Celtics' Confidence High As Challenging West Trip Begins

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/celtics_nba/boston_celtics/2015/03/celtics_confidence_high_as_challenging_west_trip_begins



Celtics' confidence high as challenging West trip begins






Photo by: Matt West
A LOT TO SMILE ABOUT: Celtics center Tyler Zeller shares a laugh with referee J.T. Orr (left) late in Monday night’s blowout of the Philadelphia 76ers at the Garden.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015 PrintEmail0 Comments
By:  Mark Murphy


Trips to Texas and Oklahoma have been tougher than old steer meat for the Celtics in the Brad Stevens era, but his young team has never flown in with this kind of momentum before.

The Celtics play the Thunder in Oklahoma City tonight before heading to San Antonio for a game against the Spurs Friday — a difficult two-game swing against contenders in the superior Western Conference.

But the Celtics are on a five-game winning streak, in addition to a stretch of 10 wins in their past 13 games — both are the most successful runs of their kind under Stevens. In that time, they have defeated Memphis and Atlanta at home and won on the road against an Indiana team that had won seven straight games.

Timing, if nothing else, might be working for them on the eve of this trip.

“It gives us confidence,” Avery Bradley said. “We know what to do as a team, and we know how to play every single night.

“All we talk about is winning games. Even the win streak, we don’t focus on that. They say the longest win streak since 2013, but we don’t care.”

Instead, the Celtics have bought into Stevens’ possession-to-possession mantra. Focus on the next play and the playoffs will take care of themselves. Now that the Celtics are getting the better of those possessions, they are winning games that would have been unthinkable as recently as early February.

“It’s hard, especially when you come in leading by 20 at halftime, and your coach says, ‘Let’s continue to go out there and play hard,’ ” said Bradley, describing Monday’s win against the Philadelphia 76ers.

“Sometimes you get a little nervous,” he said. “At the beginning of the year, we might have put our heads down and let them back in, probably would have lost a 20-point lead.”

But those inconsistencies from the first half of the season have now been replaced with a legitimate chance at securing a low playoff seed. Should they finish the season with the seventh or eighth playoff seed, the Celtics can plan on a first-round series against an elite team — either Atlanta or Cleveland.

The very fact that the Celtics are now part of the postseason discussion finds this locker room at a high ebb.

“A lot of fun,” Tyler Zeller said. “The whole year we’ve been changing, and Danny (Ainge) has done a good job with the team we’ve got. It’s tough playing different players every night, but we’ve kind of settled in, and it’s fun to go to battle that way.

“We all understand we were fighting from behind,” Zeller said of how much the Celtics have had to improve to reach this point. “But we have two very tough games coming up. You have to be able to put yourself in a position to win. But our team is very good at taking it one game at a time.

“The whole year we’ve been up and down, but we’ve done a good job of sticking together. Things just started to click, people started to find their spots. We’re doing a better job now when people get hot, we get them the ball.”

Celtics notes

The rise of Gigi Datome has coincided with a drop in minutes for rookie forward James Young.

The Celtics decided yesterday to give Young a chance not only to get some playing time, but to also work on his poise, by assigning him to the Maine Red Claws while the parent team headed for Oklahoma City.

Young has owned the NBADL during his Red Claws stints. In nine D-League games Young has averaged 23.6 points on 51.2 percent shooting. . . .

Isaiah Thomas did not travel with the team to Oklahoma City, remaining in Boston to continue treatment on his bruised lower back.

After missing four games, Thomas had hoped to return for Monday’s win against the Sixers but wasn’t ready. A new target could be Monday’s game against Detroit at the Garden.




bob



.