Matchup with Cavaliers is another chance for Celtics to confirm they’re ready for prime time
The Celtics’ Jae Crowder (left) defends the Cavaliers’ LeBron James during their opening round 2015 NBA Playoff series at the TD Garden.
COMMENTARY
Rather entertaining and emboldening stretch of basketball games for the Celtics the past few days, huh?
Friday, they took the glittering and then-unbeaten Golden State Warriors to double overtime before submitting to Steph Curry and the most awesome show in sports right now. That game was as anticipated as any regular-season Celtics game in recent memory, drawing an 8.5 household rating for Comcast SportsNet New England, its highest regular-season number in 20-plus years. Better, it lived up to the anticipation. I wish the Warriors could play here once a week rather than once per season.
Four days later, here we are with another pretty decent draw at the Garden, albeit a more familiar one. LeBron James and the Cavaliers come to town on Tuesday night to get reacquainted with the Celtics for the first time this season after bouncing them from the last postseason with a four-game sweep in the first round. It doesn’t just bear watching for the potential of Jae Crowder’s revenge on unrepentant suburbanite J.R. Smith for purposefully whacking him in the jaw and causing him to injure his knee in Game 4 last year, though that is an interesting potential undercard.
It’s one to watch because this is not just a reminder of how far the Celtics have come but may well be a welcome harbinger of the special places they will going presuming certain things fall right in the coming seasons.
Now, these are reasonably heady days for those of us who trust Danny Ainge’s basketball decisions implicitly and believed this team entering the season was much better than the star power of the roster — or lack thereof — might suggest. The Warriors game was wonderful even if the outcome was disappointing. But it was still a remarkably fulfilling week for The Green.
Playing the Warriors to a draw until the end of the second overtime wasn’t even their most encouraging achievement; if they weren’t up for that particular game, there would be no reason to even search for a pulse. Beating the Bulls on the road Wednesday, when the buzz for the Warriors matchup was already reaching a crescendo, then following up the Warriors marathon with an important five-point victory at Charlotte stands as a testament to this team’s focus and determination.
(We’re assuming the Celtics received a thank-you note from the Bucks, who ended the weary Warriors’ winning streak the next night. It’s as impressive as hell that the Celtics won the night after their matchup while the Warriors did not. Who wore out whom again?)
There are more tests and challenges ahead. After facing the Eastern Conference-leading Cavs (15-7), the seventh-place Celtics (14-10) take on the Pistons and Hawks (both 14-12), who are tied for 10th. There’s not a lot of separation in the East — the 13th-place Bucks (10-15) are just 6.5 games back of the Cavs. These games don’t have the luster of the Warriors game by any stretch. But they are much more important.
There are no breaks on the schedule, and to their credit, the Celtics don’t treat any of the opponents on the schedule like pushovers. There are nights when the shots won’t be falling when your steadiest scorer is Isaiah Thomas, a remarkable player but one who is a 5-foot-9-inch guard who jumps without knowing what he’s going to to do with the ball at least twice per game. But the effort very rarely gets a night off. This is an imperfect team, a work in progress, but one that could not be much more likable than it already is.
We should also note that their work — and Ainge’s, and extraordinary coach Brad Stevens’s — has brought real progress. A year ago on this date, the Celtics beat the Sixers to improve to 8-14 on the season. Among those playing more than 11 minutes for the Celtics that night were Rajon Rondo, Jeff Green, Brandon Bass, Gerald Wallace, and Phil Pressey.
Since then, the Celtics have gone 46-38, including a 38-22 mark in their last 60 regular-season games. The Celtics are a legitimately good team, one that cracked the top-8 in several different outlets’ power rankings on Monday.
They’ve been a legitimately good team for a while now, but that loss to the Warriors is what got people noticing.
It’s all justifiably encouraging, and even inspiring, even as the bandwagon chugging down Causeway Street overflows. The hyperbolic temptation is to suggest that the Celtics tonight are playing the team they will beat in the Eastern Conference Finals just a few days after losing a close one to the team they will inevitably face in the NBA Finals. I’m not submitting to that temptation, which probably tells you all you need to know given my usual optimism about this franchise.
There’s a long way to go. No one is making plans for June yet. But all Celtics fans should be feeling great right now about what this team can accomplish in the months immediately ahead.
Chad Finn can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeChadFinn.
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