We can go on for hours about where the Celtics should be. They're 34-15, but they should be better. They're 5.5 games out of first, but they should be closer. They beat the New Orleans Pelicans on Friday night, but it should have been easier.
Sure. Some of the things happening to the Celtics probably shouldn’t be happening, but they are. For a variety of reasons, some of which are in their control and some that aren’t, things aren’t going the way most people expected.
But things don’t always follow a nice, tidy narrative. In fact, if we’re being honest with ourselves, how many things in life actually do? Your job, your personal life, the things that have entertained you … how much of all that has gone how you expected?
I’ll assume the answer is “not much,” because that's everyone’s answer. I’m enjoying my second marriage, so my personal life has taken a couple of detours. Online news outlets didn’t exist when my career started and no one had invented podcasts, so this line of work wasn’t part of the original plan. And Mark Zuckerberg only stole the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins about 20 years ago, so my days of doom scrolling social media sites are also relatively new.
This wasn’t the plan, but it’s what I’ve got. How I handle it is up to me. My choices were to cry about it, or accept it and figure it out.
The Celtics plan was to dominate the season, win 60-something games again, make it look easy, win another title, and then figure things out from there. But for a few different reasons, things have changed. They aren't dominating like they used to. They're falling apart late in games they used to control. They can flip from looking dominant to confusingly sloppy in an instant.
So when the Celtics found themselves in another pickle, mostly of their own doing, in the closing minutes of Friday night’s game, it became an opportunity. As they found themselves tripping over themselves again, a window presented itself.
Were they going to continue failing, or were they going to start figuring things out?
“We didn't play perfect, but it's one of those games where if you win, you're happy, and if you lose you're not,” Joe Mazzulla said. “So you just have to take it on. We had some good, well-executed plays. I thought we executed down the stretch. So we just have to keep getting better.”
Yes, they lost their lead, but they never trailed in the fourth. The Pelicans got ridiculously hot in the fourth but the Celtics got important stops. They missed some chances to score, but their stars hit huge shots without settling for 3-pointers.
“(We) put a lot of pressure on ourselves, missed some late-game free throws,” Jaylen Brown said. “But we just came out, stayed with it, and made some big shots to close it out.”
Once again, the stats from Boston’s side look good enough to do the job. They shot 8-15 (53.3%) in the quarter. They were 2-5 (40%) from 3, so they mostly focused on getting to the rim. They took 15 free throws, only turned the ball over once, and forced six Pelicans turnovers that turned into eight Boston points.
But they missed six free throws that would have changed the game. The Pelicans shot 11-14 in the fourth, 5-7 from 3. Whenever the Celtics threatened to pull away, something happened to give New Orleans life.
“I think it's great to learn from these experiences,” Brown said. “Feel like the hostile environment, that was a good crowd tonight, they were loud, similar how to be in the playoffs. So anytime we can win and learn at the same time, I’m for it.”
I know they probably should know what they need to know, but it’s a new season, and the learning process is starting all over again. It’s like bench pressing 300 pounds. It’s hard to do, and if you get away from lifting for a while, you won’t be able to just come back and bench 300 again right away. You have to build back up to it.
There's no doubt the Celtics have been complicit in their own struggles. They have done things to shoot themselves in the foot. It doesn’t help that someone becomes a sniper in every game they play and makes the job even tougher.
But maybe that's a good thing. Maybe all these outlier performances will help the Celtics figure out how to deal with, say, Donovan Mitchell going on a huge heater, or Jalen Brunson having an out-of-body experience. We won’t know until we get there.
For now, I’m going to take this win as a step in the right direction. I’m not hanging a “Mission Accomplished” banner or anything, but the Celtics found their way out of a jam. They haven't been doing much of that lately, so I’ll take it. Hopefully, they can figure out the rest later.
“Those games are fun towards the end because that's the stage for big moments,” Kristaps Porzingis said. “Somebody can hit a game-winner, something crazy can happen. But I also enjoy just cruising and winning by 20 or 30. So let's try to do more of that.”