What do these Boston Celtics, this particular group of gamers, need to be remembered as?
The “Most Profitable Celtics Staff Since 2007-2011?” The “Staff that Received the 2024 Championship Amidst 4 Golden State Warriors Rings and 5 Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder Rings?” The “Brief-lived Superteam with an Spectacular Wikipedia Web page?”
I doubt that’s what they need. However losses like Friday night time’s in opposition to the Sacramento Kings — with out De’Aaron Fox, at residence, with a totally wholesome workforce, after two days off — actually make me query what they need. Since December 21, the Celtics are a pedestrian 6-6, inspiring concern in completely no person and displaying zero aggressive intuition past what their innate expertise forces out of them.
Shoddy exterior taking pictures actually contributed to the loss, however don’t let that trick you into pondering Boston is simply getting unfortunate. I used to be within the constructing for the primary time all season, and so they have been simply standing round, both watching Malik Monk take embarrassingly wide-open threes or Domantas Sabonis seize certainly one of his 28 rebounds. To be tied heading into the fourth quarter and lose by seventeen isn’t about taking pictures; it’s about attempting onerous sufficient.
Maybe this workforce is attempting to determine what the stakes are of this season, unable to position it between “holy crap, we’re all going to get buried alive beneath the load of historic failure if we don’t win,” which outlined the final three seasons, and easily reaping the rewards of their one-time success — new contracts, endorsements and possibly even new groups, which is now threatening to outline the following three.
So, enable me to assist clear issues up: this workforce goes to be torn aside by the NBA’s extraordinarily-restrictive collective bargaining settlement in roughly two years, at which era the Celtics will doubtless be unable to re-sign Kristaps Porzingis and possibly even be compelled to commerce one other starter. None of it’s clear sufficient to prognosticate, however I don’t know who’s going to be on this workforce in two years. Neither do you, and actually, neither do the Celtics.
That makes the stakes of this season and the following abundantly clear: if these Boston Celtics need to be something greater than a inexperienced flash on the “Record of NBA Champions” Wikipedia web page, they’re going to should lock in and odor the existentially-threatening roses. Was this all only a fling? Was the seven-year journey from Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward, Kemba Walker to the Jays taking up, to finishing the Infinity Gauntlet with Derrick White, Kristaps Porzingis and eventually Jrue Vacation nearly one superior season? Is that truly it?
Whether it is, it’s actually not the worst-case situation. One championship is superior. It’s greater than most groups get. And we are going to all get to recollect this Celtics workforce fondly both method. However there needs to be extra, proper? This workforce — this historically-great workforce — certainly needs extra, proper?
In the end, the Celtics are going to should determine. The extent of competitors this yr is stifling. It makes final yr appear to be a leisure stroll by Candyland. It could appear unattainable, impolite and downright imply to ask a workforce that gave all the things they needed to win all of it final yr to stage up even additional, however that’s the deal. That’s what it’s going to take in the event that they need to be greater than they at present are. It’s a horrible, unfair, completely ruthless world, nevertheless it’s the one which NBA historical past begrudgingly lives in. Final night time, and these final three weeks, make me marvel if the Celtics nonetheless need to be there.
