People all around the NBA media world are having a tough time grasping how this season’s Celtics team has performed so well. The team lost its top three big men, a starting guard, and Jayson Tatum hasn’t even played in a game, yet they’re currently sitting in second place in the Eastern Conference at 37-19.
Take Sunday night’s game in Crypto against the Lakers, for example. The average observer sees the Lakers with all of their star power and is befuddled that they could get blown off the floor in front of an inspired crowd that saw the unveiling of Pat Riley’s statue.
Here’s the thing with Boston: it’s as much about the players as it is the culture, the infrastructure, and the mentality. On the most recent episode of the All-NBA podcast, Adam Mares and Jason Timpf broke down the Celtics’ success and pointed to several key takeaways from Sunday’s game.
The Celtics play with so much structure and discipline. They attack their matchups on defense aggressively and have constant hustle and energy on both ends. When Luka Doncic and other Lakers players don’t get their way, they complain to the refs and let it hurt the team for multiple possessions. When the Celtics don’t get a call, they yell at the ref and move on, getting back on defense.
The Celtics have zero let up
The Celtics play hard for 48 minutes every night, and if players don’t, they’ll get benched. That’s the culture that exists. That’s the team’s mindset and personality. And that’s a reflection of their leaders, Joe Mazzulla and Jaylen Brown.
Mares and Timpf talked about the contrast of watching Boston versus the Lakers and even watching other good teams like the Nuggets, who simply don’t bring this type of organizational discipline.
Mares and Timpf, a Nuggets fan and Lakers fan respectively, are two great basketball minds, and they can see what’s happening and why it makes the Celtics special. But these other teams can’t even seem to comprehend it. Instead of focusing on things the Lakers can control, JJ Redick is out there losing his mind about a meaningless goaltending call (that the refs ruled correctly, by the way).
Talent is obviously a huge part of the equation, but this is a team sport, and there are a lot of things that go into making a successful team. The Celtics are, unsurprisingly, nailing a lot of those things and gaining huge edges on the margins, while other teams sit back and rely on their superstars to get them over the hump. There are layers to this basketball stuff.