No need for pity
Names don’t matter for these never-say-die Celtics
BOSTON — Just about everyone expected the Boston Celtics to be good this year.
What nobody expected was how good they would be without their stars.
The Raptors head into Boston to face a Celtics team without point guard Kyrie Iriving (facial fracture), centre Al Horford (in concussion protocol) and of course Gordon Hayward who is out for the year after that horrific incident in Cleveland on opening night.
Then there’s rookie phenom Jayson Tatum, playing through some sort of leg/ ankle injury and is maintaining his rookie leading WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player) ranking in a year where rookies are more impactful than ever.
Through it all the Celtics have put together a 11-2 record, all 11 wins following those two losses to open the season.
Not since the 2006-07 Dallas Mavericks opened the year with back-to-back losses and then went on a win streak has a team hit the reset button so quickly.
Those Mavs would win 12 in a row before a loss and go on to win 67 games under Avery Johnson.
These Celtics, though, are doing it through heaps and heaps of early season hurdles.
And the really scary part is their head coach, the guy pushing all the right buttons, believes this might just be the start for this team.
Brad Stevens told reporters after Friday’s comeback win over Charlotte in a game he started without Horford and Hayward and then lost Irving two minutes in that he has a feeling he has a team “that is just kind of going to fight through adversity all the way through. But we’ll see, right? We’re only 13 games in.”
The consistent through all of these past 11 games has been a stifling defence that relies as much on buy-in and teamwork as it does any individual defensive talents on the roster.
Four rookies are currently pulling down minutes in Stevens’ rotation. Throw in sophomore Jaylen Brown, two-year man Terry Rozier and three-year vets Marcus Smart and Shayne Larkin and that’s more than 3/4 of his rotation all still relatively new to the NBA.
Of the veterans bringing them along — Horford, Hayward, Marcus Morris, and Irving — only Morris is certain to play Sunday afternoon when the Raptors visit TD Garden.
Stevens is here for the long haul having initially inked an eye-raising six-year $22-million deal without any NBA experience to speak of. Stevens, though, quickly established himself among the league’s top coaches and received a further three-year extension on that deal in 2016.
He’s getting rave reviews from his own media base and around the league for the job he is doing both this season and last but particularly right now in the wake of all the injuries the team is dealing with.
Stevens’ Celtics are by no means an offensive juggernaut. The team has an offensive rating (points per 100 poss.) of 103.7 or about 4.5 points less than the Raptors per 100 possessions.
Boston sits a rather pedestrian 17th offensively in the league but their top- ranked defence allowing just 94.8 points per 100 possessions has been the difference maker.
The surprise is that the defence is the result of some pretty non-descript players — guys by the names of Daniel Theis, Terry Rozier, and Aron Baynes who are three of the Celtics top individual defenders along with starters Morris (just recently returned to the lineup), Horford and Irving who has not always been known for his defence.
If there is a glaring change in the Celtics this year it is the improved rebounding, particularly on the offensive boards, although there have been significant gains in the rebounding at both ends of the floor.
The Celtics a year ago were merely an average rebounding team, but through 13 games this year, they are No. 1 in the league, averaging 47.6 rebounds a night. That’s a 13.4% increase over their numbers a year ago.
On the offensive boards the Celtics are pulling down 10.7 a night, good enough for fifth in the NBA, but a 17.8% improvement over what they were doing a year ago.
Elsewhere, the Celtics have improved in small amounts in almost every facet of the game. There are those who will point to the departure of Isaiah Thomas, an elite scorer but a known defensive liability as the biggest change, but that would be overlooking the solid play Stevens is getting from his rookies and young players who seem to be driving the Celtics first-place standing.
Regardless of who is in the lineup this afternoon (3:30 p.m. tipoff ), the Raptors are going to have their hands full.