When the Boston Celtics arrived at Washington’s Capital One Arena to take on the Wizards for a matinee on Jan. 23, there was no indication it would serve as the turning point of Boston’s tumultuous season.
The Celtics had been coming off one of their most dispiriting losses of the season, blowing a double-digit, fourth-quarter lead at home to the Portland Trail Blazers, who were without star point guard Damian Lillard.
Jayson Tatum had missed 18 consecutive 3-point shots over a four-game stretch. The team’s offense had hovered around the NBA’s bottom 10. And the Celtics had fallen to 23-24 and 10th place in the Eastern Conference — a half-game ahead of the New York Knicks for the final spot in the play-in tournament.
More than halfway through this season, Boston looked headed for a brief stint in the playoffs — if it made it there at all.
Then came the 116-87 demolition of the Wizards, which saw Tatum score 51 and lift Boston back to .500 on the season. In the locker room afterward, Marcus Smart sensed change was afoot.
“After that game, we just had this mentality and mindset and this sense of urgency that we can feel that a change was starting,” Smart says. “Once that got rolling, and we got on the right track, it was just smooth sailing from there.”
Since that moment, the Celtics have transformed into arguably the NBA’s best team, finishing the regular season with the league’s top record (28-7), offense (120.2 points per 100 possessions) and defense (104.8).
And, after sweeping Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and the Brooklyn Nets in the first round of the playoffs, Boston has a chance to tie its East semifinal showdown with the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks with a road win in Game 4 on Monday (7:30 p.m. ET, TNT).
But one of the more remarkable midseason turnarounds in NBA history didn’t actually begin on Jan. 23. It began long before the results showed on the court.
“I don’t think,” Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens said, “that anybody would have guessed that it was gonna take off like it did.”
How Boston discovers its blueprint
The Celtics’ low point came on Nov. 1, just seven games into the season. After blowing a 14-point lead to the Chicago Bulls, who outscored the Celtics 39-11 in the final frame, Smart called out Boston’s superstar wing tandem.
“Every team knows we’re trying to go to Jayson and Jaylen,” Smart told reporters postgame. “Every team is programmed and studied to stop Jayson and Jaylen. I think everybody’s scouting report is to make those guys pass the ball. They don’t want to pass the ball.”
The moment was a mile-marker on a campaign — helmed by a trio of talented perimeter players that have taken part in well north of 50 playoff games for Boston — that seemed destined to disappoint for a second straight season.
Instead, it became a distant reminder of the turnaround — and what eventually started clicking for Boston.
“We have a lot of great guys on the team, so it was just a matter of figuring out how to play together,” Grant Williams says. “Same thing with Ime [Udoka, who is a] first-year head coach, so all just learning how to establish ourselves not only in the league, but also establishing the blueprint the Celtics want to have.
“As we’ve grown, we know exactly what we want and exactly what we are.”
After Marcus Smart intentionally misses at the line, the Celtics can’t get a shot off in time and the Bucks take Game 3 103-101.
Some of the Celtics’ early woes were out of their control. Brown and Al Horford missed chunks of training camp, and Horford missed time in December after he entered the league’s health and safety protocols. Smart, for his part, entered protocols in January and missed six games.
Boston also reversed its poor shooting luck. While Boston was 16th in the league in Second Spectrum’s quantified shot probability through Jan. 22, it showed up in some particularly ugly losses, like when the Celtics had the single worst…
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