Boston Celtics No Longer Winning Ugly

The Boston Celtics are no longer to pull through the ugly games and collecting wins despite playing poorly

The Boston Celtics have hit their roughest patch of the season, and they look far from the team that went on such a great streak to start the season. They still hold the number one defensive rating in the league, but it has plummeted in this last month. The offense has been able to get back on track, but it is not translating to wins the way it was earlier.

During that stretch, the Celtics were playing far from their best basketball. They constantly hurt themselves, and rarely got things going on offense. What they were able to do is keep themselves alive in any situation, and find a way to win.

Right now, it feels like other teams are finding the ways to keep themselves alive, and the Celtics are not closing them out. Things are not going the Celtics way like a few weeks ago, and Brad Stevens went far enough to question the effort and intensity, something that would never be done during that stretch.

What is happening now is that the Celtics look like a team that will only win when they are playing quality basketball. The Celtics are no longer winning the ugly games, and that makes it feel like the Celtics need to play a lot better in order to win.

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Most of this comes down to the defense. The Celtics were able to make up for so much with their defense, and all they needed was timely offense. The reverse is not true, however, because the Celtics are not getting their wins relying on their overall offense, and trying to get timely defense.

The way the Celtics are winning games is shifting, and it has changed what the minimum is they need to do to win the games. Fortunately, the Celtics have plenty of time to figure out how to lean on their offense more than their defense, and they now know how much they need to focus on getting that defense back to where it was at the beginning of the season.

Teams will always have their ups and down. The Celtics were not going to maintain the way they were winning to start the season, just like the Cleveland Cavaliers were not going to keep up their miserable start to the season.

The Celtics have hit their biggest road bump so far on the court this season, but they know that these are fixable problems. The Celtics know that they are capable of winning these kinds of ugly games, and they know they are capable of being a top team on both ends.

They are starting to figure out the offense, but we are seeing how much more important the defense will be in getting those wins. It will not be perfect all year long, and the lack of opportunity to practice does not make things easier, but this Celtics team does not need to doubt what they are capable of because of this one stretch.

The Celtics may have fell into the bad habit of thinking that they would be able to pull themselves out of those ugly games. They had so many remarkable comebacks and did just enough despite playing terribly so many times that they got to the point where they were banking on it. Unfortunately, you cannot bank on anything while winning that way, and that is why Stevens needs to bring up things like energy and intensity on the court.

The Celtics need to be playing their complete and balanced game, and avoid these ugly and poorly played games as much as possible. It is a great feeling to be confident in your ability to win games that you do not play well in, but things fall apart quickly when that becomes a part of the plan.

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The Celtics get a quick chance to bounce back, and it is vitally important that they do. Again, even if this stretch continues, it will not define the season for this team. The problem is that the Cavaliers and Raptors are just one game behind in the loss column, and the Celtics could lose that number one seed because of this bad stretch.

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