Jaylen Brown demanded more urgency out of his Boston Celtics after an ugly loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder earlier this week. The team somewhat responded, revenging a previous 21-point beatdown by knocking off the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday. However, as has been the case for most of the season, the highs were short-lived.
As I write this article, the Cs are currently trailing the San Antonio Spurs by 29 points at halftime. Jayson Tatum has accounted for 24 points. No other Celtic has made more than one shot as the rest of the team has combined for a total of 24 points.
Beyond tonight, Boston has eight more games remaining. They should be jockeying for better seeding in a uber-competitive Eastern Conference. Instead, they’re looking more and more like a team whose inconsistencies and lapses will continue to hold them back come playoff time.
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Richard Jefferson Does Not Believe in the Celtics
ESPN’s Richard Jefferson, who knows a thing or two about winning at the highest level — he hoisted the Larry O’Brien Trophy in 2016 as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers — doesn’t see the same winning pedigree in this season’s Celtics team.
“This Celtics team, this is not the same talented Celtics team that you’ve seen the last three or four years,” Jefferson said on ESPN’s The Jump. “And you just have to take away that and just understand that this year I don’t think it’s going to end pretty for them.“
Jefferson harped on the team’s recent showings against the Hornets and Thunder for why he lacks faith in the Celtics.
“When you watched this team even against Charlotte, the Boston Celtics, they were just a step slow and I don’t want to hear about who they didn’t have,” he noted. “Yes, they were missing Kemba Walker. Yes, they were missing Jayson Tatum. You know who they did have on the court? They had Marcus Smart, they had Jaylen Brown, who was an All-Star. They had Tristan Thompson. Payton Pritchard had a career-high. So they had guys who are contributing — Evan Fournier. So they might have had five of the top six players on the court ultimately they just didn’t have a sense of urgency and they were down 10 and they just never got it going.“
Celtics Booed at Home
As we alluded to earlier, Friday’s game against the Spurs isn’t going quite the Celtics’ way. After a horrendous showing in the first half, the fans at TD Garden let their team hear it.
The Celtics heard boos from fans in Boston as the Spurs led by 20+. pic.twitter.com/aVbTX7xkkb
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) May 1, 2021
Despite their victory over the Hornets on Wednesday, the team appears well on their way to their fifth loss over their last seven games. Certainly a horrendous ending to the month of April that looked so promising just a few weeks ago — previously highlighted by a six-game winning streak.
Suddenly, the Cs not only look like a team primed to disappoint come playoff time, but with another handful of losses they could very well see their place in the playoffs slip out of their hands altogether.
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