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Some Celtics ignored Steve Kerr. But when he talked about post-championship lulls, we should listen.
“I wouldn’t worry about the Celtics if I were one of their fans. This is normal."
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COMMENTARY
During the postgame hellos and handshakes following the Celtics’ much-needed 40-point victory over the Warriors Monday night in San Francisco, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown certainly appeared to leave Golden State coach Steve Kerr on ignore.
The brief scene was riveting, amusing, awkward, and understandable enough, given the unfulfilling role Tatum had on the Kerr-coached United States Olympic men’s basketball team over the summer, not to mention the role Brown never even got to have as a notable omittance from the roster. Turns out the bygones are nowhere near gone after all.
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Celtics fans showed their solidarity with Tatum (and to a lesser degree Brown, who lost out on a replacement spot on the Team USA roster to the very deserving Derrick White) in November, when they booed Kerr mercilessly when the Warriors visited TD Garden.
Kerr’s reception wouldn’t have been colder had he shown up wearing an Alex Rodriguez Yankees jersey and a Roger Goodell mask, and it’s doubtful that his welcome will be any warmer in the future.
A whole lot of boos for Steve Kerr at TD Garden. pic.twitter.com/WXtS9hF887
— Conor Ryan (@ConorRyan_93) November 7, 2024
Celtics fans (and Boston fans in general) tend to treat the city’s athletes like they might a little brother: I can complain about them all I want, but if you disrespect them, well, you’re gonna have to deal with me, pal. Capiche?
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Of course, Celtics fans know and respect NBA history, having witnessed so much of it on Causeway Street through the decades. And so, perhaps begrudgingly, it must be acknowledged that Kerr — who won five championship rings as a player (three with the Bulls, two with the Spurs) and four more as Warriors coach — has about as much first-hand knowledge of how to navigate the tricky terrain of the season after winning a title as anyone who never wore green could.
Tatum and Brown may not want to listen to him, and that’s valid. But we should. Kerr knows what he’s talking about. And his words before the Celtics trucked his Warriors, 125-85, Monday should help assuage the fears and frustrations we’ve had with this team over their rocky five-week stretch of wild inconsistency.
“I wouldn’t worry about the Celtics if I were one of their fans. This is normal,” said Kerr.
“We always say at the beginning of the season it’s like we’re climbing Everest. It’s when you start training camp, you’re at base camp. And the NBA season is such a long haul, if you go to the Finals it’s over 100 games. So if you go to the Finals and come back the next year, you’re right back at base camp.
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“And that’s intimidating, especially for the Celtics. They’ve been at it for seven or eight years, playing deep into the postseason and it’s not like this was a brand-new team last year winning it all.
“They’ve had to fight through a lot of difficult seasons, so perfectly natural for them to have a little bit of an emotional hangover and maybe not be at their best game after game. I’ve seen that a million times in this league.”
An emotional hangover. That seems exactly right to me, with other factors contributing to what often seems like malaise but really is probably a combination of boredom and mental and physical tiredness. (Exhaustion is too strong of a word, though White and Jrue Holiday, two of the smartest and most well-rounded Celtics in recent memory, have looked recently like they could use a prescription for the Hellenic Flu and a 10-day respite on a beach somewhere.)
The Celtics are finding out that lugging around that bull’s-eye every single night, no matter the opponent, is always heavy — it’s the champion’s burden and lament, and they’re lucky to have it, but there are nights when their attention to detail will naturally wane.
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We’ve seen that with the return of Brown’s old habit of dribbling chaotically into traffic, or with overly casual perimeter passes by Tatum. We’ve seen it almost team-wide on the defensive end, where no Celtic other than perhaps White deserves any all-defense consideration at this point. And we’ve seen it with smart players doing mind-bendingly foolish things. (See: Holiday vs. Hawks.)
The Celtics’ biggest issue — and one that actually plagued Kerr’s Warriors in Monday’s blowout — is 3-point shooting, which the law of averages probably will correct with a Mike Breen-like “BANG!” soon enough.
It’s striking and somewhat concerning that so many Celtics have fallen off from beyond the 3-point line. Among the culprits: Holiday hit 42.9 percent of his threes last season. This season? He’s at a Marcus Smartian 34.9. White has fallen from 39.6 to 37.1; Sam Hauser from 42.4 to 36.8; Al Horford from 41.9 to 36.9; and Brown from 35.4 to a truly dismal, maybe-you-should-stop-taking-these-altogether 32.0.
I’m not one of those Generation X (or older) fans who claim that the NBA was more aesthetically pleasing in the days when, oh, Greg Kite and Mitch Kupchak were swapping elbows and missed putbacks, but an endless barrage of bricked 3-pointers does get awfully old awfully fast. Worse, some Celtics do carry their missed shots to the defensive end, and that lack of attentiveness against teams they should beat by 15 with just a little defensive discipline is the most frustrating thing about them.
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But it’s one thing to be frustrated and another to be worried, and I’m not worried. The Celtics submitted a historically great season last year while, as Kerr noted, exorcising some demons from playoff defeats of the past.
Of course there was going to be a letdown. That reality doesn’t mean it’s fun to endure, but these players earned the benefit of the doubt when they made the confetti rain in June.
What they need to do seems obvious here, and we suspect Kerr would agree from his assorted experiences with the post-championship haze.
Don’t allow these lulls in concentration to become bad habits. Let the law of averages do its thing. (These guys will look so much better when that overdue team-wide heater from 3-point land finally happens.) And get to the playoffs healthy (hey, Kristaps Porzingis does look like himself again, which is the most important development of the last few weeks).
It’s both frustrating and understandable, but we won’t know who the 2024-25 Celtics truly are until the stakes are highest. Count me among those who believe they are much more like last year’s champs than they’ve been willing or able to demonstrate lately.
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