The Celtics ended a gauntlet of a month on Tuesday night with an 11-5 record after a 129-124 win over the Pacers. The road to the victory did not come easy for Boston after surrounding 64 points in the paint and 31 second chance points to a frisky Pacers squad including former Celtics draft pick Aaron Nesmith that was able to erase a 20-point lead in the third quarter. However, the Celtics locked down late, limiting the visitors to just 21 fourth-quarter points including critical stops late in the second half of the back-to-back.
There will be plenty to work on for both ends of the floor after the victory but scoring yet another victory over a playoff opponent speaks volumes for a team that is running on fumes at the moment. No other team in the NBA played a tougher schedule in January than Boston and while the Celtics were far from perfect, they handled it better than many of their adversaries.
Entering Wednesday, Boston currently holds a 4.5-game lead over the Bucks with 34 games remaining in the regular season. They hold a 3.5-game lead over the Timberwolves for the best record in the NBA. The 76ers, once their closest competition for the No. 1 spot in the East, fell to the fifth seed on Wednesday after their fourth straight loss to the Warriors.
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The opportunity is there now after Tuesday’s win for Boston to really get a comfortable lead in the standings as the calendar turns to February, if the team can fight off the midseason doldrums. That’s a feat this group can achieve according to Jaylen Brown.
“I think we’ve been holding our ground,” Brown said. “I think, obviously we haven’t been as sharp or as perfect as we would like to have been. But I feel like we came out, we played a level of basketball that is our standard, I feel like we’ve shared the ball. We’ve missed some shots. We got off to some slow starts in some games that got away from us.
“For the most part, we’ve been a physically tough, mentally tough team. And I think that’s important, that we haven’t skipped any steps. We haven’t let the rope go, we’ve been guarding our ass off all year, we’ve been moving the ball pretty much all year, we’ve been rebounding the ball well all year, and those are all good signs to a good team. So I think we haven’t skipped any steps. This is a tough moment, guys are out, tough part of the season mentally for everybody. And I think we’ve been responding well.”
The path is there for the Celtics to take that next step. They only play one over .500 team in their next eight games before the All-Star break and that’s a Heat team that has currently lost seven straight games. The never-ending string of playoff opponents and tough fights may be coming to an end and that will allow for lower minutes and more rest if this team executes the way they can. On the flip side, the Bucks have the seventh toughest schedule remaining in the NBA while the Sixers, Knicks and Cavs are dealing with key injuries to their starters. The door is open for Boston to run away with the Conference in the regular season if they want to. All signs about this group so far this year have shown that capability, including Tuesday night.
“I think we play hard,” Jrue Holiday said. “I think there’s parts of the game where we execute very well and there’s parts of the game that we don’t. Especially a team like Indiana who plays fast, plays random, plays hard, they came out in that third and had 30-plus points. So I think toward the end of the game we kind of locked in and took the game over. But winning’s hard. I’m glad we won.”
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