(Note: No clips today. Apologies!)
1. This road trip was always going to be the stiffest test the Boston Celtics were going to face at this point in the season. After a 3-0 start, it was fair to start dreaming a little bigger.
The Golden State Warriors provided a stark reminder that Boston isn’t at the “showing up is enough” stage. The LA Clippers doubled down on that.
Many, including your fearless writer here, picked the Celtics and Clippers to meet in the 2023 NBA Finals. That makes the beatdown Boston received in Los Angeles a little worrisome, but not overly so.
Yes, the Celtics have played poorly in phases of the game against two good teams on the road. But that tends to happen against good teams on the road. It’s far from the end of the world to have losses at the Warriors and Clippers on your ledger.
What these games have clarified is that Boston is a very good team, but not a great team. And that’s fine. The Celtics don’t need to be great in mid-December. That can come later. And now they’ve got plenty of film of what they need to work on to get there.
2. It’s pretty clear by now that Boston really misses Al Horford against the best teams. With Blake Griffin starting, the Celtics have little choice to play drop coverage against pick-and-roll actions involving Griffin. The challenge is that Griffin lays back so far that he’s closer to the restricted area than he is the free throw line.
The Warriors walked into jumper after jumper against this coverage on Saturday, and the Clippers repeated it on Monday. But someone has to play, and Griffin was playing well on offense and on the glass. So, it’s robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The Celtics also miss Horford’s quick decision-making. He’s very good at moving the ball or shooting right off the catch. Griffin tends to record scratch a bit, and that split-second allows the defense to catch back up.
And Boston misses Rob Williams in these games too. The Clippers lived in the midrange and the paint. Those are shots Williams can impact, if not take away entirely.
Horford and Timelord can’t return soon enough. Thankfully, we’re getting really close to that point.
3. The last two games were a reminder that Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have had MVP and All-NBA caliber starts to the season, but they aren’t locks a those levels…yet.
Tatum hit a major shooting slump and hasn’t been able to shoot his way out of it. Brown, as he sometimes does, goes into “I got…
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