NBA: 5 most disappointing teams midway through the 2021-22 season
By Kyle McKee
Boston Celtics
Even though the Boston Celtics are having a better season than the Atlanta Hawks, it sure doesn’t seem that way. The Celtics are currently in tenth in the East — the final Play-in spot — with a record of 21-21.
This Celtics team has been one of the hardest squads to figure out.
They started the season off in a peculiar fashion as rookie head coach Ime Udoka called out the team, teammates were publicly sniping at each other, players meetings were called, and the team was booed at home multiple times.
They’ll lose to a LA Clippers team without Paul George which they did on Dec. 29th and then come back two nights later and beat the team with the best record in the league, the Phoenix Suns, without Jayson Tatum.
With that being said, Boston’s season can be best summed up best by what happened on January 6th.
On the road against a blue-collar Knicks team, the Celtics dominated the Knicks the entire first half. They held a 24-point lead with less than two minutes left in the first half but the Knicks ended the half on an 8-0 run, cutting the lead to 16.
In the second half, the Celtics re-established a 20-point lead with 5:33 left in the third on a Dennis Schroder three-point play, From then on though it was all New York as they outscored the Celtics 61 to 42 in the second half, including 31 to 21 in the fourth quarter. Celtics did remain in the game but lost in heartbreaking fashion as RJ Barrett banked in a near impossible-looking three-pointer at the buzzer over the out-stretched hand of Jayson Tatum.
The Celtics need to turn things around quickly if they want to salvage their season.
Their offense is way too dependent on Tatum and Brown. The two all-stars combine to take 40.2 field goals a game. That’s the most amongst any teammates in the NBA. A lot of their dependency on Tatum and Brown is due to the coaching staff and the players themselves. But Brown and Tatum need to do a better job of creating looks for their teammates. The same goes for the coaching staff.
With that being said though, looking at the Celtics roster, it’s hard to blame them for wanting the rock in Tatum and Brown’s hands as much as possible. The likes of Marcus Smart, Romeo Langford, Robert Williams, Aaron Nesmith, Payton Pritchard, and Dennis Schroder are not players opposing defenses are scared of at all. However, with how ball-dominant Tatum and Brown are, it’s hard for any other player to even have a chance to showcase what they can do.
It might be in the Celtics’ best interest to focus on developing their young talent for the rest of the season. See what they’ve got in Aaron Nesmith, Romeo Langford, and Payton Pritchard, and planning for the future is better for the franchise. Especially, considering how stacked the top of the East is and how far back the Celtics are from contending.