Danny Ainge insists he’s not disappointed or disturbed or angry, but it’s hard to take him at face value when you see his face.

Usually the Celtics’ president of basketball operations is the breakwater of reason as merely choppy seas threaten the shore, but while he’s trying to find the green lining in this odd season, it’s understandable that he’s a few degrees short of ecstatic.

Indeed, everything the Celtics want is still on the table. They have the raw material to win the Eastern Conference and be at least competitive with the representative from the West, particularly if it’s Golden State. Kyrie Irving is among the few in the NBA uniquely suited to take over the final moments of a playoff game, and there should be more than enough overall to propel this team deep into the postseason – if people are willing to subdue individual interests and do what’s asked of them. It’s all still here. The road is open.

But after 71 games, the Celtics are a fifth seed. Take a look at the roster and then back to those two figures: 71 and No. 5. The word “incongruous” comes to mind.

Ainge has another. Asked his general thoughts on where the Celtics are at this stage, he paused four seconds as he inhaled and then exhaled harder.

“Inconsistent,” Ainge said. “We look good in stretches of each game. We look good some games. (Monday) night we just needed to make some shots in some key moments. Like, there’s two or three stretches where Denver made a couple of outside shots and we missed a couple of lay-ins. I don’t think it’s anything disastrous; I just think we need to keep working to get consistent. And we could have used Gordon (Hayward) out there, because there were some open shots to be made.”

But Hayward is in the league’s concussion protocol, and while it doesn’t appear to be a long-term issue, he won’t be available in Philadelphia Wednesday night.

A healthy and assertive Hayward would appear to be a critical element for the Celtics, but there is still a distance between here and the general cohesiveness the club needs. I asked Ainge if he ever thought he’d still be hoping his team would be trying to get itself together this late in the season, and he sort of dribbled around a direct answer.

“Well, I think that if you’re just focused on your own team … but I’ve had the luxury of playing on many teams and being in this league a long time and watching many games,” he said, “and I know that there’s a lot of frustrations that everybody goes through throughout the course of the year – ups and downs and good games and bad games. And (Monday) wasn’t one of our worst games and it wasn’t one of our best games, and we got beat by a good team. I mean, there’s a lot we can learn from a game like this, and I know the guys are frustrated because we had a lot of guys that didn’t play well in this game.”

Frustrating, too, is that the Celtics haven’t yet had one of those stretches where they play killer ball for 10 or so games and give themselves a basis for the confidence they’ll need later on.

“There’s been a few games here and there when we’ve played really well,” Ainge said. “It’s like you take one step forward and take a step backward, and then you take two steps forward and take another step back.

“But I feel like there’s a lot of good things I see on our team. I feel like we need to be healthy. We need to be right. And I feel like our minds are getting in the right place, and that’s a good thing. (Against Denver), we weren’t thinking, but it wasn’t a lack of effort. It was falling asleep on some plays or not paying attention, but it wasn’t some deep-rooted issues that can’t be fixed. We could have played well and still lost against a team like Denver. They’re a very good team.”

And as far as that dozing off issue goes, Ainge doesn’t believe the Celtics can simply set an alarm for mid-April.

“Yeah, I don’t believe you can flip a switch,” he said, “but I see a lot of things I like on our team. I like a lot of our energy. We have lapses, but I feel a lot of it is inexperience and maybe communication that we need to get better at. At this stage of the season, we’re still playing lineups out there that probably haven’t played much together. We saw (Al) Horford and (Aron) Baynes out there more than maybe we’ve seen them all year, and that was the foundation of our defense last year. Again, I’m not making excuses. I’m not panicking. I feel much better about our team today than I did two weeks ago.”

Horford and Baynes played together for 11 minutes and were a plus-2 in the nine-point loss to the Nuggets. They are a plus-42 in 70 minutes over 16 games this season.

The Celtics, meanwhile, are a “plus-15” at 43-28, which means they need to win seven of their last 11 just to reach 50 wins. This after winning 55 and 53 the last two seasons.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“I wouldn’t say disappointed, because the season’s not over yet,” Ainge said. “I’m encouraged. … I see a lot of good things.”

However, that he’s still mentioning communication as an issue in the third week of March can’t be comforting. Like you, Ainge couldn’t have seen this coming.

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