The Crossover: Celtics Are in Conversation to Win the East

Our Celtics skepticism has finally come to an end.

Rob Ferguson/USA TODAY Sports

Mannix and Beck take a look at the Celtics, who are poised to be one of the top teams in the East heading into the playoffs after an abysmal start. The guys also take a look at the Heat and what their weaknesses are compared to the team that reached the Finals in 2020.

The following is an automatically generated transcript from The Crossover NBA podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.

Chris Mannix: I want to talk about the Celtics here. We’ve done this a few times on the podcast, but this has been quite the week for the Boston Celtics. They go on the road, a four-game West Coast road trip, which takes them through a couple of good contenders in the Western Conference. And all these West Coast road trips are tough in general. But they go to Golden State and they beat the Warriors by 22 in a game that, quite frankly, wasn’t that close. They were thumping the Warriors from start to finish. They then go to Sacramento, and on the heels of blasting out Sacramento by like 50 or whatever it was in Boston, a couple of months ago, they beat the Kings by 29. They then go to Denver, a tough place to play, especially as you’re winding down a road trip, and they bust up the Nuggets by 20 points. The closest game of this four-game road trip was the final one in Oklahoma City, where they allow the Thunder to get back in it before beating them by nine. 

Howard, we talked about the Celtics and I think the two of us have had a discussion about Boston with a healthy dose of skepticism. Like, all right, they’re on fire right now, they’re playing well, Tatum’s great, yada yada. But a four-game road trip where they beat the crap out of Golden State and Denver. In addition to wins over Sacramento and Oklahoma City. What does that tell you about the state of the Celtics? And are we ready to kind of declare Boston as up there with Miami, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Milwaukee, whoever is at the top of the Eastern Conference as one of the teams to beat?

Howard Beck: You said it, Chris. You and I have been, not holdouts, but just kind of like, O.K., this is nice, let’s see if it continues, kind of wait and see. We’ve been fooled too many times by this team, not just this season but the last couple of years. It's always kind of hard to get a gauge on these guys. And it's roughly the same essential core, right? You know, new coach, some new pieces here and there, some guys who are emerging. But I think it's hard to proclaim, O.K., suddenly they've arrived when we’ve had all these kinds of false starts over the last couple of years in the Jayson Tatum–Jaylen Brown era. 

All of that said, yeah, I’m ready. They’re there Chris, they are there. They are in the conversation to win the East. They are as legitimate a team to win the East as any of the others, right? And that field right now, it’s four, maybe five, depending on how we feel about the Nets. And so the Bucks, defending champs. Sixers, Embiid and Harden. The Miami Heat have been first for a lot of the season. And we know they’re just a really tough team. Maybe the Nets if they somehow can win their way out of the play-in, possibly without Kyrie. And it’s the Celtics. 

So a couple of quick numbers here. Because first of all, I want to remind people of where they were and why we did have skepticism. December 29, this team was 16–19, three games under .500. Since then, they are 29–9. That is the second-best record in the NBA since December 29, second only to Phoenix, just ahead of Dallas, Memphis, Minnesota and Philadelphia. So they’ve been one of the best teams since the start of the year and going back a couple of days into December, their net rating in that time, Chris, is a plus-12.3 per 100, which is No. 1 by far in that two and a half, three months. 12.3 net, the next best team is Phoenix at 9.5, then Memphis at 7.5, and again, Minnesota, the Timberwolves keep popping up, at seven. 

The Celtics in that time have the No. 1 defense by far in defensive efficiency and the No. 5 offense. So if you’re top five in offensive and defensive efficiency, you’re almost a contender by definition. Now, they’re not for the season, because for the season they’re No. 1 in defense, but No. 11 in offense, just outside the top 10. But since December 29, they’re the No. 5 offense. So this team is by all statistical, by win-loss, by net rating, they’re absolutely there. We could get into the weeds about personnel and stuff too, and how that plays out. But there is no question that at this point we have to say that the Celtics are as good a bet to win the East as anybody else.

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