Boston Celtics: Time to push the panic button after another rough outing

The Boston Celtics picked up yet another loss against the lowly Washington Wizards on Sunday afternoon. This one wasn’t particularly close, meaning it’s time to press the panic button as the Cs drop to 13-13 on the year.

This isn’t in relation to their current place in the standing — they’re still sitting in the 4-5 seed range in this strange shortened season.

They certainly have time to make a run up the standings if they find their form, but right now Boston just isn’t a great team.

It’s time to be worried about the Boston Celtics

When looking at their overall team stats, it’s not all that bad. Coming into Sunday’s contest, the Boston Celtics were 12th in the league in offensive rating (113.7) and ninth in defensive rating (110.9).

Those numbers would indicate a team that would finish better than .500 on the season, but they have lost a good amount of close games. Of their 13 losses, six of them have been within a six-point margin.

Turn a few of those around, and their record is starting to look acceptable.

Boston doesn’t really turn the ball over (eighth in the league at 13.7%) and they grab tons of offensive rebounds (sixth at 27.9%), but those don’t translate into victories. In terms of shooting statistics, they’re middle of the pack on both ends of the ball. However, the Boston Celtics’ free throw rate is by far their worst statistic.

Sitting at 24th in the league, the Cs are allowing opponents to make 21 free throws per 100 attempts. Compare this to their own free throw rate of 18.2, and they are getting outscored at the foul line practically every game. This has been a point of concern throughout the start of this year, as stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown aren’t finding themselves at the line as often as they would like.

In comparison, younger players such as Grant Williams end up fouling way too much, as he’s in the fifth percentile of all bigs in the league when it comes to fouling the opponent. This has made it extremely difficult for Boston to pull off comebacks that they have made in previous years with this same core.

It doesn’t help that they’ve had injuries to Kemba Walker, Marcus Smart, Payton Pritchard, and lost half the team to COVID-19 including Jayson Tatum, but that can’t be an excuse for losing to far inferior teams on a consistent basis.

So, how do they turn it around?

Sure, the fire Stevens and Ainge trains are going strong right now, but in reality that won’t happen and won’t change anything. Ainge will make a trade sooner rather than later, considering the trajectory that the team is going on.

Is a Harrison Barnes or P.J. Tucker trade going to change the mentality of this team? Perhaps.

For now, Boston has to look internally and play with more effort than shown in the past few weeks.

Losing to Detroit two of three games and getting blown out by the Wizards are not signs of a good team.

And they’re not good right now.