As the Celtics’ three-game skid lengthened and they lost to two sub-.500 teams, the players congregated. C’s guard Marcus Smart said they had a players-only meeting after Friday’s loss to Sacramento, where they sat in the locker room and “self-reflected” with each other.
The early returns were sparkling. Boston beat up the Magic in a 112-96 win on Sunday in TD Garden. That ended the losing streak and brought the Celtics back to the .500 mark at 21-21. More importantly, it was a game they should’ve won and did just that.
“We asked each other: ‘How we want to end the season? How do we want to be remembered for this season?’” Smart said postgame Sunday. “Everybody agreed, this was a bad feeling and an ugly feeling that we are feeling and we don’t want to feel like this. We don’t want to look back on this season and be like, ‘Damn, we could have did this.’”
The 72-game season chugs on and Smart noted the Celtics still have time for a turnaround. There’s still 30 games left on the slate; not a wealth of time, but enough to make a marked improvement.
The Magic shot just 38.1% and 32.4% on 3-pointers as they looked uncomfortable offensively all night. Boston matched that with a 23-for-54 (42.6%) performance from beyond the arc. C’s guard Jaylen Brown scored 34 points off the efforts of a career-high 10 3-pointers, just one off franchise mark (which Smart claims).
“We sat down and we understand we haven’t been playing to the criteria that we expected and others expect us to,” Smart said. “We are a young team and we are learning. The big thing and the biggest thing about growth is understanding and accepting the faults that you are wrong for, yourself, individually, and as a team.”
Smart said last Friday the Celtics just weren’t having that much fun as a team as the losses piled up. There were some personal, off-court issues some players were dealing with, he said, while injuries and the pandemic just seemed to pile on amid a stressful time.
There’s not much that helps low-energy vibes than winning.
“We just tried to sit down and tried to figure it out and listen to one another to help, not ourselves, but the team individually and everybody,” Smart said. “Try to put everybody in the right position to succeed and we came out and it showed tonight and that’s what we have to continue to keep going.”
Of course, Boston’s issue has been consistency. There was definitely some goodwill built from Sunday’s win, but the Celtics are back in action at 9 p.m. Monday against the Grizzlies at the FedExForum for the second game of a back-to-back.
The next step is building that momentum as the Celtics look to climb higher in the Eastern Conference standings.
“It’s a huge stepping stone for us,” Brown said of the win. “We’ve been in a little bit of a funk. To come in here, early game a little bit different from our routine, to come in and get a nice comfortable win is just good for our spirit. We know that we’ve underperformed.”
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March 22, 2021 at 06:03AM
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Marcus Smart said the Celtics held a meeting to fix their season: ‘How do we want to be remembered?’ - MassLive.com
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