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The Boston Celtics nailed down one of their most impressive wins of the season on Friday night, routing the Indiana Pacers by a score of 117-97 on the road to all but ensure themselves of home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
Barring something weird like the Philadelphia 76ers losing out for the rest of the season, the Celtics will end up with the 4-seed and the Pacers will follow at No. 5, meaning Boston would face Indiana in the opening round next week.
Taking that into consideration, this was a major statement game from a C's team that was even missing Jaylen Brown in the win. Keep in mind that this was also the second time the Celtics had beaten the Pacers in a week, as they also topped Indy in Beantown last Friday.
Without Victor Oladipo, it seems hard to imagine the Pacers having much of a chance against the Celtics in a seven-game series. Yes, they have been fighting admirable since Oladipo went down in late January. Yes, they are a really good defensive club. Yes, they are tough. Yes, they are scrappy.
But they simply don't have the talent to truly contend with a Boston club that should dispatch of Indiana in six games or less in a playoff series.
Of course, the C's should have done a lot of things this season. They should have won 60 games. They should have beaten bad teams regularly. They should have been the No. 1 or 2 seed in the Eastern Conference.
However, due to injuries and maddening inconsistency across the board, the Celtics seriously found themselves in the position of having to fight for home-court advantage in the final week of the regular season.
Now, just to be clear, Boston hasn't locked it up just yet, as it will have to win of its last two games or see Indiana lose each of its last two contests, but given that the Celtics' last two contests are at home against the Orlando Magic (against whom Boston is seeking some revenge) and on the road against a defeated Washington Wizards club, it seems safe to say that Boston has this in the bag.
All that matters is that the C's are now playing some pretty fine basketball, having put together back-to-back impressive road wins, as they also defeated the Miami Heat in South Beach on Wednesday night.
The thing is, this is not the same Celtics team from earlier in the season. I know that may sound cliche, but it's the truth.
Brad Stevens was not employing this frontcourt pairing of Aron Baynes and Al Horford—the duo that led Boston through much of the playoffs last year—throughout the season. Gordon Hayward was not playing this well. Brown was not playing with this much confidence.
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Everything seems to be clicking for the C's right now. Would it have been nice if this began happening back in November or December? Of course, but sometimes, you play the hand that you're dealt, and that is exactly what the Celtics are doing.
Honestly, Boston really could not have picked a better time to peak.
Talent was never the problem with this club. It was how well it played as a collective unit and whether or not Hayward was ever going to begin to rediscover his old form at some point.
But lately, Hayward has been a monster, as evidenced by his 9-for-9 performance that led to 21 points on Friday evening, and his 25-point outing against the Heat earlier in the week.
And as for the rest of the team? Dare I say that the guys are beginning to look…comfortable?
“Comfortable” is really not a word we could have used with the Celtics at any point this season. Yes, they had their moments when they looked like world-beaters, but then they had times where they looked completely and utterly lost.
Comfort breeds consistency, and consistency is something that Boston has never had throughout the 2018-19 campaign. But, it looks like the C's are beginning to develop that consistency now.
This team is so talented and so deep that all it really needed to do was flip a switch. Maybe the switch was behind a bunch of things that the Celtics needed to move, and maybe the stuff they needed to move weighed thousands of pounds.
Whatever the case may be and however difficult that switch was to access, the Celtics have appeared to find a way to press it, and they have done so right at the buzzer.
Heck, maybe this was destined to be the case all along. Maybe Boston really was just coasting throughout the entirety of the regular season and was waiting until the playoffs to really turn it on.
Either way, the C's seem to have found something here, and that is horrible news for the rest of the Eastern Conference.
