The Celtics are absolutely dominating the rest of the NBA right now

BOSTON -- It's getting kinda silly with the Boston Celtics. We're three quarters of the way through the regular season and they appear to be getting stronger and stronger with every game.

Boston sits at an NBA-best 48-12 on the season and is currently riding an 11-game win streak. They've been respectfully toying with the opposition as of late, racking up not just a handful of double-digit wins, but utterly embarrassing the opposition. (Again, in a very respectful way.)

Statement wins have been followed with even bigger statement wins. The message remains the same though: These Celtics are the best team in the NBA until someone else proves otherwise. For the most part of the season, everyone else has failed to do so.

The Celtics' current streak started with a 40-point win over the Memphis Grizzlies back on February 4. It continued Sunday with a 52-point lambasting of the Golden State Warriors, the third-biggest win in Boston franchise history. 

Wins 2-5 during the streak were by single digits -- a pair of 8-point wins and a pair of 4-point wins -- but the rest have shown varying degrees of dominance by the Celtics. They have won each of the last six games by at least 14 points, and two of those contests have been decided by 50 points: A 136-86 beatdown of the Nets and Sunday's 140-88 drubbing of the Warriors. Boston's average margin of victory over the last six games is a ridiculous 29.8 points.

The Celtics have beaten playoff teams on the road, with wins in Miami and New York. The Mavericks and the Warriors each came to town on their own, albeit less impressive hot streaks, and the Celtics completely demoralized both of them.

The Celtics own a plus-243 differential over their 11-game winning streak, which is the largest point differential over ANY 11-game stretch in NBA history. It's a miracle teams even bother showing up against the Celtics lately.

Jayson Tatum has been silly good throughout the run, averaging 28 points off 51/38/91 shooting splits. He's scored 30-plus points four times, including a 41-point game against the Nets, to go with 8.5 rebounds and 6.5 assists per game. He has four double-doubles during the streak, and six games with at least seven assists. And none of that touches on his defense, which remains the most underrated aspect of Tatum's game.

On Monday, Tatum took home Eastern Conference Player of the Month honors. And he was not alone in receiving some league-wide accolades.

Jaylen Brown claimed his fourth career Eastern Conference Player of the Week award after averaging 28.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 3.0 assists while leading the Celtics to wins over Philadelphia, Dallas, and Golden State. Brown -- the guy that the Warriors decided to leave open on Sunday -- shot 65 percent from the floor and 43 percent from downtown over that three-game stretch.

If the Celtics were only Tatum and Brown, teams may have stood a chance over the last month. But Brad Stevens has built one of the deepest rosters in the NBA, with Kristaps Porzingis, Jrue Holiday, and Derrick White (and Al Horford off the bench) keeping everyone on the floor honest. Each of those four have sacrificed their individual numbers this season (as have Tatum and Brown), but that just makes the squad all the more dangerous as a whole. 

The Celtics have been incredibly efficient during the streak, with a true shooting percentage of 66 percent over the last 11 games. That has been the case all season, really, as Boston leads the NBA with at 61 percent for the season. 

That is just one of the truly ludicrous numbers that the Celtics are putting up this year. The Celtics own the NBA's best offensive rating at 121.7 (1.6 points better than the second-place Pacers) and have the second-best defensive rating at 110.2, trailing only the Timberwolves and their 108.0 defensive rating. Boston's plus-11.6 net rating sits above everyone else in the league, 3.6 points better than the Oklahoma City Thunder, who sit at a plus-8.

With 48 wins heading into Tuesday night's game in Cleveland, Boston is on pace for 66 wins this season. The Celtics haven't eclipsed 60 wins since 2008-09, when the team won 62 games, and the last time a C's team won 66 games was the year prior, when the Paul Pierce-Kevin Garnett-Ray Allen Celtics brought home Banner 17.

The success -- or failure -- of the 2023-24 Boston Celtics will ultimately come down to whether or not they add their own banner to the collection at TD Garden. That has been the case since the offseason shakeup started with trading Marcus Smart for Porzingis, and owner Wyc Grousbeck echoed that sentiment ahead of Sunday's blowout. The pressure to win it all will only ramp up as the march to the playoffs -- and all this winning -- continues.

But with a cohesive group that is locked in defensively and knocking down shots on offense, the Celtics are playing at a level we've rarely seen in the NBA. At this point, it doesn't look like anything can slow them down.