Celtics Feel Pretty Sunk After Dipping Below .500
By Matthew Geagan, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- February is nearly over, and the Boston Celtics currently sit below .500. Let that sink in, as the Celtics continue to sink in the Eastern Conference standings.
This is the latest that the team has had more losses than wins since the 2014-15 season, when Boston finished 40-42 to secure the eight-seed in the East. Since that season, the Celtics are usually flirting with 40 wins by this point in the campaign. By this time, the team is usually well on its way to locking up one of the top four spots in the Eastern Conference.
Alas, this is not a regular season, and the C's have only played 31 games. Unfortunately, they've lost 16 of those, including five of the last seven and 10 of the last 15. They just keep sinking and sinking, and Boston is now barely hanging on to one of the final playoff spots in the conference.
Any way you cut it, this is a massive disappointment for a team that wants to be considered a true contender in the East. It's an unusual season for everyone, with most teams just sort of going through the motions in mostly fan-less arenas as they get locked in their hotels from city to city. But the Celtics have been stuck in their malaise for six weeks now, and have shown very little signs of being able to snap out of it.
Tuesday night's loss in Dallas was just another disheartening chapter in this really demoralizing novel. The Celtics went through the motions early (as did the Mavs), but again fell apart in the second half. It wasn't as bad as Sunday's debacle against the Pelicans, but the Celtics let the game escape them after halftime. They did show some guts down the stretch, erasing a 12-point Mavericks lead late in the fourth quarter, but that too went to waste.
Boston got big buckets from Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Kemba Walker over the final minutes, with Brown's pullup from 13 feet putting the Celtics ahead 105-104 with 37 seconds left to play. It was the kind of basketball we've been waiting to see for a while. But through it all, you couldn't help but feel it was all a bit of fool's gold.
That's because the Mavs have Luka Doncic, and that guy has a knack for hitting some pretty big shots. The Celtics needed to play some defense to hang on to that lead, and they did not, at least not for Dallas' entire possession after Brown's make. Brown locked down Doncic for about 18 seconds before letting Daniel Theis switch on to the Slovenian superstar, who calmly drained a deep three in Theis' face, giving the Mavericks a 107-105 lead with 15 seconds.
Brown answered with a nice driving layup to knot things up at 107-107, but Luka ripped Boston's heart out -- again -- with a 28-foot three that went through the nylon with 0.1 seconds on the clock. Boston's furious comeback was all for naught, and the Celtics are now at their lowest point of the season in terms of the standings.
"It's tough. Another heartbreaking loss," said Brown, who scored a game-high 29 points for Boston. "I think we played well in spots, but yet again, we have to finish games better. Doncic got the switch and hit two tough shots. We have a system and we stuck to it. We lost tonight. When a guy gets it going like that, it's tough, but we have to get the ball out of his hands."
Brown was named an All-Star for the first time in his career just prior to tipoff, a career milestone that should be celebrated. But he was in no mood to tout his accomplishment after another defeat.
"I don't feel very much like an All-Star with us below .500. I have to do a better job inspiring my teammates, getting guys going, leaning and growing," he said. "It's not just about scoring, it's about getting teammates involved and things like that. I'm learning and growing in that process.
"But I don't feel much like an All-Star because I think this is the most I've lost since I've been here as a Celtic. We have to find ways to win," he continued. "I think we've been playing better than we had earlier in the season. I'm hopeful we'll string some games together and make a run. It's in our grasps to do so."
Jayson Tatum was also named an All-Star on Tuesday night, earning the honor for the second straight season. He too was pretty glum about the current state of the Celtics, rather than jovial about his All-Star status.
"I look at our record and where we're at, and it's hard to really focus on that when we aren't where we want to be at as a team," he said. "That's how I kind of approach it."
Getting Luka'd is something many teams experience. The kid is pretty amazing, and it's going to happen. During a normal season, Tuesday night was the kind of loss where the Celtics would tip their caps and move on. Just about every team has those kinds of losses built into the season, because they are going to happen.
But for a team that has lost far too many games that they should have won, a team that has constantly underachieved and folded in the most important moments, a loss like Tuesday is going to sting a whole lot more.
This season was expected to be a bit of a struggle for the Celtics, given the team's lack of depth, Walker's knee issues and a compacted schedule. Mixing in some COVID issues certainly hasn't helped. But there was hope that the Celtics would eventually put it all together, and this is the time in the season that usually happens for Brad Stevens' team.
That has not occurred yet, and the pressure just keeps on mounting. The team looks like it's a lot more than a Marcus Smart return from flipping this discouraging script.
"It's a long season," said Brown. "We've still got 40 games left to play, so, looking forward to it each and every day."
The Celtics keep saying they're looking forward to each and every game, but then they go out and don't disinterested in each and every game. Until that changes, the Celtics keep dropping winnable games, and keep dropping in the standings.
