Are the Boston Celtics a flip-the-switch team?

Frustration is mounting for the Boston Celtics as they continue to fall into bad habits and lose games they shouldn’t.

Boston Celtics fans everywhere let out a collective “UGH” Saturday night as their favorite team dropped a dreadful 105-103 loss to the Orlando Magic. After a four-game winning streak where Boston had more than 30 assists in each of those wins, they have now dropped two straight games in Florida looking like a completely different team.

The inconsistency is maddening to watch, and the frustration seems to be mounting for the players as well.

Kyrie is sitting at his locker just staring straight ahead. Hasn’t showered yet. Most of the other players have already dressed and left.
— Adam Himmelsbach (@AdamHimmelsbach) January 13, 2019

The Celtics have too often fallen into bad habits this season. They’ll have their good games, moving the ball on offense with purpose, cutting and hitting the paint every possession, and being active on the defensive end.

But then they’ll have games where the ball sticks to one side of the floor, they settle for too many jump shots, and they don’t inflict their will on the defensive end, allowing players like Terrence Ross to get hot and sustain it late in games.

It’s almost as if they go through those strong stretches of play to prove to themselves they are an elite bunch. Then when they play against lesser teams, they get lazy and expect their talent to bail them out. Games like Saturday remind me of a tweet from NBA Twitter savant Matt Moore.

I judge teams on a variety of measures but one of them is “What’s the best version of your team look like and how good is it?”

The Celtics’ best version looks incredible and we almost never see it. The Raptors’ version is incredible and we often see it.
— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) December 28, 2018

I feel the question needs to be asked. Are the Celtics going to be one of those teams that just flips the switch when it matters? Similar to the Cavaliers the two years before LeBron James left?

It’s certainly not the ideal path towards a championship, and it would be a complete departure of what we’ve come to know about Brad Stevens-coached teams. But as of now, it’s the only identity we have evidence of.

After the loss to Orlando, Kyrie Irving said the young players on the team do not know what it takes to play at a championship level. He claimed last year, there weren’t expectations, so the Celtics could play free and easy. Now with high expectations and lofty goals, they haven’t responded well enough.

Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Terry Rozier, the three young players who starred in the playoffs last year due to injuries to Irving and Gordon Hayward come to mind when you hear Irving’s comments. Tatum has had a pretty good year to this point statistically. While he has mental lapses here and there, his consistency has been a bright spot among a laundry list of issues with the team.