After two puzzling losses this past weekend, the Celtics fan base was freaking out. It fueled hours of sports radio talk with passionate rants from callers and texters. (Fortunately, some of that noise was muffled after the Celts' 112-99 win over Denver Monday night.)
Fans called for Danny Ainge to make trades for Harrison Barnes, John Collins and Nikola Vucevic among other potentially available players.
I can guarantee you none of those three players will be wearing a Celtics uniform when the NBA's trade deadline rolls around March 25. The price will be way too high, especially for teams like the Hawks and Kings who may not be out of the playoff picture a month from now.
The fans want a better product. That's understandable after seeing the West Coast road trip, the loss to the Pistons at home and all of that followed in scoring just 91 points against the Wizards. (Washington had played 25 games as of this writing. In 24 of those games, Washington allowed 100 or more points.)
The ball movement was better against the Nuggets on Tuesday night but that's not going ot get anyone to jump on the bandwagon.
I'm here to tell you the Celtics are right where they should be and your outrage is extreme and premature. Here's why:
1. Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Kemba Walker and Marcus Smart have played two games together this season for a total of 28 minutes.
2. Not only has the top group played very limited minutes together, Boston hasn't had much consistency at all due to injuries and COVID.
The Celtics most-played group of four players this season is Smart-Brown-Tatum-Theis for a total of 177 minutes.
The Utah Jazz has 11 such lineups with more than Celtics 177 minutes played together this season including one group with 427 minutes. Health and COVID luck are obviously a factor to the Jazz having the NBA's top record.
3. Boston has nine games until the All Star break which starts March 5. Only one of those nine games is against a team with a winning record (March 2 vs LA Clippers).
4. Did I mention the NBA trade deadline is March 25th? There's nine games until the All-Star break. Ainge will use the break to evaluate his team, self scout with Stevens and work the phones. Games will resume March 10.. I'm thinking there will be at least 16-18 games from now and the trade deadline. Boston fans should be hoping for the bad teams (Magic, Hawks, Bulls, Pelicans, Kings) to bottom out and truly become sellers in this period.
5. The Celtics have had three straight years of Top 10 finishes in defensive rating. As of Tuesday night after the win vs Denver, Boston is back in the top ten with a defensive rating of 109.7, good for eighth in the NBA.
6. Kemba Walker's three point shot is starting to fall. Kemba's three-point percentage is up 12 points from January to February including shooting 52 percent in Boston's last three games.
7. The past two seasons, Boston has finished among the best in the NBA in turnover percentage -- eighth (13.7%) last season and third (12.7%) in 2018-19. This year's team is currently 20th at 14.6 percent. Not good.
When Brad Stevens can finally get his full squad back, he can put out a starting lineup of Kemba-Smart-Brown-Tatum-Theis, a group with a 2019-20 turnover rate of 11.4 and just 8.7 in limited minutes this season. This group is clearly the best in terms of ball security just based on last season's data. Long story short: the turnover issues should get fixed simply by getting their best players on the court together at once.
8. As bad as the Celtics have been, no team in the East has gone better than 6-4 in their last 10 games. So the Celtics' recent struggles hasn't killed them in the standings.
We knew they weren't the Eastern Conference's best team after an 8-3 start put them atop the standings just a month ago on January 14.
Come back to me one month from now and the state of the Celtics could be completely different. We will all have a better sense of what this team is, the needs and what the market will be like.
It's just way too soon to panic.
