BOSTON – The Boston Celtics acknowledge that they’re going through a rough patch at the moment, but they also know that times like these can strengthen a team's character. After dropping their fifth game in their last six outings Sunday afternoon to the Houston Rockets, Boston’s players owned up to their shortcomings, but also vowed to keep working together to find a solution.
“This is when our group needs to make sure that we stay together and even closer, because I know it’s hard,” veteran big man Al Horford said after Sunday’s 115-104 defeat at TD Garden. “We’re the first ones that don’t want to lose. We just need to continue to work, because we feel like we can be better than this.”
Boston will look to continue its work on the West Coast. Immediately following Sunday’s game, the C’s boarded a plane to San Francisco in preparation for Tuesday night’s game against the Golden State Warriors. They will then travel to Sacramento to play the Kings, and then it’s off to Los Angeles to face off against both the Clippers and Lakers.
While it won’t be an easy journey, the trip could wind up being beneficial for the C’s in that it will allow them to bond during long plane rides, team dinners, et cetera.
“I think that’s one of the benefits of being on a long road trip,” agreed C’s coach Brad Stevens. “You get to spend some time together. You get to have some meals together. There’s more time off the court that you can engage with each other, and we can do that.”
Though, that would only matter if it can also translate to how they play on the court.
“The bottom line is how you compete together,” Stevens went on to say. “It’s not about anything else when you’re talking about judging a team’s success or not. We have to compete better together. We have to play better. We’re all responsible for it. We’re playing good teams. We just have to be better.”
The C’s showed signs of being better during each of the last three games, even though only one of them resulted in a victory.
Boston displayed great defensive purpose against Portland Wednesday night, as it nearly staged a fourth-quarter comeback while playing on the second night of a back-to-back. It followed that up with a solid, double-digit win over Washington Friday night. Then on Sunday night, the C’s showed another outstanding fourth-quarter fight, as they clawed back from a 28-point deficit and pulled within eight, before falling by 11.
Stevens liked what he saw near the end of Sunday’s game, though he knows the team can't afford to take such a large, early hit against a team of Houston's caliber.
“I do think that we saw some good things in that twelve-minute stint or so, between the middle of the third and early fourth," the coach explained. "We had some chances at the end, but obviously, our margin for error had decreased significantly by then. Even when we made a run at them and it looked like we could get in even further, some of their shot making combined with some misses/turnovers on our part, took away any real chance at the end. But the game was lost in the first thirty minutes, and that’s that.”
When the Celtics play with the force that they displayed during the second half of Sunday’s game, they’re an extremely difficult team to beat. Their goal is to play with such force at a steady pace throughout.
“It’s just one of those things that we need to work through it as a team,” said Horford. “It’s a commitment to winning and being consistent with it.”
The upcoming West Coast trip will be a great test to see if the Celtics can find a solution to their recent skid. And, no matter how challenging it may be, they vow to stick together and continue to build through it all.
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