Boston Celtics Schedule Finally Evens Out

The Boston Celtics’ schedule is finally getting back to normal

The Boston Celtics had a crazy start to this season, with ups and downs all over the place. They have beaten the very best teams in the league, while struggling against the very worst. We have seen them go on the most impressive streak of the season, and then we saw almost all of it disappear during the brutal stretch in December.

The Celtics have been all over the place, but they have managed to hold onto the number one seed and have to feel great about their position, especially since their schedule is finally going to look normal again.

With the Celtics having a game scheduled in London this year, they had one of the strangest schedules you will ever see to start the season, and it went to both of the extremes. Things started out normally, and then things got as cluttered as you can imagine. The Celtics went an entire month without more than one day off, and they did not have an opportunity to practice once.

The schedule is not the only reason the Celtics struggled, but they blew all of the ground they gained during their 16 game winning streak, and even briefly lost the number one seed to the Raptors. The Celtics were clearly fatigued, with their defense and rebounding falling off a cliff. They could not muster the same kind of intensity, and they could not string multiple wins together.

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The Celtics had multiple stints of playing eight games in 12 nights, and almost every game felt like a back to back. The organization would probably complain about such a ridiculous stretch, but they literally asked for it.

In anticipation of their game in London, the Celtics asked for extra days off before and after to accommodate everything around playing a game in London. Obviously, asking for that time off meant the league had to add a bunch of games to a relatively long stretch in the season,

Fortunately, the Celtics escaped the brutal stretch holding on to the number one seed, and the following seven game winning streak has brought them back to their peak, with decent separation in the East.

The rest could not have come at a better time than the Celtics, who used it to get healthy, and finally recover from that awful stretch. The problem is that now the Celtics have to deal with another kind of strain from the schedule, because playing one game in eight days is not something NBA players are used to doing.

We saw how negatively the cluttered schedule impacted the Celtics, and we are just waiting to see if the Celtics are going to have any rust because of all this rest. On top of that, both Al Horford and Jayson Tatum are not 100 percent coming out of the 76ers game, taking some of the health advantages away.

The Celtics were rusty to start out the 76ers game, and there is the risk of having some of that rust once they get back to playing games. The Celtics know there is no real reason for them to come out of this stretch slowly, but I think everyone can agree that we are happy to see the schedule finally even out.

There can be advantages to the extra rest, but the Celtics are finally going to be able to settle into a comfortable schedule and really hit their stride for that final playoff push. On top of that, there is no longer this absurd game in hand issue in the East.

The Celtics are no longer in a position where they know that all the teams behind them will have an opportunity to gain ground on them, because there was a point where the Raptors had six games in hand, making it a lot more difficult to gauge what kind of advantage they really have.

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The numbers were all off and their bodies were going through unnecessary strain. Finally they are back on even ground with the rest of the league, and as long as the health holds up they will be in their best position to find their stride as the playoffs come around.

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