Celtics Look Like a Championship Team to Close Road Trip Over Bucks

The Celtics looked up at halftime at a familiar sight, shooting over 50% from the field and three, ahead by 20 points and with 75 points for the 10th time this season. Wednesday’s offensive onslaught in Miami never ended as the team traveled 1,500 miles north. It only cooled slightly to 133 points and 56.2% shooting after scoring 43 points in the first quarter. Boston’s sixth-best mark in a quarter this year fell 10 points behind their historic start in the previous game — their second-most in franchise history.

It looked familiar, Jayson Tatum’s connective passing leading him close to a triple-double he passed out of an open three at the end of the third quarter to attempt one more time. Jaylen Brown’s 26 points led the team after 43 in Miami. Sam Hauser hit all his shots again and Boston missed few as a team. Between the win over the Heat and the first half on Friday, the Celtics connected on 84-of-148 shots from the field (56.8% FG) and 33-of-66 threes (50% 3PT). In the first quarters — Boston combined to start 35-for-53 (66% FG) and 19-for-27 (70.4% 3PT). Hardly ever missing. And of course, after the opening frame in Miami, Joe Mazzulla nit-picked the team’s defense in the ESPN broadcast’s timeout interview.

That always helps, and ultimately doesn’t define a team that overall ranks 21st in scoring, 18th in shooting (46.6% FG) and tied for eighth in three-point efficiency (46.6% 3PT). Their 55.1 eFG% checks in at 12th. Shooting no longer ranks as their superpower, especially as Tatum tries to find consistency one month into his return, Brown’s early-season scorcher from the mid-range cools down and Derrick White’s season-long woes largely continue. But the Celtics haven’t focused on shooting lights-out this season. They simply want to shoot more than their opponents, which explains why a streaky-shooting group looked up on Friday night a hair behind the Nuggets for the best offensive rating in basketball.

And resembling every bit of an NBA champion as they stampeded through the final steps of their road trip.

The Celtics enter their final five games on Sunday nearing full health with Nikola Vučević approaching a return from surgery before the playoffs, effectively locked in the two-seed with a 2.5 game edge on the Knicks and navigating through an open Eastern Conference led by Detroit, currently missing their star Cade Cunningham. Tatum said earlier this month what increasingly became apparent earlier this year: there’s no guarantee in coming years that Boston will have a better chance to win a championship than this summer.

That still leaves questions. Actual shooting results will matter more in the playoffs for this group. You only have to look back at last postseason’s meltdown against New York to see that. This year’s team found a different strength to lean on in offensive rebounding, an obvious counter to shooting variance that sometimes makes Boston’s offense appear unstoppable. Only the Rockets, Hornets, Blazers and Pistons grab a greater share of their misses on offense than the Celtics (33.7 OREB%). A playoff series allows for greater attention and intensity by opponents toward boxing-out.

Boston’s rate actually increasing into the playoffs last spring raises hope for that number sustaining. And over the past 15 games, only the Spurs have given up a small offensive rebounding share than the Celtics. Elsewhere, their margins are thin, they don’t get to the free throw line often despite Brown’s late-season efforts to will his way there, they haven’t forced many turnovers lately and as mentioned — don’t shoot at an elite level. Instead, they’ve returned to their defensive principles, rarely fouling, holding opponents to the sixth-lowest shooting efficiency in the league over the last 15 games and continuing to never turn the ball over themselves.

They’ll need Neemias Queta to hold up physically while maintaining nightly performances that hover around double-doubles. One of Baylor Scheierman, Jordan Walsh, Hugo González and Luka Garza will have to threaten opponents offensively off the bench. Payton Pritchard, a show-stopping wizard with the ball over the last two games, can’t score 0 points like he did twice early this month. They’ve received enough from those players to believe their performances can translate to at least the early stages of the playoffs.

The late stretches will fall on Brown, Tatum and White logging enormous minutes and two-way contributions. As Tatum does the unprecedented following Achilles surgery, the rigors of a championship run that numerous players have described will become an entirely different challenge for the star. A Knicks rematch appears inevitable in round two, a team that’s throttled Boston in 2-of-3 ahead of their final meeting on Thursday. Charlotte, one of the best teams in basketball since their slow start, is a statistical favorite alongside an increasingly healthy Philadelphia team and a large Toronto front line to face Boston in the first round.

Expectations will also increase given the team’s regular season feats. But lowered stakes to begin the year allowed a winner to emerge through intense focus on doing the little things, everyone understanding their roles and committing fully to whatever it takes on any given night to win. That’s allowed more Mazzulla flexibility than ever, sitting Brown several times this season, shifting role players in-and-out as they make mistakes and more recently experimenting with looks like Tatum sliding over to center.

They’ve competed in most games, pushing the Spurs and Thunder to the brink recently and rolling through the Hornets last weekend after Charlotte dominated them in Boston at the beginning of the month. Walsh’s return to the rotation recently provided moments of on-ball defensive impact that resembled his impact earlier this season. And most encouragingly, after conversations Brown affirmed on an NBC broadcast earlier this month, Tatum returned with a focus on facilitating while Brown’s scoring dominance returned of late.

The Celtics might not be the championship favorite as the postseason looms. But they’ve done everything possible to put themselves in the mix, an unthinkable outcome for this season when it began in the fall.