Bulpett: Now Celtics must stay hyped for more mundane part of schedule

Bulpett: Now Celtics must stay hyped for more mundane part of schedule

BOSTON HERALD Steve Bulpett Saturday, November 18, 2017

There will be no sellout crowd to greet the Celtics Saturday in Atlanta. They will look up at thousands of empty seats in Philips Arena -- a far cry from Thursday in the Garden when a full house stood for long stretches as the home team came back to defeat Golden State.

What inspiration they draw from beyond the court will be via the numerous New England transplants that will attend and, if the circumstances are right, drown out the Hawks’ supporters.

Mainly, if the Celts want to run their winning streak to 15, they’re going to have to dig deeper inside for motivation against the 3-12 Atlantans. The presence of national television cameras and the defending champion Warriors will not be there to raise their RPM.

The same will be the case Monday when the Celtics roll into Dallas to face a Maverick group floundering at the bottom of the Western Conference -- and even to a degree next Wednesday when the C’s conclude the trip in Miami.

And while the odds state the Celtics will be significantly favored in all three games, these are eminently losable outings, as well.

Really.

Heck, it was just a week ago Monday that the Celts escaped Atlanta with a 110-107 win, giving up the most points in their 14-game run. So sloppy were they in that one that Brad Stevens called a timeout 47 seconds into the third quarter to instruct his lads to get their heads out of their hindquarters.

Kyrie Irving had a dozen of his 35 points in the fourth quarter to help extricate the C’s from their predicament.

The scene was similar on Oct. 28 in Miami when Irving scored nine of his 24 points in the last 2:02.

“I thought we were really sloppy at times and didn’t make great basketball decisions,” said Stevens in a quote that could be cut and paste into a number of game stories thus far. “But I guess we played hard enough and well enough to give ourselves a chance to win, and Kyrie made huge plays at the end.”

Which is kind of how they got past the Warriors on Thursday, right?

Irving was matching Steph Curry brick for brick, but he got to the lane and to the free throw line late as the Celts completed the trip back from a 17-point deficit.

The common denominator for the C’s has been that at some point they will have a run sparked by defensive pressure. They had actually been pretty bad on that end in the first half against Golden State, surrendering a number of back-door layups and allowing the Warriors some wide-open looks from distance. But the visitors, as evidenced by Curry, were in the midst of an off night from the floor.

You can say the Celtics defense had a lot to do with that, but run back the video in your memory bank and tell me how many shots you see the Splash Brothers hitting in the face of defenders occupying the same shadow.

Jaylen Brown finally gave the C’s some offense in the third quarter to complement the attack-dog work of Marcus Smart, Terry Rozier and others, and it again became a game when it was starting to appear as if the Warriors were flexing their defending champion muscles on the way to another dispatching of a pretender to their throne.

It will be interesting to see how Brown plays Saturday evening. His team-high 22 points against Golden State came a night after his best friend passed away, and there was a point earlier in the day where the second-year swingman wasn’t even certain he could play.

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Not sure that a team, even a team with a 15 game winning streak, who routinely falls behind by double digits in the first quarter almost on a nightly basis can even think that any other team would be an easy win.

And, of course, we all know that Coach Stevens looks only to the very next game and is unlikely to let his team do anything but follow his lead.

Back in the mid 80's I think I remember McHale saying there were games all they had to do was walk on the court.

And the W was already in the books

We are quite a ways from that amount of swag.

We are good enough to beat anyone..........and to lose to anyone too.
Stevens will keep them low key and focused as much as any coach can.

Not sure if there needs to be any changes to rotations starters and bench, depending on matchups of course. Sucks to fall behind but also we have had a few games where we had big leads and watched it evaporate. NBA is a game of streaks and momentum and as long as we have the longer or more OR LAST streak it's OK.

beat