By Staff Writer James Mellen III.
When the Red Sox won the world series earlier this year, many Boston sports fans immediately started to follow their fall and winter home teams. With the Brady-Belichick dynasty showing no signs of slowing down, and the Celtics boasting a loaded, all-star caliber roster, Beantown began to wonder how many consecutive championships their city would win.
While the Patriots delivered a sixth Super Bowl victory over the course of Brady’s career, the Celtics on the other hand, have, for lack of a better term, been blowing it.
The team is currently 5th in the eastern conference, which isn’t necessarily anything to shake a stick at. However, they finished last season at second in the division and made a deep run into the playoffs without both Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward.
With Kyrie and Gordon both healthy and back on the roster, a lot of fans have been left wondering what’s going on, especially after watching the past weeks four-game losing streak which finally broke with a win over the Washington Wizards.
Many winning teams over the leagues’ history have hit hard turnarounds during the spring playoff seasons. Most recent of which have been the Cleveland Cavaliers, who finished last year’s season off with a similar record to the C’s current record, but went on to win the Eastern conference.
The Celtics have been compared to Cavs’ last season multiple times on Twitter, as pictures of a clearly frustrated Kyrie Irving staring down at the second-year stud, Jayson Tatum, was compared to pictures of a likewise frustrated LeBron James, making the same expression toward a younger Kyrie.
It seems as though much of the team’s trouble has come from a change in chemistry dynamics as Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward return to the court this season after last year’s injury.
What the C’s gained in talent, they seem to have lost in chemistry as the younger members of the team are having trouble finding their new role on the team.
On March 2, Marcus Morris spoke to Tatum directly about the team’s rough patch during the regular season, telling Tatum that the C’s “can’t hit that switch when you get to the playoffs. You need to hit that switch now and have some camaraderie and have some consistency going into the playoffs and I think we’ll be good.”
While Spring is just around the corner, and many fans are expecting the Celtics to start performing at game speed when the regular season ends, it would without a doubt be in the team’s best interest to listen to their veteran player’s advice.
Even with the team’s rough streak, they have a real chance at winning the conference, and maybe even beating Golden State.
However, the C’s need to find their chemistry, and find it soon, because the season is only going to get harder from here.
Out of their 19 remaining regular season games, 10 are against teams that have already qualified for the playoffs.
Still, 19 games are 19 games, which is enough time for the Celtics to get their act together and build some desperately needed chemistry and momentum for what will be a demanding playoff season.
One question still goes completely unanswered in the C’s 2018-19 season; Can any team in the league beat the Celtics in a seven-game series?
