How does it feel to run a marathon after training on cake walks?
Ask the Celtics in a couple months.
The Celtics have clinched the NBA’s first playoff berth with four weeks still left in the regular season. Thanks to Thursday’s win over Phoenix, they are now 9 1/2 games up on the second-seeded Bucks in the Eastern Conference standings. That gulf is wide enough that they’ve virtually locked up the East’s top seed.
To wit: Pro Basketball Reference currently paints the Celtics’ odds of earning the No. 1 seed at 100%.
And while heavyweight regular-season bouts can often simulate a playoff atmosphere, those matchups are now getting squeezed out of Boston’s schedule.
Only six of the Celtics’ 16 remaining games are against opponents currently with winning records. Just two of their next nine will come versus projected playoff teams. Boston has by far the NBA’s easiest remaining schedule.
On one hand, the scheduling gods have bestowed a great blessing on the Celtics. Two dates with each of the Hornets, Hawks, Wizards and Pistons down the stretch feels like a runway to 60-plus wins. On the other hand, long, easy strolls can also become runways to boredom.
And boredom, for a team that occasionally stumbles through late-game offense and lazes its way into too many 3s, can be a killer.
Maybe the Celtics should treat the upcoming home-and-home against the Pistons like a Load Management Invitational. Or maybe they should sit Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown in Charlotte, knowing the Hornets can’t sting. Health is paramount.
But otherwise, the Celtics should approach their remaining games against Milwaukee (twice), Oklahoma City, New York, New Orleans and Sacramento as postseason appetizers. These are their final chances to feel playoff heat before it can burn them, and play the type of basketball that will propel them to a championship.
And what is that type of basketball?
Ruthlessly hunting mismatches on offense. Cycling through different defensive coverages, possession to possession. Protecting the ball and the glass, knowing extra possessions will be every underdog’s only sure path to upsetting them as a sharpshooting favorite.
Take Coach Joe Mazzulla’s halftime speech from Thursday night.
“It was just a very simple conversation of like, ‘We’re up five, and we’re shooting 50 percent from 3. So we’re at a very critical point of the game, to where if we decided to rely on just that, and we don’t get the shot margin back in some capacity, then we’re not going to win,” Mazzulla said. “And if we hold them to more one-shot possessions, and we get out and score and we can control that better in the second half, then we have a chance.”
Mission accomplished.
Not that the Celtics waited until the third quarter to find postseason form.
In the first quarter, Tatum hunted ex-Bucks guard Grayson Allen like Allen had an actual rack of antlers on his head. Once Tatum was done chasing prey, he picked on a fellow predator. He splashed consecutive 3s over Kevin Durant in the final minutes before halftime, giving him nine points in the second quarter while Durant went scoreless.
In between, with Brown alongside mostly reserves, the Celtics maintained their lead in the second quarter. Later, to start the fourth, Brown and the reserves extended the Celtics’ lead while Tatum sat. Brown finished with 39 points, unafraid and attacking, capped by an exclamation point dunk on Allen to put Phoenix away for good.
Meanwhile, Durant scored five points after the first quarter, facing a pesky rotation of Tatum, Brown and Jrue Holiday. It was a flex of the Celtics’ defensive depth and toughness, playing their third game in four nights.
“We just came off a long road trip. This could’ve been a game where we came out sluggish, but we came out with the right mentality,” Brown said. “To take care of business.”
Mentality is precisely what Mazzulla pointed to postgame when asked what he wants to see over the Celtics’ remaining 16 games. Basically, how they can stay sharp during this upcoming month-long stroll through the NBA’s version of Munchkinland.
“(It’s) understanding winning is the most important thing, but also finding ways to get better,” Mazzulla said. “Like we’ve got to watch this first half (versus Phoenix). And we got to watch the end of the game when they went to a small lineup, and we weren’t able to create the advantages as easily when they played smaller and switched. And we’ve got to watch that stuff, and we have to get better at it.”
Translation: In nit-picking their film for the next 16 games, the Celtics will actually be fighting their toughest foe until the playoffs – themselves.
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