One would have expected a bit more excitement from Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. After all, the first had just been selected to his very first All-Star Game mere hours before, while the latter received his second straight nod. “I don’t feel much like an All-Star,” Brown told the media. Tatum expressed happiness for his teammate but echoed his sentiment.
“It’s really hard to focus on that when we aren’t where we want to be as a team,” Tatum added.
Where exactly are they as a team? Well, following last night’s 110-107 loss to the Dallas Mavericks, the Boston Celtics are now 15-16. They are in sixth place in the Eastern Conference and are in danger of falling out of the top eight relatively soon. Despite their run of injuries, it’s stunning a team this talented has been struggling so much, yet their current record accurately represents what we have been seeing on the court.
For the record, Brown should know that he was correct in his assumption: the team hasn’t lost this much during his time here. The last time the Celtics were under .500 past the ten-game mark in the season was April 15, 2015. Brown wasn’t even in college at that point.
What happened that dipped them below the break-even point? Well, days after allowing the New Orleans Pelicans to stage their biggest comeback in team history, the Celtics lost another extremely winnable game. Well, the Celtics went cold in the always-dangerous fourth quarter and allowed the Mavericks to put together a double-digit lead. After sleepwalking through much of the second, they scrambled to retake the lead in the game’s final minute. It almost seemed to work but then Luka Doncic did what Luka Doncic does, hitting back-to-back improbable three-pointers to secure the victory. What could have been a momentum-building win ended up being nearly as demoralizing as their collapse against New Orleans.
“Obviously that’s another heartbreaking loss, but that feels a little different than it did on Sunday,” head coach Brad Stevens said after the game.
He’s right, but “different” doesn’t necessarily mean “much better.” It’s not just that the Celtics’ offense is inconsistent outside of their All-Star duo, it’s that the team is visibly letting up defensively, something that’s reflected in their 103.1 defensive rating during games that have not effectively been decided. It’s ultimately not that inspiring that something shifted in the team late in last night’s game, but only at the point where it was on the brink of unwinnable. If they had anything close to that level of commitment during the previous quarter’s worth of game time, the Celtics could have built a lead that could have sustained Doncic’s literal last-second heroics.
So the question is what now? Yes, there’s the trade exception that GM Danny Ainge worked so hard to get after losing Gordon Hayward to the Charlotte Hornets. The problem is that whoever they could get with that exception isn’t likely to move the needle that much from where they are now. They could get a useful piece for a team that is actually looking like a championship contender but these Celtics feel closer to falling out of the playoff mix entirely than sneaking their way into the NBA Finals. One can dream about some huge trade but it’s hard to know how many sellers there will be at the trade deadline.
What will have to happen for the Celtics to reverse course? It could all come down to their current All-Stars, but maybe not how you think. On the Celtics radio broadcast yesterday, broadcaster Sean Grande made the suggestion that the young players had reached the level where they have made themselves better but were yet to reach the next stage where they knew how to make the team better. Brown, despite his considerable maturity, is still just 24 while Tatum turns 23 next week, it makes sense that they aren’t quite there yet, we shouldn’t expect either to be at that point of their evolution.
The problem is that the team is already theirs. They no longer have Hayward, Kemba Walker isn’t the same player he was last year and now Marcus Smart is on the shelf. It feels like a cliché to use the term “growing pains,” but that’s exactly what this edition of the Boston Celtics is going through. Fans may not want to hear it, but it’s very possible that what’s wrong with them will only be fixed over time. Problem is, it’s hard to ignore the fact that this is the very thing slipping away from them.
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February 24, 2021 at 10:59PM
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The Boston Celtics Now Have Two All-Stars And A Sub-.500 Record - Forbes
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