Intangibles are non-negotiable for the Celtics.
The talent isn’t where it used to be, so nights where the execution struggles are understandable. This is not a roster full of great rebounders, so nights where the other team gets a bunch of second chances are expected. Half the roster is new and most of the guys coming back are being asked to do a lot more, so a lack of cohesion makes sense.
But through it all, this Celtics team can’t take anything for granted. Their effort cannot wane. They simply have very little margin for error, so screwing up anything controllable is unacceptable.
"We just gotta play basketball,” Jaylen Brown said after the loss to Utah. “The shots just didn't go in tonight for whatever reason. We still gotta find ways to win … a team coming off a back-to-back shouldn't be a harder playing team than us.”
The Celtics have given up three 42 point quarters this season, as well as quarters of 36, 37, and in the third quarter of this game against Utah, 38 points.
“(It was) just bad,” Derrick White said. “I don't know exactly what happened, but bad communication, bad rotations. They kind of did whatever they wanted that quarter and that's been, kind of like the whole year, there's always been that one quarter that seems to get us.”
The Celtics have yet to figure out how to navigate their way out of these basketball rip currents. These bad quarters have happened in six of their eight games, and five of those ended up being losses. They gave up 42 against the Cavs but scored 40 to keep pace and ultimately win. But the way the Celtics were shooting in this game, there was no such outburst coming.
“If you're just not hitting shots in this league, it puts a lot of pressure on your defense,” Payton Pritchard said. “You see it in the second half, they got to the free-throw line, hit 3s, and then it makes us more stagnant on offenses because we got to take it out on a set defense. If we're making shots, then we can set our defense better. It's just a better flow.”
Through eight games, Boston leads the league in 3-point attempts but is 29th in percentage, so the pressure on their defense seems to there on most nights. Water will eventually find its level and the Celtics’ percentage will improve, but that can’t be the only thing that fuels Boston wins.
Before the season started, Josh Minott said he thought the Celtics would be the fastest team in the league based on how they were practicing. However, the practical application of what’s happened in practice isn’t too much different than last season. Boston is dead last in pace again this season. They are averaging four more field goal attempts in transition this season as compared to last, but that's a marginal improvement at best.
“For us to have a chance this year, we got to come out with crazy energy,” Pritchard said. “We’ve got to have this pop. And I just feel like we last two games, we gave an excuse being tired the game before, and tonight, we had no excuse. So just a lack of energy. We’ve got to come out with more and fight like every game is going to be our last.”
If the Celtics thought a bad team coming into Boston on a back-to-back would lay down for them, they were sorely mistaken. And in true mess around and find out fashion, the Jazz left town with a win and a better winning percentage than Boston.
For at least this one day, the Jazz can say they're better than the Celtics, which has to be humbling for the home team.
“You just have to hold them to a standard, and I think it's a process,” Joe Mazzulla said. “I think it's just a combination of your film study, your shootarounds. Our guys do a good job of wanting to learn and study that, and now it's getting the reps of executing those in real time. And you're never going to be perfect in them, but we've gotten better at those, and tonight we just weren't great at it. So just like everything else, you have to make the commitment to be able to do that every night.”
The Celtics are certainly far from perfect and there isn’t much they can do to fix that. But their effort can be immaculate, which is supposed to be what separates this team from others. When that wanes, the rest falls apart very quickly.
“It's a new team, so we're figuring it out. We’re learning,” Pritchard said. “We’ve got a lot of things we’ve got to keep getting better at, and we’re willing to work, so we're gonna get better at it, and we'll grow. And by the end of the season, I can promise we're gonna be a better team than when we started. That's a promise.”