The Boston Celtics are spectacular, but they’re also entitled.
Every once in a while, for seemingly no reason at all, this team will produce a game that reeks of… something. It’s hard to tell quite what it is, but it’s always the same story: poor three-point shooting, bewildered bodies standing around and faces plastered with frustration.
And then they lose, both unimaginatively and pathetically. In both of the Celtics’ Game 2s, they’ve horribly underestimated their opponent and disrespected their NBA-caliber talent as if they were playing a high school practice squad.
It’s self-important self-destruction. Once the Cavaliers began executing a professional offense and knocking down shots that NBA players usually knock down, the Celtics never responded with their usual counterpunch. Then they let it snowball, taking bad shot after bad shot and continuing to disrespect their opponent defensively.
I am by no means an analytics Luddite, but when a team starts using math as a reason not to play to their own standards, I can get a bit ticked off. In the third quarter, with the Cavaliers in the midst of hitting every three-point shot imaginable, Derrick White turned his back to Darius Garland, either royally screwing up a switch assignment or simply letting him shoot.
How do the Celtics not understand that, in order for the Cavaliers to beat them, they will have to dominate the three-point margin? Did the Heat doing it in Game 2 mean nothing? Are they actually going to need another “wake-up call” game to convince them that letting statistically shaky shooters shoot is actually a viable defensive plan?
It is exhausting that this keeps happening. The Celtics’ repeated inability to win both initial home games—now losing at least one of the two in six of their last seven series—is an affront to Boston’s traditionally powerful home court advantage, now reduced to at best an even playing field and at worst—though probably in reality—a disadvantage.
This team’s persistent need to have their backs plastered against the wall in order to play at their highest level will be what loses them the title this year. After an overpowering win, the Celtics came out with a mixture of shell shock and entitled smugness, believing that the Cavaliers would simply give up and let them have this series, as was their sovereign right.
As was true after Game 2 against Miami, the narrative for the next two days will be the three-point margin. It’s true that the Cavaliers more than doubled the Celtics’ three-point efficiency, but I’ve also had it up to here with that conversation. If people want to sit around and lament about three-point variance, I won’t be partaking this time around.
That’s because missing threes is not an excuse to just hand the game away. Just once, I’d like the Celtics to just figure it out. Find a new angle, find a different advantage and exploit it. Keep shooting threes—since, no matter how much I hate it, that’s how you make comebacks—but dig in on defense. Get physical, maybe even a little too physical at times. Claw and bite your way back, and even if you can’t get there, come out with some war wounds.
Because all I’m left with after this one is the same questions and probably the same answers. I fully expect the Celtics to win Game 3 by some preposterous margin, as they now have to dwell on their rank amateur incompetence for an entire flight over to Cleveland and will probably, as usual, lash out on the court.
But there you see a different entitlement: my own. I came into tonight after watching the one-dimensional Cavaliers struggle to do simple things in Game 1 and expected a cakewalk in Game 2. Once again, I was Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, hoping that this time, Lucy wouldn’t pull it away and the heart-attack Celtics could just dominate a series without the customary self-detonation.
Everyone under the sun will expect a Celtics bounce back, because that’s just how this team operates, I guess. But they very well might lose, like when last year’s home losses in the Eastern Conference Finals failed to wake the Celtics up. Once they finally figured it out, it was too late and they had run out of margin for error.
And I’m sick of it. One of these days, the slothful arrogance and entitlement—both from the Celtics and myself—will catch up with us and it’ll be too late to turn around. The sky hasn’t fallen yet, but will we even notice if it does?
