Celtics' starting 5 looks championship caliber again
The Celtics' starting five is playing like it's 2024 again. With a gauntlet of a March schedule on the horizon, the league's best rotation has to keep this rediscovered chemistry brewing.
"They're doing a better job of having an understanding how they impact each other, and we've just got to continue to get better at that," head coach Joe Mazzulla said, following the team's 118-105 win over the Knicks Sunday.
The Celtics have now won nine of their last ten games. They're on a five-game win streak and have beaten their opponents by an average of 18.2 points – including two beatdowns of New York, widening the gap between them and anyone on their heels in the Eastern Conference.
Jayson Tatum has been the team's most consistent player throughout this season, but he's been at another level since Boston's last loss, against a discombobulated Mavericks team on February 6th. He flirted with his second straight triple-double and came up just one assist short in the last 90 seconds of Sunday's game.
Now, finally, the star-studded cast around him is clicking again. Jrue Holiday looks back to his elite form after taking off multiple games with a lingering shoulder injury earlier in the month. Jaylen Brown scored nine-straight points in the fourth quarter and Derrick White sank back-to-back three-pointers to hold off a barrage from Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns that started in the third quarter. Kristaps Porzingis continues to dominate matchups around the rim and show out irreplaceably on offense.
It's fun to look at Payton Pritchard 6th man odds, to see Al Horford spit in Father Time's face, and to watch Kornet dunk – but this – this is how Boston will need to defend the title. All five starters posted double-digits in both points and plus-minus. Those stats made for a pretty box score, but it also made for beautiful team basketball. Notably, when Tatum took his regular rest at the beginning of the fourth quarter, Boston went on a 12-4 run to regain control of the game. It helped that Towns was briefly sidelined after a knee-to-knee collision with Porzingis, but it was truly Porzingis, White, and Holiday's return to the floor that stopped the bleeding for Boston.
The Celtics will host much of the top talent in the league over the next two-and-half weeks, starting with the Eastern Conference's top dogs – the Cavaliers – on Friday. Two days later, Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets come to town. All eyes will be on the March 8th showdown with the new-look Lakers, and the league's second most-winningest team, Oklahoma City, takes the parquet the following Wednesday.
It's been a long winter for the Celtics. The team has toyed with uncharacteristic, bad habits through January, and invited doubts about the ability to keep the mindset that got them to Banner 18 last June. Suddenly it feels like a sprint to the Spring and Boston's tank looks full. If the starting five continues to play this way for two more weeks, everyone needs to heed the advice Tatum gave when responding to a question about how to hold off the third quarter surge from the Knicks:
"Don't panic, we've been there before."
