Boston Celtics
The 2021-22 Boston Celtics can be defined by a remarkable and unprecedented mid-season turnaround that ignited a run all the way to the NBA Finals.
What did we learn?
Not even 10 games into the season, trouble was a brewing in Beantown.
The land of high expectations and Marcus Smart-induced drama, Smart was already calling out guys in the media for a lack of passing the ball, leading to a players-only meeting when it was still November.
Halfway through the season, things weren’t much better. The Celtics were 18-21.
That’s right, it was Jan. 7 and the Boston Celtics were in 11th place in the Eastern Conference, on the outside of the play-in looking in, behind the Washington Wizards and the New York Knicks. The clamoring for the Celtics to break up the J-Team duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown was more rampant than ever.
But that’s precisely when one of the most significant in-season team transformations took place.
From that point forward, the Celtics were the best team in the NBA by a substantial margin. From Jan. 23 to the end of the season, no team in the NBA won more games than the Celtics, who also sported an astonishing +15.5 net rating.
It started slightly before the trade deadline, but when Brad Stevens traded Josh Richardson and Dennis Schroeder for Derrick White and old boy Daniel Theis, that’s when the Celtics completed their full metamorphosis.
The Boston defense ambushed opponents from every direction, switching everything and moving on a string with the most superb rotations. The help defense smothered opponents to no end, and the Celtics defensive recoveries were so far and away better than anybody else.
On a late-season Lowe Post podcast, Zach Lowe and David Thorpe talked about how the hardest jump to make in the game is from great to extraordinary and that’s exactly what Jayson Tatum did this season. After the All-Star Break, Tatum averaged 30-7-5 and shot 41.5 percent from 3 on 9.2 attempts per game! He looked smoother and more in control than ever. The game looked so easy for him.
Even better was that Tatum and Brown were coalescing to their highest degree yet, clicking on all cylinders together. The J-Team started passing the ball more and much sooner in the possession with so much less iso one-on-one ball. After Jan. 1, Brown had 11 games of six or more assists. He only had one such game in the first 2.5 months of the season.
The Boston offense also benefitted mightily from Marcus Smart running the point and averaging a career-high in assists for a third consecutive season. Post-All-Star, Smart dished out 7 dimes a night while quarterbacking the best defense in the NBA to the point of winning Defensive Player of the Year.
Rookie head coach Ime Udoka deserves a lot of credit for moving Robert Williams off the ball to great defensive success, a fail-safe that was always engaged. Time Lord’s late-season torn meniscus and subsequent surgery definitely limited the extensiveness of what the C’s could do both defensively and offensively. But having Daniel Theis as a serviceable backup and fill in was a nice deadline move by Brad Stevens.
And the deadline trade for Derrick White was a significant boon. A team-oriented and smart player who keeps the ball moving and communicates well on defense, White was the ingredient that finalized the Celtics’ lethal potion.
The Celtics’ potion would not have been so potent without Al Horford’s veteran leadership and steady presence both in the locker room and on the court. We have long been an advocate for continuity and togetherness being an underrated aspect of the game, and Horford’s return to Boston is an added chapter to the long-running line of success stories.
Boston announced their playoff intentions on the final day of the regular season: They weren’t afraid of the Nets, getting to exact sweet, vicious revenge on the team that beat them in last year’s playoffs. The C’s swept the Nets in one of the closest sweeps that you’ll see. It took a game-winning layup at the buzzer from Tatum in Game 1 and a 17-point comeback in Game 2. The average margin of victory for the series was 4.5 points.
Round 2 vs. the Bucks was an absolute dog fight. Down 3-2, the Celtics went right into Milwaukee and showed the defending champs exactly what it’s like. Tatum out-dueled Giannis with a 46-point masterpiece. And in Game 7, Grant Williams hit seven 3s in the game of his life. (He was not heard from again.)
The Eastern Conference Finals Bubble Rematch vs. Miami was another hard fought tooth-and-nail battle. The Celtics turnover problem was put on full display, fueling the Heat with easy buckets in transition. When the Celtics played smart and took care of the ball, they won in a landslide. But the series still went 7 games and the C’s almost completely melted, a Jimmy Butler 3 away from being taken out at the very end.
In The Finals — the sub-.500-in-January Celtics made the NBA Finals! — the C’s blitzed the Warriors in the fourth quarter of Game 1, raining 3s down upon the Warriors in their own building. They even went up 2-1.
But then Steph lit them up in TD Garden in Game 4, and Andrew Wiggins erupted.
The Warriors experience reigned supreme. The Celtics were just too young. Tatum and the bench no-showed. They got out-rebounded and out-hustled. They lost the points in the paint.
The Celtics lost three straight games to the Warriors, the first time they lost three straight since late-December.
Losing is never easy, especially when the world was convinced the Celtics were the better team after Boston’s Game 3 victory. But the Celtics came too far for this to be a true disappointment.
From a players-only meeting in November to the freaking NBA Finals.
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Additional Notes
The Celtics five-man lineup of Smart-Tatum-Brown-Horford-TimeLord was absolutely ludicrous:
Offensive Rating: 118.8 / Defensive Rating: 94.2
Net Rating: +24.6 in 443 mins
On a random late-December Wednesday night, Jaylen Brown was roasted for pulling an Antoine Walker, the most shot attempts (36) without an assist since the legend Toine back in ‘98.
Payton Pritchard deserves a big shoutout for all of the big 3s he hit against the Bucks and Heat. Alas, he only hit one 3 against the Warriors and was deemed unplayable.
For a team that made The Finals, it’s wild that the Celtics record at home in the playoffs was 6-6.
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Did our preseason Over/Under prediction hit?
Feeling lucky and seeing green. Over 46.5 wins.
2021-22 Boston Celtics record: (51-31)
Yes indeed!
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What’s Next?
With the 53rd pick in the draft, the Celtics selected JD Davison from Alabama, a 6-foot-3 point guard with quite the hair.
Luxury tax or no luxury tax? Per ESPN’s cap-guru Bobby Marks, the Celtics enter the offseason $7.5 million over the luxury tax. Jaylen Brown is also extension eligible, up to three years and $119 million.
Strengthen the bench. One more big wing and shot creator ought to do it.
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Favorite Celtics Highlight of the 2021-22 Season:
Now if only we had gotten to see this version of Tatum in The Finals.
