Jrue Holiday hopes Boston Celtics' regular season isn't too easy

Jrue Holiday doesn't want the Boston Celtics to have too easy of a road in the regular season, less run the risk of having not gotten over enough hills when the postseason rolls around and the games really start to matter.

“I think the hardest part for me was just how challenging it is to be able to work through adversity together as a team,” Holiday said (h/t The Boston Globe [subscription required]). “There’s so much pressure on certain people individually, but as a team, when you’re in that moment, if you’re in a Game 6 or 7, how you get through it and stick together I think is really, really big.

“I think if you go through a season where, I don’t want to say it’s too easy, but you don’t have a lot of challenges, it’s not like that in the playoffs. It’s a completely different beast. So I think being able to go through struggles and stress during the season, being able to talk about it and come out of it during the regular season prepares you for those struggles.”

Boston Celtics bench issues are not proper adversity, but instead potential downfalls

Holiday's words are not cover for the C's underwhelming bench. The Celtics cannot allow the trade deadline to come and go and not add a ninth player who Joe Mazzulla could deploy in critical late-game situations and in the postseason.

Luckily, help appears to be on the way. Brad Stevens is almost assuredly about to package some combination of Dalano Banton, Luke Kornet, Svi Mykhailiuk, and Lamar Stevens' contracts and flip their recently-guaranteed deals for such a player.

But don't mistake Holiday's sentiment for excusing the sort of end of the bench issues that could ultimately be Boston's downfall when it's make-or-break time come May and June.