At 8:10 p.m. on Wednesday, February 24th, I was convinced the Boston Celtics would never win another basketball game again. I’m not talking about this winter, or this season. I was thinking about the rest of eternity, and that the C’s were on the cusp of ceasing to exist, like the Kentucky Colonels or an unsuspecting large Dunkin’ iced around Ben Affleck. These are the thoughts one has when Danilo Gallinari turns into a human three-point tsunami in the midst of a blowout loss to the Hawks.
That defeat dropped the Celtics to 15-17, two games below .500. Worse than that, the team looked rudderless, defeated, and worn out. It’s one thing to get run off the floor (it’s the NBA, it happens), it’s another thing entirely when the effort level straight up isn’t there. I could have been convinced pretty easily in that moment that Boston wouldn’t even make this year’s play-in tournament for the 7-10 seeds.
Yet, despite all odds, less than a week later the Celtics are 17-17 heading into Tuesday night’s marquee matchup with Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers. They’re fresh off back to back weekend wins over the Pacers and Wizards, the first time Boston has won consecutive games in over a month. Both Indiana and Washington are currently below .500, but those victories had a season-saving feel, particularly Sunday night’s last minute theft against the Wizards.
You could argue a team with two stars young as talented as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown (and a third All-Star-level player in Kemba Walker) shouldn’t be in a situation where it seems like the entire season hangs in the balance during a February home game against a non-playoff team, but that’s where we’re at with the 2021 Celtics. Everything about this year has felt like an uphill battle, going all the way back to opening night against the Bucks. In that game, as you may recall, the Celtics were outscored 37-21 in the 4th quarter and only escaped with a win thanks to a rabbit-from-the-hat buzzer beater by Tatum:
At the time, that felt like a statement victory by an Eastern Conference finalist over one of the best teams in the league. As it turns out, many of the negatives from that night (blowing big leads, isolation basketball, over-reliance on Tatum and/or Brown) have plagued Boston throughout the season. That first point has been possibly the most infuriating. The Celtics constantly cough up double digit advantages, the most egregious being Feb. 21st’s overtime loss to the Pelicans, where the C’s let a 24 point 3rd quarter lead vanish in less than a quarter and a half. They did it again on Sunday, where they led the Wizards by 10 points early in the 1st quarter, and then by as much as 11 points in the 3rd, only to have to ultimately come back from a 106-98 deficit with less than three minutes remaining in the 4th.
The Celtics also fall into frustratingly stagnant offensive spells, where ball movement stalls and their pace grinds to a halt. The numbers back up the eye test there: Boston has had 311 isolation possessions so far this season (5th most in the NBA), but is only scoring on 38.9% of those trips (26th in the league). It’s one thing to be iso-heavy and score. The Nets, for example, isolate at the second most frequent clip in the NBA (9.6% of possessions), but score on 50.1% of those possessions (2nd best in basketball). Granted, Brooklyn’s talent level on that end of the court is unmatched by anyone, possibly in league history. But that style of basketball is clearly effective for the Nets, and thus understandable that they’d lean so heavily on it. That has not been the case for the Celtics.
Compounding those issues is that Boston simply has not defended at a high enough level this season, especially since Marcus Smart was sidelined with a calf injury on January 30th. Let’s take a look at the Celtics’ defensive rating ranks over the last few seasons:
- 2016: 4th
- 2017: 14th
- 2018: 2nd
- 2019: 6th
- 2020: 4th
- 2021: 16th
If results hold, it’d be the worst finish for a Celtics defense under Brad Stevens since Stevens’ first season as head coach. Of course, that year the C’s went 25-57 and were in full rebuild mode, not coming off of their third Conference Finals appearance in four seasons. Boston’s defensive woes have only underlined Smart’s value to this team’s identity on both ends of the court, as outlined beautifully in this Twitter thread by NBCSports Boston’s Abby Chin. The results bear out the peripheral data:
- Celtics DRtg, before Smart’s injury: 108.9, 11th in the NBA
- Celtics DRtg, since Smart’s injury: 113.4, 20th in the NBA
Still, you don’t need to deep-dive into NBA.com’s database to see that the Celtics desperately need Smart back. More than anything, Smart’s pending return after the All-Star break will mean Boston will be (knock on wood) deploying its four best players for meaningful minutes for the first time all season. As it stands, Walker, Brown, Tatum, and Smart have only appeared on the court together in two games this season, for a grand total of 28 minutes.
For most teams, having barely had your top four players on the court at the same time all season would make things challenging enough. But, Walker’s slow return to form after missing the season’s first month has only added to those difficulties, and the Gordon Hayward-sized hole left by his departure this offseason looms larger with each passing game. Fortunately for the Celtics, Kemba is starting to pick up momentum. After shooting only 37.1% from the field in his first 15 games, Walker has averaged 24.7-4.0-5.7 on 45.5/39.3/92.9 shooting over his last three outings. More importantly, he’s averaged 33.1 minutes per game in those contests, up from 28.9 MPG in those initial 15 games. The Celtics desperately need Walker to return to the level of effectiveness he was at last season pre-injury, to help supplement Tatum and Brown’s production.
Replacing Hayward’s wing size, scoring, and playmaking is impossible with the players currently on the roster, though the return of Smart and Romeo Langford will help aid Boston’s languishing bench units by simply adding more NBA talent back into the mix. Still, the Celtics’ lack of depth due to the “talent drain” as Zach Lowe eloquently put it on last Friday’s Lowe Post (along with the injuries to Smart and Walker) is apparent. Just look at this side by side of last year’s team and this year’s team, sorted by minutes played:
Semi Ojeleye has grown on me, and has played better this year. But if he, along with a rookie (Payton Pritchard) are essentially your 5th and 6th most reliable players?
Any way you slice it, the drop-off from Smart/Walker/Hayward to Theis/Thompson/Ojeleye is dramatic. While Brown and Tatum have already accomplished so much in their young careers, that’s a heavy burden to thrust on a pair of guys who are only 24 and 22 years old, respectively. on It’s no wonder the Celtics have scuffled compared to expectations.
Part of those depth issues can be chalked up to bad injury luck. But some of the blame has to fall at the feet of Danny Ainge, who hasn’t really hit a no doubt home run with any of these late lottery picks, and who has struggled to find the right veteran pieces to help fill out the bench. This year’s big free agent acquisitions have ranged from “somewhat disappointing” (Tristian Thompson) to “I guess Jeff Teague is unplayable now?” (Jeff Teague). When you lose guys like Hayward, Al Horford, and Kyrie Irving for nothing, your margin for error is slim, if it exists at all. While there’s still time to find the right supporting cast alongside the Jays, it’s going to require more aggressive swings than Ainge has been willing to take since trading for Kyrie.
As uneven as the first half of this season has been, however, there have been some bright spots. Robert Williams III is probably deserving of his own post, so for now just check out the highlights from Friday night’s game against Indiana, one of his best performances of the season:
Brown has taken major strides forward offensively for the second straight year, and Tatum has shown that last season’s leap was absolutely not a fluke. Ainge still has a trade to make. Stevens, despite the ludicrous calls from Boston sports radio screeching for his head on a platter, is still an excellent coach (even if I think he could use his timeouts more proactively). Considering how bunched up the East is, the Celtics are, improbably, still in great position to get their guys back to full strength and make a run to lock up a top four seed.
A lot still needs to go right, though, for the Celtics to go from “back in the mix” to a serious title contender again. Over the weekend, the Celtics might have saved their season. The next step? To make sure that it was a season worth rescuing.
For The Love 