Inside TD Garden on Wednesday, there were some unusual sights: Jaylen Brown laughing. Marcus Smart smiling. Fans cheering. The Celtics winning.
OK, not that unusual. Boston’s 115–93 win against Portland was its 46th of the season.
It kept the Celtics within two games of Milwaukee for the top spot in the Eastern Conference and maintained a two-game cushion over Philadelphia for second. They will likely top last season’s 51-win mark and are on pace for the best winning percentage since Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett were in uniform.
Still, Boston needed this one. Don’t believe me?
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Ask center Al Horford. “[Winning] was very important.”
Or Jayson Tatum. “We kept a lead. We haven’t done that lately.”
Added Horford, “Getting out of that losing streak, it’s good for our group. … I guess you could say it’s a breath of fresh air.”
It’s been a rough stretch for the Celtics. On Friday, they blew a 28–point lead in a loss to Brooklyn. On Sunday, they went down in double overtime against the Knicks. They battled the next night in Cleveland before the Cavs handed them a third straight defeat. They are .500 since the All-Star break and have seen the grip they held on the top spot in the conference slip away.
There are ebbs and flows to every season, but there have been some red flags with the Celtics of late. The turnovers. The poor rebounding. The lazy defense. The late-game execution. After blowing a double-digit lead with five minutes to play against Cleveland, coach Joe Mazzulla allowed for the possibility that Boston’s struggles could get worse. Tatum suggested the Celtics were thinking too much.
“The only thing you can control is you try to win the games,” Mazzulla said. “So we put ourselves in the best possible chance to win.”
But there are issues. Real ones. Like Grant Williams. He isn’t simply struggling; he’s in a freefall. In December, Williams shot 44% from three-point range. He connected on 32.5% last month. He had a chance to win the game against Cleveland with one free throw at the end of regulation … and missed them both. The Athletic reported Williams is battling an elbow injury. Others believe his looming free agency status—Williams and the Celtics could not come to terms on an extension last summer—has been a distraction for him. On Wednesday, Williams entered the game in the fourth and missed five of his seven shots.
Boston couldn’t have beaten Milwaukee last season without Williams, who scored 27 points in Game 7 of the conference semifinals. The team won’t get very far without him this season, either.
There’s Robert Williams, an elite defender … when he is on the floor. Williams missed the first two months of the season recovering from knee surgery and the past three games with a hamstring strain that will sideline him into next week. Recently, ex-Celtic turned TV pundit Kendrick Perkins wondered, “When is [Williams] gonna be available to show us consistently that he could be on the floor?”
It’s a fair question. Boston loves its frontcourt. Robert Williams is a premier shot-blocker. Horford is a versatile defender having a career year (45.4%) from three-point range. Luke Kornet and Mike Muscala offer solid depth. But the Celtics can’t trust it. Williams has a long injury history. Horford is 36. At the trade deadline, Boston aggressively pursued Jakob Poeltl for insurance. It was willing to offer a first-round pick and pay Poeltl, a free agent next summer, the $16 million to $18 million per year it likely would take to keep him. The Spurs liked Toronto’s offer better. If Williams’s body breaks down in the playoffs, the Celtics might wonder whether it was worth sweetening the offer.
Then there’s Mazzulla. He is brilliant. A rising star. He took over the team under impossible circumstances and has guided Boston to the third-best record in the NBA. He will receive votes for Coach of the Year and deserve them. But he’s still a first-year coach. He makes mistakes. His use of timeouts has been questioned. His late-game play calling has been scrutinized. He’s still finding his voice. Ime Udoka practiced tough love and criticized his players publicly. Mazzulla doesn’t do that. He can’t do that. Udoka was a seven-year NBA veteran with a decade worth of assistant coaching experience in the NBA and with USA Basketball when he was hired in 2021. There’s a level of gravitas that comes with that.
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Mazzulla now has a challenge in front of him. He has to navigate the Grant Williams situation. He has to get Robert Williams back on the floor. Chemistry matters and the Celtics’ preferred starting lineup—Horford, Tatum, Brown, Marcus Smart and Robert Williams—has started together just five games this season.
“I think right now it’s more about finding different lineups and continuing to find continuity, [an] identity to where we can play different ways,” Mazzulla said. “To have our bench being confident, being ready to play. We have a lot of different weapons. We can go a lot of different ways. Whoever is playing we just have to figure out the best lineups.”
With 15 games left in the season, there’s still time. Boston will play its next six on the road. Mazzulla said the team needs a fighter’s mentality. “Who are we when we are at our best?” Mazzulla said of the team’s mindset. “And why are we not at our best?”
They should be a stingy defensive team, not the middle-of-the pack bunch the Celtics have been since Feb. 1. They should shoot in the high 30s from three-point range and not the 33% they connected on in their last three losses. They should hold big second-half leads, not blow them like they did in two of them.
“It’s you vs. you, every single night,” Brown said. “The opponent for us is there, but it’s all about us. We gotta be better in spots. It starts at the top. It starts with me and Jayson. We have got to be better. We got to set the tone.”
Maybe the win against Portland started something. This upcoming road trip is long but not especially daunting. The roster of last season’s Finals team is there. It’s better. It just needs to rediscover the identity that got it there.
“In order to experience success, you have to have failures,” Mazzulla said. “The great teams stay the best version of themselves the longest, and when you don’t, you’ve got to quickly get back to who you are. That’s the goal.”
