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Road dominance driving Celtics’ month-long hot streak
The Celtics have turned their season around with stifling defense and solid play on the road.
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Only two teams in the NBA can say they’ve won nine of their last 10 games: The Western Conference-leading Phoenix Suns and…the Boston Celtics.
After spending much of the season’s first half taking steps forward followed by a couple steps back, the Celtics have been on an all-gas, no-brakes run up the Eastern Conference standings. They’ve gone from flirting with .500 to now being 4.5 games out of the conference’s top spot.
Boston has especially crushed opponents during an 8-1 February run, posting their best scoring, rebounding and assist averages per game so far of any month this season.
Going back to the month of December, the Celtics have the best defensive rating in all of basketball, are allowing the NBA’s lowest opponent field goal percentage for the entire season and now have the best net team rating in the Eastern Conference, per Statmuse.
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Their revitalized play away from home has been part of that turnaround.
For the season, the Celtics sit perfectly even on the road (15-15) after Thursday’s trouncing of the Nets. But if you look a bit closer, you’ll notice the team hasn’t lost a road game in nearly a month — their last defeat away from T.D. Garden came on January 28 to the Atlanta Hawks.
Since then, the Celtics have trailed for all of one minute on the road and have not been behind on the scoreboard at all for the 287 minutes they’ve played in the month of February, according to Celtics reporter Taylor Snow.
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Even more impressively, each of their last four road victories has come by a margin of 23 or more points, which is something no team in NBA history has managed.
Interestingly, though the Celtics are currently .500 on the road this year, they now are averaging more points scored (110.2) and fewer points allowed (104) on the road than they do at home.
Of course, they’ve had no problem winning at the Garden, either: their pre-All-Star loss to the Detroit Pistons snapped a five-game home winning streak. But winning on the road — something they’ll have a chance to do in the coming days against the lowly Pistons and Indiana Pacers — will keep them trending upward as the season hits the home stretch in earnest.
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