December can be a tough month. The stress of the holidays, year-end work projects, and the sun setting 15 minutes after it rises can make things tough for a lot of people.
Maybe that's why the Celtics haven't had the best month of their lives. Ten of their 14 games this month have been at home. The result of a preseason trip halfway around the world and the NBA Cup giving them a weird break in the middle of everything. Maybe they got too comfortable. Maybe they at and drank too much like the rest of us.
Whatever the reason, Boston finished the month with an 8-6 record, 14th in the NBA. They have been inconsistent with their effort, but they finished the month strong by mopping the parquet with the Toronto Raptors. Before the game, their defensive rating for December was 108.9. After the game, it was 106.4. Their offensive rating jumped a point too, putting Boston fourth overall in net rating for the month.
I guess that's what happens when you hold a team to 71 points.
“(It was) just all defense,” Payton Pritchard said after beating Toronto. “I don't know if you could tell. Just more active. Helping each other. We had more steals, more deflections. We just gotta continue to just be conscious of making a conscious effort on the defensive end and being active and being in help and shifting."
Ummm, yeah, we could tell. We can always tell.
We can also tell what a difference Jrue Holiday can make. Holiday came back after missing three games with a shoulder injury and the impact was immediate.
“He brings stability, especially defensively,” Joe Mazzulla said. “It's another guy that can pressure the ball, it's another guy that could guard different positions, it's another guy that could execute defensively in different ways. And then he didn't get a ton of looks, but he made the ones that he got. So I think his impact in his presence means more to us than he probably realizes.”
Holiday hasn’t exactly been his best to start the season, but this was one of his better overall games. The Celtics not only got back to hounding defense on the perimeter, but it pushed the rotations back closer to normal. Pairing Holiday and Derrick White together on the perimeter is a key element to Boston’s defense reaching its full, elite potential.
"Jrue's just one of the best, if not the best all-time on-ball guard defenders that I've seen,” Pritchard said. “Every time he's in the lineup, it just helps. His impact. Obviously, offensively, he hits timely shots, big moments, great passes. We love to have him back."
The shot-making is obviously a big deal for an offensive team like Boston. Holiday has had his off nights this season, but he was feeling it against the Raptors.
“Maybe the hit (to my shoulder) is what helped it,” Holiday joked, referencing a shot he took a few games ago that put him out of commission. “Maybe it got my shoulder in line and now I can see three or two go in. It felt good."
Holiday says the pain in his shoulder might linger for a while, which is something he’s going to have to manage over the course of the season. Maybe that will cost him a game or two down the road, but keeping him as close to 100% as possible is clearly a priority. The Celtics don’t need Holiday to be a world-beater, they just need him to play his normal level of defense and hit a few shots just like he did against Toronto.
“I think it's just about being active and using your instincts,” Holiday said. “It's definitely fun for me being more active. I think probably about the seven-minute mark of the first quarter, I was gassed and my lungs were going crazy, but it's fun to be able to scramble and run around and be as active as possible."
Holiday will have plenty of opportunities to get his cardio back up because Boston now heads out for the toughest month on the schedule. January will be the opposite of December, with 10 games on the road and five at home. Boston only ventured out of Eastern time twice this season (twice in Chicago). Nine of their next 10 road games are in different time zones, including two Western Conference swings.
"It's going to be a tough month,” Holiday said. “We've been home a lot, which is good for this December, but to start the New Year, we want to start it off with a great road trip and really get back to form."
Maybe this trip, and the send-off on Tuesday, is just what this team has needed. Maybe some time living out of suitcases and jumping on and off planes will snap them back into focusing on basketball instead of whatever else they’ve had going on at home. Maybe some time with no one but themselves can get them back into the natural flow of a season.
“As a competitor, this is going to be a great challenge,” Pritchard said. “Really looking forward to it. We play a lot of good opponents. But this isn't like necessarily the championship, but it's preparing for it. Moments like this, you gotta go to war and get better. Hopefully we win every game. But if we lose, it's preparation. It's building for what's to come in the future. It's going to be a really good test for us and we're going to go out there and compete."
