How they started

The Boston Celtics earned an exceptional 28-12 record through the first 40 games of this season as they sat atop the Eastern Conference, with their fan base feeling exuberant about the team’s hopes of getting back to the NBA Finals this spring. They were dominating teams with ease and were displaying historic offensive performances after last season’s committed dedication to the defensive end of the floor.

According to forbes.com, Boston led the league in true shooting percentage (62.5%), while shooting over forty percent from three-point range as a team in the first twenty games of the season. The Celtics were off to a scorching start, and it was all a matter of time before they would be cooled down—and more importantly—how they would respond.

The consistency of key contributors

Although the Celtics brought back most of its team from their run last season, they brought in Malcolm Brogdon via trade, and the 30-year-old Atlanta native has been nothing short of a steadying presence in times of need for Boston all season. Despite missing a few games due to minor injuries, Brogdon has provided a spark all while being a consummate professional in coming off of the bench, and it’s led to him being a strong candidate for the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award.

Despite the struggles that Grant Williams has endured this season, he is still more than capable of having a big night. He recently proved that in Boston’s upsetting 118-117 loss in Utah Saturday night, shooting 7-for-12 from 3-point range as part of a 23-point performance.

Both Al Horford and Derrick White have been incredible for much of this season—Horford has played a bevy of minutes at the five spot with Robert Williams III missing a lot of time due to injury, while White has been stellar in the number of games that he’s started for Boston when Marcus Smart has not been available.

Ultimately, while both Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown continue to star as the two cornerstones of this championship-aspiring roster, this is all an extended way of saying that the aforementioned role players must strive to ascend to another level in the coming weeks.

Remaining level-headed through the tough moments

During the current six-game road trip that the Celtics have embarked on, it has been headlined by two heart-wrenching losses to a lowly, bottom-of-the-league Houston Rockets team, and, more recently, an inferior opponent in the Utah Jazz. Both of these losses have resulted in fan base-related frustration because of how Boston squandered late-game advantages.

Another recent issue with the Celtics has been their lack of end-of-game management and composure. Many have been clamoring for other trustworthy guards to be in the lineup for crunchtime minutes. When you factor in the three above-average guards that Head Coach Joe Mazzulla has at his disposal—Smart, Brogdon, and White—it’s simply challenging to fault Mazzulla for making a wrong substitution decision at the end of games. However, there requires more of a trial and error approach to which guard enters the end of the game—especially while the regular season is still ongoing against subservient opponents.

The Celtics must retain a classic, yet reliable approach of not getting too high during the highs, and not getting too low amid the lows. This mentality will only assist the team in venturing to where they desire to go.

The road ahead

With the Celtics being two full games back of the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks, and in a proverbial tie with the Philadelphia 76ers for second place in the Eastern Conference, the sense of urgency should only raise in the final weeks of the regular season.

After the team wraps up the final game of a lengthy road trip on Tuesday in Sacramento, Boston will play just three of its remaining nine games away from the TD Garden parquet. More importantly, though, a pair of those road games will be against the previously mentioned two teams that Boston is battling against for seeding at the top of the East.

At some point in the next few days, Boston will likely have Robert Williams III back in the lineup, which will only bolster the rest of the starting unit. It will be vital for Williams to gain some added cohesion with his teammates in the final games of the regular season, something that he wasn’t able to accomplish last season.

Within the final ten games of the regular season, Boston will oppose seven objectively lesser opponents at home—these include Indiana, San Antonio, Washington, Utah, Toronto, and Atlanta. These games appear as contests that most would favor the Celtics in, meaning that the team should be able to focus on marquee matchups against Sacramento, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia.

Overall, there are three performance-based tasks that the Celtics must both attain and withstand throughout the final games of the regular season and into the early stages of the playoffs—Stay healthy and prep your starting lineup, don’t play down to lesser opponents and lastly, remain well-focused and execute in the late minutes of close games. If Boston can reach these three points at a high level in the coming weeks, they will be poised for a deep playoff run yet again. Nonetheless, they need to do it all swiftly and efficiently.