A quick glance at the NBA standings likely leaves Boston Celtics feeling comfortable heading into their final stretch of the season. Just look at the last three games—Brooklyn Nets, Utah Jazz, Portland Trail Blazers—all wins. Yet a deeper look at the reality of the situation provides so much more than a cakewalk ideology.
Their record may not show it, but the Nets have quietly kept up their early-season heroics. They may not have flashy personnel on file, but the on-court fight speaks for itself. “I don't know what people's expectations were, but that's a good basketball team,” Mazzulla said after Boston beat Brooklyn this past Tuesday. The same can be said for the Blazers.
But fans should have seen that fight coming.
Trail Blazers gave Celtics a perfect pre-playoffs test
Portland has been one of the hottest teams in the NBA for the past two months. Chauncey Billups has instilled a defense-first mindset in his guys, imploring them to either guard their yard or get off the court.
So, when Boston traveled to the Pacific Northwest for a date with Billups’ Blazers, it was much more than another game against a team in the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes. And Portland proved it.
They kept the game close in the early goings, and even after Boston made a run, they stormed back and kept the Celtics honest in the second half.
“I thought we were able to execute offensively against different coverages, and we were able to withstand some runs that they went on,” Mazzulla told The Boston Globe post-game. “They tested everything that we need to get better at. So I thought it was a good game for our guys.”
This is exactly what the Celtics need heading into the final few games of the year.
“We’re figuring things out,” Jayson Tatum told The Boston Globe. “We’re playing with a lot of different lineups. We just talk about mind-set wins, opportunities throughout the game. We might be up 15 with five minutes left, and how do we execute? How do we continue to be aggressive?”
As the playoffs inch closer and closer, Boston will begin to enter preparation mode. Obviously, they can’t overlook any of the games in front of them, but now that they have officially clinched the playoffs, the regular season matters considerably less. However, it can still be useful.
With Jaylen Brown, Kristaps Porzingis, and Jrue Holiday sidelined on Sunday night in Portland, Boston got the chance to get some high-level reps against a high-level team. Reps that would have looked a lot different had they been fully healthy.
Taum and Derrick White got to run a few more actions together than they usually do, allowing Mazzulla to get more tape on that potential postseason tool.
Allowing Tatum to set the screen gives the Celtics a different look, so when he used a ghost screen against the Blazers, it threw them off.
Luke Kornet also got the chance to shine a bit more as a facilitator, displaying his impressive playmaking chops in an array of spots.
Baylor Scheierman got some extra run, Payton Pritchard got to go wild, and Sam Hauser feasted off catch-and-shoot opportunities. Scheierman may not play in the postseason, but the latter two just got some additional opportunities in spots that could become relevant in the playoffs.
There’s nothing that compares to in-game action, and the Celtics now get to use the rest of the regular season as their effective exploratory lab, testing out different things ahead of the playoffs. And when they get to do it against a team that challenges them as much as this version of Portland did, it’s the perfect cherry on top.