The Celtics have develop into a dominant staff when taking part in at dwelling within the common season. But can it translate to the playoffs?
With Friday’s win over the Knicks at TD Garden, the Celtics moved to an ideal 10-0 at dwelling this season. Coupled with a Nuggets dwelling loss on Friday, the C’s turned the final remaining unbeaten staff at dwelling this season.
The final time they did that? The 2007-08 season, once they received their first 12 dwelling video games en path to a 35-6 dwelling document and in the end, the NBA championship.
As they head right into a stretch of 4 dwelling video games this week – two towards the Cavaliers, then two towards the Magic – the Celtics haven’t misplaced a house sport within the common season since a double time beyond regulation loss to the Knicks final season on March 5, a stretch of 17 in a row. But Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla mentioned there hasn’t been an added emphasis on defending dwelling courtroom.
“We haven’t said anything about it,” Mazzulla mentioned. “Obviously, outside of it just being the Garden and being at home and playing in front of a crowd that we have all the time, we haven’t really spent too much time deciding what the difference is. Small sample size, we’ve only lost five games (overall), too.”
The Celtics know higher than anybody that their dominant dwelling mark means nothing if they’ll’t do it come playoff time.
Over their final 16 postseason video games courting again to the 2022 Eastern Conference Finals, the Celtics have only a 7-9 document at TD Garden. It options some puzzling defeats, together with a irritating 2023 stretch final spring that made life far tougher than it wanted to be. They misplaced Game 5 of the primary spherical to the Hawks, which was a possible clinching sport. They misplaced Game 1 and Game 5 to the 76ers, forcing them to return again from a 3-2 collection deficit. Then, in fact, they dropped the primary two video games to the Heat within the convention finals, forcing them to try a never-before-done 3-0 collection comeback that in the end fell quick in Game 7 – at dwelling.
Mazzulla, although, seemingly doesn’t put an excessive amount of inventory into these dwelling playoff losses. He checked out it from a distinct perspective.
“There’s two sides to look at it,” Mazzulla mentioned. “‘Cause then you could say that we’re really tough to go win on the road. So there’s two sides to that and I think more about just learning about what leads to winning regardless. I think that’s the thing we’re trying to really make clear to everybody and our team in general is like the things that lead to winning are the things that lead to winning regardless of where you play and the hardest things to do are those things all the time. So we have to just continue to fight for that mindset, you know?”
That has been a theme with Mazzulla’s focus this season. The coach is doing his greatest to get rid of outdoors influences or distractions that may have an effect on his staff’s capability to hone in on the elements that impression successful. That got here to gentle throughout the In-Season Tournament. Before the Celtics’ ultimate group play sport towards the Bulls – once they wanted to win by no less than 23 to advance to the quarterfinals – Mazzulla mentioned the purpose differential wasn’t a spotlight going into the sport as a result of it was a distraction. It was solely when the Celtics have been in place to advance within the fourth quarter when Mazzulla modified his method to provide his staff one of the best likelihood to make the quarterfinals.
Mazzulla was upset that the Celtics didn’t win the championship of the brand new match. But falling in need of that objective isn’t essentially motivation to win it subsequent yr. For Mazzulla, he desires the Celtics to grasp that it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are – a house sport, an in-season match sport or anything – that the habits that result in successful all the time stay the identical.
“That was my whole point in the beginning, is like if we’re gonna use all our emotional energy to do this one thing and we still have 61 games left, what’s going to be our motivation after that?” Mazzulla mentioned. “So are we annoyed that we didn’t get an opportunity to win a championship? Yes. But do now we have to see that the issues that go into successful a championship are the issues that go into successful on a Monday night time in the course of January when nobody actually desires to play?
“So we’re really fighting for that mindset and identity. Can things be important all the time? But yeah, I was pissed off that you don’t get a chance to win at it, but we have to fight for that mindset all the time.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com