Dec
Celtics’ early patch testing was rough
It will be interesting to see how the Boston Celtics respond to this early season lull.
Every year, I write an article about expectations versus results. This seems like a good time to revisit it.
In the past year, if you explained to your former self all the things that happened, your former self would either accept these results gleefully or have you arrested for identity theft.
Once a team has achieved success, things change. There’s a target on your back. Pick your random sports cliché. The Celtics were just 2 wins away from a championship. The season started off with a historic pace. The bar was raised. The goalposts were pushed back. There was a target on your back.
It’s difficult to change the course of history, and things like winning streaks are almost impossible to maintain. That hasn’t prevented teams from trying though, and the Washington Wizards have been one of the offenders. Winning isn’t everything in sports, but losing 4 games in a row for struggling teams is unlikely to happen. I’m not singling out any particular team, but it should be considered inexcusable when you go into games without winning streaks and record against winning teams.
You can blame it on tired legs, you can blame it on the rookie head coach, you can blame it on egos that have gotten out of control, or you can blame it on Lady Luck. You can even blame it on the officials as part of a mass conspiracy to hurt the Celtics. Regardless, the bottom line is that they must get back on track quickly, otherwise things could spiral out of hand.
Celtics’ early patch testing was rough
Perhaps this is hyperbole, but fortunes can shift quickly in the NBA. One minute the Celtics are under .500, the next they’re in the Finals. One minute the Hawks are making a run to the ECFs, and the next they’re just an average team with chemistry problems. It’s funny how one minute the Nets are an unfair juggernaut of offense and then the next they’re trading for Ben Simmons. Things happen, and it spirals when a team loses.
In this part of the article, I channel my inner Brad Stevens. Just like we shouldn’t have been overjoyed by the early season success (guilty), we also need to remain objective about the recent struggles. Five games isn’t enough to make large conclusions about. The team shot above their career averages practically across the board. Now they all seem to have gone cold at the same time. Things will eventually level out.
For them to make all those shots, they must get back to the habits that put them in position to do so. This means moving the ball and bending the defense multiple times to get wide open looks. It may have had something to do with the integration of Robert Williams back into the lineup, but for someone who has missed such a long period, he has done pretty well.
The ingredients are all there. They have the pieces that we know fit together because we saw it all work just a couple weeks ago. They just need to get back to doing what they do best. This season is long, and they’ve hit a rough patch. Over the next few weeks, we will be able to see a lot about who they are as a team and what we can expect.
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