Road to title begins with unknown step
The regular-season journey is finally over for the Celtics and it was mission accomplished as they finished healthy and rested Sunday as the reserves coasted to another win.
The bad news for the Celtics is they will prepare this week for an unknown playoff opponent.
Because they will play the eighth seed in a first-round Eastern Conference series, they’ll have to wait until late Friday when that team is determined.
The unfortunate aspect of the play-in tournament for the top two seeds is the multi-day wait for the opponent. The third through six seeds all know who they’re playing.
The Celtics and Knicks, who earned the No. 2 seed, will wait.
And that first-round opponent won’t be easy, with the
Heat and 76ers each earning a play-in berth. They will play Wednesday in Philadelphia. The winner plays the Knicks, the loser hosts the Hawks-Bulls winner Friday.
Not that the Celtics need any incentive, but they should be plenty motivated for their firstround series, considering how they allowed the Hawks to hang around last year for six games. And this year’s opponent — especially if it’s Miami or Philadelphia — will unquestionably be better than Atlanta.
But what we do know is if the Celtics get past their first-round opponent, they won’t have to play the Bucks, Knicks, Pacers, or the seventh seed until the conference finals. The Cavaliers wasted a chance to get the second or third seed by losing Sunday to the lowly Hornets at home and fell to fourth. Meanwhile, the Magic dominated the Bucks and earned the fifth seed, meaning Boston will face the Cavaliers-Magic winner in the second round.
That’s an advantageous draw. Yet, the Celtics are determined to ensure they are locked in enough, prepared and focused enough, to prosper regardless of the opponent, because they did win the East by 14 games and finished with the league’s best record (64-18).
Ten weeks ago, after a practice session in Miami, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla was asked about the conference competitors making moves such as the Heat’s acquisition of Terry Rozier and the Bucks trading for Patrick Beverley to keep up with his team. Mazzulla said Boston hasn’t won anything to be considered the standard for the Eastern Conference. In other words, the Celtics should be hungrier than their competitors because they have fallen short so many times.
But they also hold the mentality of a team that’s sliced through the rest of the NBA this season, never losing more than two games in a row. They finished fifth all-time in point differential at 11.34 and were the league’s only 60-plus win team.
“I think you have to have the balance of knowing you’re a really good team,” Mazzulla said. “And the humility of understanding that you could lose at any time. I think guys have carried that perspective the entire season. We aren’t going to go in [to the playoffs] talking ourselves down, but at the same time we want to have a level of humility. So you want to understand what you’re really good at and you understand you could lose any time if you don’t do x, y, or z. We have to focus on having that balance, which I think the guys have done the entire year.”
The primary plan for the Celtics was to get Kristaps Porzingis to the regular-season finish line healthy, and he avoided any serious injury issues. Jaylen Brown was battling a sore left hand but played through his injury with no setbacks, and then got the weekend off.
The Celtics’ starting core will enter Game 1 next Sunday having 10 days off. Mazzulla also gave the players three days off last week, meaning rest won’t be an issue. Of course, inactivity may affect sharpness but Mazzulla said he trusts his players to be prepared because they have been all season.
This is the only way for the Celtics to prove they are not last year’s team that stumbled through the playoffs. This year’s team is different because of the acquisitions of Porzingis and Jrue Holiday, but also an improved bench that used the past two wins over the Hornets and Wizards to gain even more confidence.
Payton Pritchard scored a career-high 38 points Sunday and was one rebound from a tripledouble. The advancement of Pritchard, Sam Hauser, and Luke Kornet, and the addition of Xavier Tillman, provide even a better argument that this team is different.
“Just be us,” Pritchard said when asked what the Celtics need to do to be ready next Sunday. “Mentally get prepared, but we’re going to be all right. We’re going to be ready for it. Everybody has one thing on their mind and that’s to do for this championship and that’s to take care of business, Round 1. We’re going to do that.
“I always knew I could [produce like this] on a nightly basis but when you have a team with as much talent as we have, you have to do other things to help win. Ultimately I’m here to win a championship and whatever that’s asked of me, I will do that.”
The regular season is over, finally. And the Celtics have put themselves in the optimal position to conquer banner No. 18. Now the real journey begins.