves, they can find themselves on the hamster wheel of promising this is the last weekend of bad habits and never actually breaking any of them.
Of course there was going to be a challenging portion of the season. Everyone knew it was coming. And even though the Celtics are mostly winning as they deal with it, there is a fear that the wins will stop when the competition gets more playoff-y.
“One thing that always at least centers me is focusing on the day-to-day stuff,” Horford said. “What I tell the group and what I do myself is just try to focus on, for example, tomorrow I’ll go in, have a treatment session, have a good practice, do the things that I need to do, start recovering tonight, and just kind of focus on that and then start looking into Washington and things like that. So really not trying to get caught up in the past or think too far ahead. And that’s kind of like the mindset that you want to have. It’s boring, for some people, that answer can be, but that’s just how I look at it. That’s what I tell the guys.”
Mazzulla wants us to face the reality that winning in this league is hard and these are the times that shape a champion. Playoff basketball is going to be gross and tough, so they should figure out a way to do that more often.
And maybe getting Xavier Tillman, and possibly someone else before the deadline passes, will be like a round of Ozempic that kick-starts the Celtics back into shape. Or maybe, like Horford, they just need to refocus and get back to basics to start seeing those good results.
Either way, the habits are slipping right now. It hasn’t cost the Celtics just yet, but they're being nudged in that direction. Winter is almost over. Spring is around the corner. The holiday weight needs to start coming off so they can feel good about how they look when June rolls around.