The Boston Celtics have won two games, one by 23 and one by 20. They have led by 35 and 32 in those games. Jayson Tatum hasn’t had to play in either fourth quarter.
The Celtics have blasted out of the gates as we all expected, even without Kristaps Porzingis. It’s actually stunning to remember that this group is about to bring back an All-Star-level center who has had a major impact on both ends of the floor. The best team in basketball is going to get better … much, much better … possibly in a matter of weeks.
But nestled into the deep recesses of these two easy wins are warning signs from the Basketball Gods. The amalgam of spirits who dole out hoops karma daily have included in Boston’s reward for a proper approach to the season warnings of what’s to come should they stray.
Don’t think you’re above punishment for playing the wrong way.
When the Celtics had more than eight minutes to break the record for made 3-pointers in a game, they broke from their normal approach and started hunting shots rather than generating whatever was best for their situation. The team was averaging .74 made 3-pointers per minute of play. At that pace, they should have hit about five or six more.
They hit none.
“When we were just playing, having fun, playing our style of basketball, everything was going in,” Jaylen Brown said after that game. “We’re not a team that’s hunting 3s. We play the game and we do what we’re supposed to do, but I think towards the end it was tough because we wasn’t playing the way we had normally played.”
The Celtics then got on a plane and went to Washington, DC to face the Wizards, who are a decidedly bad team. They started 19-year-olds Bub Carrington and Alex Sarr against the champs. Bilal Coulibaly is 20. This is a team constructed to win one thing: the draft lottery and the right to draft Cooper Flagg.
So the C’s sauntered into the Capital One arena, on Brown’s birthday, no less, and decided to kick things off by taking the Wizards lightly. Brown especially seemed to be hunting a 50-piece birthday present for himself, attacking without regard for defensive alignment or open teammates.
“We started off a little slow,” Brown said. “I thought in the first half we had some bad shots, some missed layups. Part of that was my fault. We cleaned it up in the second half.”
The slap on the wrist this time came in the form of a 17-point outburst by Jordan Poole, a deficit that got as high as eight, and a one-point game with 3:50 to go in the first half.
The Celtics did, indeed, clean it up in the second half. They corrected course and dominated the third quarter. They returned to form, getting out of the trap of playing Washington’s frantic up-and-down style and getting back into playing at their tempo, making the right reads and taking better shots.
Neither little slip was damaging at all. They had such a big lead that the only thing chasing the 3-point record did was embarrass them a tiny bit. They came back so strong against Washington that the first half will be summed up simply as “a slow start.”
But they should serve as important warnings. In two separate instances in their first two games, the Celtics got away from a proven mentality and the results were pretty stark. The only way to get more obvious foreshadowing is in a Netflix series.
If you’re not careful, these warning shots will become full-blown punishments.
“(Last season), we respected every opponent. We respected every practice day. And I think it paid off in the end,” Tatum said. “It's gonna be tougher this year, obviously. Human nature might play a part of, obviously, what we did last year, and having to fight that. But I think we’re on the right track.”
This is the tough part for these Celtics. Human nature might be their toughest opponent this season, and there will be nights when human nature does win. The Celtics won’t be perfect by any means. They will stumble, sometimes over longer stretches than any of us are comfortable with.
But that doesn’t mean the warnings should be ignored.
Right now, those warnings amount to as much as the note in a fortune cookie. You read it, purse your lips and nod, show it to your date and say “that’s good advice,” and move on. The thing is, it is good advice, and it should be treated as such.
This Celtics team is as dominant as it gets right now. They are going to win a lot of games. It would be a shame if the only thing that trips them up is themselves.