This might be a rough couple of weeks.
The Celtics are in full control of the East and, soon, the NBA's top overall seed. They are going to be the favorites to win a championship. Nothing that happens between now and Game 1 of their opening round series, possibly against these Atlanta Hawks, changes any of that.
And they know that.
We’re starting to see the result of that. They were sloppy against Chicago and their defense wasn’t great, but they managed to win. They looked awesome for a quarter-and-a-half on Monday night, then they completely checked out of the rest of the game and lost. And now they just played a lackluster defensive game and got burned by the resulting offensive rebounds they allowed.
So their heads aren’t really all there at the moment.
At the same time, they're trying some new things. The few times they executed down the stretch in the first game against the Hawks, guys like Jaden Springer were on the floor where they might not normally be when it really matters. In this second loss to Atlanta, the Celtics let Dejounte Murray repeatedly cook Kristaps Porzingis on switches without adjusting.
"Those are good reps for us. We went to that on purpose,” Joe Mazzulla said. “We had an opportunity to practice stuff that we're gonna need to get to and we haven't done a lot of 1-5 switching with KP on the floor. So I thought that was a good opportunity for us to just work on that and get reps on that and get it on film.”
What this all boils down to is the Celtics don’t see these games the same way you do. And that might make things a little dicey around here.
And let me be clear about this: You don’t have to see things the way they do. You’re watching games to see wins. You want your favorite team to win and it bothers you when you don’t. You’re a fan who just wants to watch the best of Boston’s teams beat the tar out of an average Atlanta team, especially after the way things went on Monday. You’re still angry about that, and you wanted to see an utter demolition as a message, especially to a potential playoff opponent, not a loss that might give them confidence.
On top of that, they lost with spotty late-game execution … again. You don’t want to hear about learning or trying things, or letting Porzingis fail defensively against a matchup the Hawks wanted. You don’t want to hear about letting the team figure themselves out rather than call a timeout to stop a big run.
But this is not only what’s happening, it’s also what needs to happen.
The one challenge Boston hasn’t consistently faced is the tight, late-game situation they will probably see in the playoffs. When they have gotten those changes, they’ve struggled. They're 36-4 in 10-point games, but 5-7 in three-point games. Getting these reps now is infuriating, but helpful. And when they get there, Mazzulla wants to let the team figure it out on their own.
Take the Porzingis sequence, for example. After a couple of plays where he was burned, the Celtics finally got a pre-switch to get Porzingis out of the action. The Hawks went and found him again anyway, but the initial pre-switch was something the team was figuring out on its own. It was a step in the right direction.
Now when they go back and look, they can pick apart the missed chances to pre-switch earlier, as well as where the help needs to be, how high up Porzingis can play a guy like Murray and where he needs to rotate to after the help comes. They can talk through the new film, with the mistakes fresh in their minds, to figure out where they can be better next time.
The same goes for the last play I highlighted in the game report. The more they put it in Tatum’s hands and nothing falls, the more they can break down where the missed passing opportunities were, and, hopefully, better choices to be made later.
Which will, theoretically be good for the Celtics when it matters most.
“These are definitely learning experiences where we come down to crunch time and make plays and just see what we're made of,” Jrue Holiday said after the game. “I'd rather do it now and get it out of the way now rather than when we get into the playoffs.”
Holiday was asked how he moves on from a game like this. It was a question formed in the language of the layman; the Joe Everyfan who is also wondering the same. How the hell you move on after two really tough losses like that, in ways that seem to betray the image the team has created for themselves?
Holiday seemed taken aback by the question.
“The next game. The next city,” he said. “Give me a good meal and some good sleep.”
That exchange encapsulates how differently players process games like this than you do. They're already past it. That's how they have to be, even if we don’t quite understand it, and even if it makes for a rough couple of weeks.