Maintaining a number one seed in the NBA is never without sudden obstacles – even in the up-and-down Eastern Conference – and the Boston Celtics are experiencing it now. They are continuing to hit bumps on their path, as they have lost three in a row, all against teams who are below or just a shade above the .500 mark.

When tracing the struggle, however, one can see that the problem stretches beyond their past three outings. Though the Celtics are still ranked third in ESPN’s power rankings, their offense has immensely cooled off in the past five weeks.

“Cooled off” might not even enough describe it; the Celts’ offense seemingly got extinguished. Counting the stats beginning December 15th, they are now dead-last in the league in offensive efficiency – uncharacteristic for arguably the best-coached and most well-oiled team in the East.

Speaking of the coach, Brad Stevens is noticing his men’s unsteady O. Here’s what he told Jared Weiss of USA Today following Thursday’s 89-80 defeat to the young Philadelphia 76ers:

“I’m disappointed in our offensive effort… I just didn’t think we played hard enough on offense.”
“We were very sloppy, over-dribbled, dribble didn’t take us anywhere, not moving the ball, not getting to spots. And when Kyrie’s out, you’ve got to be even better at those things. So, and then at the end of the game, you turn it up to a different level on offense, and good things happen.”

The succeeding game, which ended in an embarrassing 103-95 home loss to the lowly Orlando Magic, had more of the same “sloppy” play that Stevens mentioned. In the game, Kyrie Irving and Jaylen Brown were left to carry the team, as the rest of the Celtics shot an abysmal 32 percent from the floor – the bench combined to only go 4-for-19 from the field.

With the almost inexplicable drop in their scoring attack, the Celtics have also plummeted to the 17th spot in BasketballReference.com's offensive ratings. Furthermore, the Celtics are now last in the NBA with just 101.6 points per 100 possessions, per NBA.com.