Former Boston Celtics champion points out team’s troubling trend
NBC Sports Boston color commentator and former NBA champion forward for the Boston Celtics, Brian Scalabrine, recently called out a troubling trend the team is suffering during their post-All-Star break malaise — one that now has them in danger of losing home-court advantage in the postseason’s second round.
According to Scalabrine, who was speaking on “The Lowe Post” podcast with ESPN’s Zach Lowe, the Celtics no longer play hard when they’re comfortable under head coach Joe Mazzulla.
“They don’t guard at nearly the clip that they used to guard at,” Scalabrine said. “It used to be that everyone’s fighting to be the best defender on the team. It was a good rivalry…It used to be a thing. They used to take pride in guarding the ball. They used to take pride in shutting down the other team’s best player. I actually believe they have moments of that. But they’re far from, far from a 48-minute per game team that sits down defensively and really works on that side of the ball.”
The Boston Celtics may be ‘poisoned’ by two former players
Recently, Locked On Celtics podcast host John Karalis pointed out that a pair of former Boston Celtics who played on teams that disappointed come postseason time could’ve “poisoned” the mindset of Jayson Tatum, the team’s MVP candidate — potentially causing a domino effect on the rest of the team as well.
“I keep going back to Kyrie (Irving) and Tristan Thompson,” Karalis prefaced before saying, “And I swear I feel like they poisoned Tatum’s brain. I feel like those guys, at the beginning, Tatum learned from Kyrie, that the regular season doesn’t matter. You’ve learned from Tristan Thompson that the regular season doesn’t matter. And I just don’t think he puts the same value (on the regular season). I really, I honestly believe that.”
Irving, who has since stomped on the Celtics logo at halfcourt of the TD Garden and bashed the city of Boston, and Thompson, whose one year in Boston was the one year in the past six that saw the Cs bounced out of the playoffs in the first round, may actually be the origin of the team’s current struggles.
That’s a poor excuse, though. This team needs to lock in during the stretch run of the 2022-23 regular season before they end up in a position where there’s no momentum come the postseason.