SAN FRANCISCO — The Celtics have not looked like contenders for the majority of the past month but that changed on Monday against the Warriors. Jayson Tatum led a balanced scoring effort from the defending champions as the visitors crushed Golden State 125-85 in their biggest road victory of the year.
The victory continued a pattern in which the Celtics have alternated wins and losses over the past nine games. Boston is 11-9 overall since Dec. 7, putting them a great deal behind top contenders like the Cavs and Thunder at the top of the NBA.
Despite that inconsistency, Boston look like an energized group on Monday and Tatum explained what type of tactics the team is trying to use to stay engaged throughout a regular season grind.
“I think understanding just I’ve been through it before,” Tatum said. “And I’ve been through spurts of the season where I was trying to rush to get to the end and skip steps. And it resulted in us losing in the conference finals, whereas last year we didn’t get bored, we didn’t skip steps. We just tried to get a little bit better every day and we know the result of that. So keeping that in perspective and just understanding it’s hard.
“It’s hard to win night-in and night-out in the league. I don’t think it’s a question of, like, are we bored or not. It’s tough. We get everybody’s best shot. We put a lot of work in and sometimes we don’t play as well as we would like to. And that can be frustrating sometimes. But I wouldn’t say we’re bored or anything.”
Instead Tatum and the Celtics are trying to focus on some of the little things to keep things fresh amid the 100-plus game slog. Multiple players including Tatum, Jrue Holiday and Derrick White have been playing basketball since the Paris Olympics so finding that level of engagement is crucial.
“Just try to find some motivation,” Tatum said. “Try to keep it fun. It’s a long season, it’s 82 games. You don’t want to skip steps but you know what’s most important is the playoffs and things like that. But how do you find joy and keep things fun and entertaining throughout the course of the season. That’s the cool part about it and I think that’s very important as well.”
With three more playoff opponents still awaiting Boston on this trip, the challenge still remains of stringing together these types of wins. However, Boston has been a better team all year long on the road (15-5) is a sign Boston has been able to lock in more away from TD Garden. Amid the ups and downs in the win-loss column, Mazzulla is liking the progress he’s seen since a dismal outing in Toronto.
“I’ve liked a lot of the things we’ve been doing on both sides of the ball,” Mazzulla said. “You’ve just got to fight for process vs results as far as that, and I think the consistency of that could lead to further success. So we saw that for the most part today as well.”
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