There’s a southern expression Celtics fans should consider adopting to welcome opponents to TD Garden this season: bless your heart.
Brian Scalabrine on the Celtics' hot start
Boston’s starting five is so complete that a spunky team like the Indiana Pacers never stood a chance, and now they’re part of franchise lore. The Celtics posted the third-most points in Boston basketball history and put the rest of the league on further notice. Playing this team is going to be a bad time.
Joe Mazzulla’s team is first in points through four games and forcing opponents to pick their poison. They can play inside-out, they can swing the ball around the perimeter and curl towards the basket. Hell, their point guard started the game backing up into the post for two.
Boston is also first on the boards and second in field goal percentage, trailing only the reigning champs.
We’re a far cry from “shoot more 3s,” everybody.
“We’ve got everything, right?” Jrue Holiday said after the 155-104 victory. “We’re in the paint, we have the midrange, and we have the three. I feel like that threat makes us even harder to guard so at any moment, we know if our three ball isn’t falling, we can also go into the paint and post up. We’ve got JB and JT in the midrange, and going one-on-one with KP down there.”
The 4-0 Celtics should continue gaining momentum through this early stretch of the season, snowballing downhill until Thanksgiving Eve, when they’ll face their most formidable opponent in the East in the Milwaukee Bucks.
Before and after those marquee games, the biggest challenge will be focus. Holiday commended his new team for approaching each game with professionalism and as a unique challenge, but that’s not hard when the leaves are still on the trees around town.
“I think it’s more about not getting bored, not getting complacent, locking into every game,” he said.
Preseason visits from members of the 2008 championship squad may have left an impression on how to start a season with so much expectation. That team blazed through their early schedule on an 8-0 run, similarly demolishing a Denver Nuggets team 119-93 in early November.
Holiday provides a mature perspective on sustaining success and meeting expectations, coming from a Milwaukee team that ripped off a 20-game winning streak and being a key member of a franchise that actually won it all recently.
The Indiana massacre also allowed anxious fans side-eyeing the bench a minute to exhale, as shooters Sam Hauser and Payton Pritchard led the reserves to 46 points in the fourth quarter. The bench should continue to grow in its production as the calendar pages flip.
After all, it’s just past dawn of the NBA season. But so far, Boston’s the early bird.