No matter how you frame it, the Boston Celtics are one of the hottest teams in basketball. Jayson Tatum has ascended and their defense is stellar.
But as well as they are playing now, that wasn’t always the case for this squad. They had a losing record at one point during this calendar year and ranked as low as the No. 11 seed in the Eastern Conference, outside the play-in tournament, as recently as Jan. 16.
Don’t look now, but if the season ended today, the Celtics would begin the playoffs as the No. 4 seed and have a home-court advantage during the first round.
There are a lot of factors that have played into this remarkable midseason turnaround. Although many may not have seen this 180-degree turn coming, one person who predicted as much was Boston’s Jaylen Brown.
The morning before the Celtics faced the Miami Heat (arguably the best team in the conference) on Jan. 31, Brown shared a premonition.
The energy is about to shift
— Jaylen Brown (@FCHWPO) January 31, 2022
Much like Sean Monahan wrote about the culture at large for his Substack (and then as Allison P. Davis subsequently wrote for The Cut), Brown boldly declared that the Celtics were about to experience a vibe shift.
When considering the game before he tweeted the rallying cry, Boston then immediately rattled off a nine-game win streak. More impressive: Since the tweet, the Celtics have the best defensive rating in the NBA and the second-best offensive rating in the East. They are even outscoring opponents by 15.1 points per 100 possessions when no other team in the league has a net rating above ten.
During that span, they have won 19 games and have lost just 3 times. That sort of energy heading into the playoffs is the type of momentum that can easily strike fear in the hearts of opponents around the league.
Even though Brown has played well of late, too, it is Tatum who has really taken his game to the next level. He is averaging 28.8 ppg, 7.7 rpg, 4.9 apg, and 1.0 spg while shooting 39.4% on 3-pointers since Jan. 31.
As one of the team’s stars, Brown obviously has some agency in how well the Celtics play on the court. But in the future, if I’m down on my luck, I hope to see Brown predict the energy will shift for me.
