Boston Celtics now have two stars and under .500 record

One would have expected a little more excitement from Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. After all, the former had just been selected for his very first All-Star Game a few hours earlier, while the latter received his second consecutive nod. “I don’t really feel like an All-Star,” Brown told media. Tatum expressed his happiness for his teammate but echoed his sentiment.

“It’s really hard to focus on that when we’re not where we want to be as a team,” Tatum added.

Where exactly are they as a team? Well, after last night’s 110-107 loss to the Dallas Mavericks, the Boston Celtics are now 15-16. They sit sixth in the Eastern Conference and are likely to drop out of the top eight relatively soon. Despite their string of injuries, it’s staggering such a talented team that have struggled so much, but their current record faithfully represents what we’ve seen on the pitch.

For the record, Brown should know he was right in his assumption: the team didn’t lose much during their time here. The last time the Celtics broke the ten-game mark below the .500 mark this season was April 15, 2015. Brown wasn’t even in college at the time.

What happened that put them below the breakeven point? Well, days after allowing the New Orleans Pelicans to stage their biggest comeback in team history, the Celtics lost another extremely winnable game. Well, the Celtics got cold in the still dangerous fourth quarter and gave the Mavericks a double-digit lead. After sleepwalking for much of a second, they rushed to regain the lead in the last minute of the game. It almost seemed to work, but Luka Doncic did what Luka Doncic does, hitting an unlikely three points consecutively to secure the victory. What could have been an uplifting victory ended up being almost as demoralizing as their collapse against New Orleans.

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“Obviously it’s another heartbreaking loss, but it looks a little different from what he did on Sunday,” head coach Brad Stevens said after the game.

He’s right, but “different” doesn’t necessarily mean “much better”. It’s not just that the Celtics’ offense is inconsistent outside of their All-Star duo, it’s that the team is visibly loose defensively, which is reflected in their defensive rating of 103.1 in games that were not decided effectively. It’s ultimately not so inspiring that something changed in the squad at the end of last night’s game, only to the point where he was on the verge of the impossible. If they had anything close to that level of commitment during the previous quarter’s playing time, the Celtics could have built a lead that could have supported Doncic’s literally last-second heroism.

So the question is what now? Yes, there is the commercial exception that GM Danny Ainge worked so hard to secure after losing Gordon Hayward to the Charlotte Hornets. The problem is, the ones they might get with this exception aren’t likely to move the needle as much from where they are now. They might get a useful piece for a team that actually looks like a championship contender, but these Celtics feel closer to getting out of the playoff mix altogether than sneaking into the NBA Finals. One can dream of a huge trade, but it is difficult to know how many sellers there will be by the trade deadline.

What will have to happen for the Celtics to reverse course? It could all come down to their current All-Stars, but maybe not how you think. Yesterday on the Celtics radio show, broadcaster Sean Grande hinted that the young players had reached the level where they improved, but had yet to reach the next stage where they knew how to improve. the team. Brown, despite his considerable maturity, is still only 24 while Tatum turns 23 next week, it makes sense that they aren’t quite there yet, neither should we expect to be at this stage of their evolution.

The problem is, the team is already theirs. They don’t have Hayward anymore, Kemba Walker isn’t the same player he was last year and now Marcus Smart is on the shelf. It’s a cliché to use the term “growing pains,” but that’s exactly what this edition of the Boston Celtics is going through. Fans may not want to hear it, but it is very possible that what is wrong with them will only be fixed over time. The problem is, it’s hard to ignore the fact that this is precisely what escapes them.