Here we are on a Monday morning after a very eventful NBA weekend, one which witnessed the end of the Golden State Warriors’ bid to match and then pass the 1972 Los Angeles Lakers for the longest regular season winning streak in league history.
The NBA and basketball lovers everywhere (except the cities where the Warriors played of late) wanted the Warriors to be unbeaten heading into their Christmas Day showdown with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. The delicious scenario — the unbeaten reigning champs going against the most iconic active player in the league in a Finals rematch — would have created a genuine sensation on Christmas in Oakland. There is no doubt that the Warriors are the NBA’s most interesting team, and that the Cavs and Spurs are the Dubs’ foremost challengers.
After that trio of heavyweights, however, which is the next most interesting team in professional basketball right now? The Oklahoma City Thunder are always a natural choice, with Russ and KD and a first-year head coach trying to figure it all out. The Los Angeles Clippers remain a soap-operatic rollercoaster ride with an expressive coach who doubles as the organization’s general manager. The Charlotte Hornets have become one of the big (and pleasant) surprises of the new season with their unexpected transformation into a highly potent and watchable offensive team.
Yet, with the past weekend in mind, the next most interesting team in the NBA outside of Oakland just might be the team which didn’t beat the Warriors on Friday night… but contributed to Golden State’s eventual downfall in Milwaukee… and then proved something very important on the same Saturday night when another team took down the Warriors.
That team is, of course, the Boston Celtics.
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Yes, Milwaukee played a fantastic game on Saturday in disposing of the Warriors. The Bucks, in an immediate sense, did what the Celtics could not. However, Boston’s weekend was easily the more impressive one, and the opponent the Celtics played on Saturday helped reinforce that claim.
The Celtics, after their draining and highly emotional double-overtime loss to the Dubs in Boston, had to make their way to Charlotte to play the buzz-attracting Hornets. Charlotte cruised past Memphis with such ease on Friday night that the Hornets figured to have more in the tank on Saturday — not only playing at home, but having been stretched to a much smaller extent on Friday.
Boston had to play a centerpiece game of its young season on the front end of a back-to-back set. Surely, the Celtics’ astounding 9-0 record in road-court back ends of back-to-backs (dating to the 2015 All-Star break) was likely to end, much as the Warriors’ 24-0 record was similarly vulnerable on the very same Saturday.
Yet, while the Warriors were truly spent against a comparatively bad team after playing two overtimes, the Celtics — against a Charlotte team which was second in the East earlier this week — powered through and won on the road, 98-93. Boston is now 10-0 on the back ends of back-to-backs which finish on the road since last season’s All-Star break.
Call that a small sample size if you’d like — you wouldn’t be wrong. That said, winning all 10 such games (not merely 8 or 9 of them) shows something special about the Celtics and their immensely skilled coach.
It’s impossible to ignore or minimize the following thought, because just about every NBA blogger has thought it over the past few weeks: If Brad Stevens can get this much production out of this roster, what could he do with a top-flight roster?
First things first, though: How high can Boston climb with the roster it currently has? The East is enough of a muddle and a puzzle that the Celtics — should they avoid Cleveland’s half of the East playoff bracket — could earn a postseason path which would give them a legitimate shot at the East Finals. It’s early in the season, but the rather ordinary brand of ball being played by the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat — combined with the injury-based struggles of the Washington Wizards and the Atlanta Hawks’ two no-shows against the San Antonio Spurs, among other things — suggest that the East could be a total free-for-all in the race for the spot opposite Cleveland in the NBA’s final four next May.
Are the Boston Celtics the most interesting NBA team not called the Warriors? They might be. That one could legitimately speak of them in such terms is commentary enough for now. We’ll see how we regard this team in a month.
