Recent play is bringing up new questions of sustainability for the Boston Celtics
The Boston Celtics are playing some of their best basketball of the season, and that is allowing them and the fans to put the brutal stretch before the All Star break behind them. The defense is back to where it needs to be, and the offense is the best we have seen this season. Things have come together in a brilliant way for the Celtics, and has put them back in a strong position to get that top seed.
When the Celtics are playing like this, there is no doubt they are contenders in the East. The Celtics have not been winning miracle clutch games and they have not been giving up crazy runs over this recent win streak. They are getting strong contributions from every player that sees the court, and everyone looks comfortable.
It looks like the Celtics have not only discovered how they want to play, but they have made a lot of progress in understanding what they need to do to play that well. This might be the most promising strech of the season so far, but it is still impossible to trust.
The Celtics have gone on much longer winning streaks, but this has been the stretch where they have played the best basketball. All their other streaks involve so many close games and crazy finishes, but that is not what the Celtics want to be doing.
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Everyone knew that the way the Celtics had been winning was unsustainable. You will only get so far playing inconsistently and relying on late game heroics. The Celtics made it as difficult as possible for themselves to win before the All Star break, and it was easy to see how unsustainable that was.
This stretch, on the other hand, is an example of how the Celtics need to play in order to sustain winning. They need to be able to trust their bench with a lot of minutes, because every advantage they get there makes it that much easier on the starters.
The Celtics need to play well on both ends, because inconsistency there leads to far too many runs on both sides. Over these last three games, the Celtics have shown us how they need to play in order for them to sustain the kind of winning that will get them the top seed.
The next question is whether or not they can sustain this level of play. It is still too hard to tell if the bench will keep playing like this, or if Kyrie Irving will somehow manage to be even more efficient, while rookies and sophomores carry the kind of load that no contending team asks of their youngest players.
There are a lot of different pieces that have come together for the Celtics to play this well, and it is still too early to say that they will be able to keep this up. What we can say, however, is that if the Celtics are ale to sustain the way they have played over these last few games, they will be in great shape.
There will always be the ups and downs, and the Celtics will not play this well every game. What they need to prove is that this is now the norm. The Celtics have struggled so much at playing consistently throughout a game, and that had been their biggest weakness.
This stretch has been the first indication that the Celtics can play consistently on both ends for an entire game. The Celtics are proving that they do not need miracles to sustain winning streaks, but we need to find out how well this will hold up.
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The Celtics have to feel great about the way they are playing, but it will be put to the first real test in their next game, when they face off against a Houston Rockets team that will certainly remember last time they met up.