BOSTON — Last summer — after Jayson Tatum’s Achilles rupture, after the Boston Celtics cleaned house to deal with the second apron, after a summer of trade rumors dissipated into smoke — nobody knew what to expect.
Predictions ranging from low-tier playoff team to AJ Dybantsa candidate funneled through the local and national media. Then, an 0-3 start to the season seemed to affirm many of those suspicions. The outside noise grew louder.
But the inside noise grew stronger.
“When we lost our third game of the year to Detroit, me and Joe [Mazzulla] were walking off the court, and we said to each other, ‘This is only going to make us stronger,’ and that we were going in the right direction,” Payton Pritchard said after Boston’s win over the Charlotte Hornets on April 7.
“That a lot of people didn’t think that, [us] losing our third game, but I remember like, ‘OK, we’re going to start turning the corner.’ And then, little by little, every day getting a little bit better, we started getting there. So, I remember moments like that when things feel like [they’re] falling all around you, to stay grounded and keep going.”
Fast-forward to now, and the Celtics have entered the postseason as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, riding the successes of a 56-win season that have multiple organizational members primed for NBA award candidacy.
The summer buzz slowly gave way to championship expectations. A year without a franchise superstar quickly turned into Tatum’s late-season return spectacle.
Exterior expectations began to fall in line with the vision Boston always had for itself
“I think it’s just the character of everybody in the building,” Sam Hauser said after Sunday’s 123-91 Game 1 win over the Philadelphia 76ers. “Even with starting the year without JT, we had a lot of guys in the building who were on the championship team and knew what it was going to take to be successful this season, so kind of feeding off that.
“And obviously, JB [Jaylen Brown] kind of led us, [at] the start of the year, with a lot of that. And the mindset each and every night was just to be the harder-playing team. And if we were going to do that, we were going to be in a lot of games, and obviously, we won a lot of games this year. So, I think it goes back to just the character we all have. And we weren’t going to let with the outside people’s expectations, we weren’t going to let that determine how we were going to handle our day-to-day process.”
But therein lies the problem.
As the rest of the world was playing catch-up, the Celtics were business as usual.
For a moment, feed into what Mazzulla has spent the last week preaching. The notion that the playoffs are no different than the regular season. The same old platitudes like “giving the game what it needs” and “upholding the standards.”
But look at them from a different perspective.
Mazzulla and the Celtics have spent the whole year repeating themselves.
“Like Derrick [White] said, [like] Baylor [Scheierman] said, like Joe said, the standard is the standard,” Hauser reiterated.
Sure, part of it is because that’s what they believe. That’s how the Celtics operate. That’s what led to their monster win over the Sixers on Sunday afternoon in Boston. It makes up the very fiber of the organization.
In Game 1 of the NBA Playoffs — the Celtics’ first chance to prove themselves as tried-and-true championship contenders — they mollywhopped the 76ers.
Tatum looked like an MVP candidate. Brown exploded for a monster third quarter. Hauser and White homed in on Tyrese Maxey. Pritchard provided his usual spark on both ends of the court.
There were areas to improve upon — those same “10 to 15 possessions” Mazzulla talks about incessantly (another trite). But by and large, the Celtics met the expectations placed in front of them. And in turn, they made a statement: The Celtics are back in the title mix.
But did they ever exit that mix?
If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?
If, internally, the Celtics spend an entire season acting the same as they have for years, did they ever really change?
Mazzulla and the Celtics haven’t spent an entire season reprising the same old song and dance for fun. It hasn’t been one big practical joke against the media or a page out of Marshawn Lynch’s book of providing zero context. It’s because, in their mind, nothing truly changed.
Boston built a brick wall around itself all year, and expectations flew in, hit it at full speed, and were pulverized into dust.
So, even though the expectations have shifted from the unknown to second Larry O’Brien in three years, the Celtics are unfazed. Because for them, in their brick-wall citadel, that’s always been the expectation.
And that’s the very reason Sunday went the way it did.
Teams play harder in the playoffs. They try harder. In theory, that should put Boston back a step. Their intensity and incessant hustle gave them a leg up in the regular season, so perhaps that advantage would diminish as teams began to match it.
Yet that’s not the nature of these Celtics.
“Same standard. I think our standard is being the harder-playing team. But in the playoffs, teams play harder. We got to play even harder, or definitely match that,” Brown said. “So, the mentality, the focus, the attention span, the efficiency needs to improve. We got to get to our spots, and we got to be able to see and read the game as it comes.
“And I think that is what we’ve been building up towards all season long. In our film sessions, in our practices, and even when we get out [in the] game. So, it’s not something that we’re not familiar with. We’re just intensifying and taking it to another level.”
The expectation isn’t to play hard. It’s to play harder.
It’s not to meet the standard. It’s to rise above it.
It’s not to win the battle. It’s to win the war.
This year’s Celtics are different. They’ve needed game plan tweaks. Stylistic changes. On-court, rotational, and preparation-oriented adjustments. All have been integral to Boston’s success. But Celtics basketball is Celtics basketball.
Always has been, always will be.
The Sixers came to town on Sunday afternoon hoping to upset the Celtics. The outside world deemed Boston the favorite; its victorious outcome, the norm.
Yet the magnitude of the win was the Celtics’ latest wake-up call.
Sitting in its fortress of solitude, Boston kept working. Heads down. Non-stop. And on Sunday, it sent out a Trojan horse.
On the outside, the “new-look” Celtics. The “Tatum is back” party. The “We made it back to the playoffs” brigade. The horse’s saddle — made up of 18 green and white banners sewn together and lined with 80 years’ worth of championship gold — placed carefully to cover the trap door.
On the inside, the league-shattering reality that none of this is new to the Celtics. To them, it’s not a surprise. The outside noise that dissipated when it hit the brick wall was harnessed and turned into fuel.
This is all according to plan. And the plan is far from over.
