Celtics must look from top to the bottom to get out of recent rut: ‘It’s about us’

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Back in early January, Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla issued a challenge to the role players. At the time, he believed they were failing Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Mazzulla, often hardest on those two guys, told the rest of the players it was their obligation to step up. They needed to knock down open shots. They needed to compete with passion. They needed to take advantage of their opportunities.

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The Celtics’ recent rut can’t be pinned primarily on the supporting cast. As the numbers highlight, some of the starters have fallen short since the All-Star break. In a stat that almost feels like a typo, the Celtics have been 12.4 points per 100 possessions better with Tatum on the bench over the 13 games since.

Tatum is usually a plus/minus king, but the Celtics have actually been outscored by 16 total points over his 457 minutes played during this stretch. His poor outside shooting hasn’t helped, but the more pressing concern throughout this time has been the defense exhibited by lineups that should be among Boston’s best. San Antonio, which has the worst defense in the league, has given up 119.9 points per 100 possessions this season. Every combination of Boston’s four healthy starters has been worse than that since the All-Star break (screenshot from NBA.com):

Most of the Celtics’ best combinations have included Derrick White:

Derrick White probably deserves to play more crunchtime minutes. Even if he does, the Celtics have other problems to solve.

Based on their injury report for Tuesday’s game against Sacramento, which only included Danilo Gallinari and Payton Pritchard, Robert Williams is set to return against the Kings. He should swat away some of the team’s weaknesses. He should wipe away some of his teammates’ mistakes. His energy should ignite the rest of the team on both ends of the court.

Still, even with him back, the other starters will need to change their own focus level and attention to detail. It’s telling that Mazzulla, who has rarely lost his cool, started taking a harder stance with the Celtics recently. After Friday night’s win in Portland, Al Horford revealed that Mazzulla has challenged the team recently “to be better as a group, to be more focused and really get back to who we are.”

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Have the Celtics been bored near the end of a long regular season? If so, it would be at least somewhat understandable. They reached the NBA Finals last season. They opened this season on a tear. Regardless of how they finish the campaign, they will likely land a top-three seed. They would rather have home-court advantage in every series, but have proven they can win huge games on the road. They definitely haven’t been locked in like they were last March, but they were a desperate team at that time. They entered March of last year with the same amount of losses as the seventh-place Toronto Raptors. The Celtics were in danger of falling into the Play-In Tournament. Though a top-two seed is now in jeopardy, they aren’t in the same predicament.

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Are the Celtics simply banged up and tired? Williams has missed eight straight games. Marcus Smart recently revealed he still hasn’t fully recovered from a sprained ankle that sidelined him for seven games across January and February. Tatum has played 37.4 minutes per game, which ranks second in the league behind Pascal Siakam.

Since the All-Star break, Tatum has shown potential signs of fatigue. His 3-point shooting, wobbly even before this stretch, has cratered. He has hit just 35 of 120 tries from behind the arc (29.2 percent). Late in recent games, his production has suffered. He didn’t score against the Utah Jazz in the second half. Over his last four games, he has scored 10 points total on 1-for-12 combined shooting in the fourth quarter. He has racked up just one assist over 33 fourth-quarter minutes during that time. In each of the Celtics’ two losses on this trip, he did not score a single fourth-quarter point.

Brown has been Boston’s most consistent player throughout this stretch, averaging 27.8 points, 6.4 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game on 50.2 percent shooting. He has tried to wake up the Celtics several times recently with both his play and his words, seeming frustrated at times with the lack of urgency from his team. After a March 6 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, he was informed Smart said the team needed to fight to get its rhythm back. Though that seemed like a pretty innocent comment from Smart — even somewhat cliché — Brown responded like Smart didn’t have the right goal.

“We should be fighting to win,” Brown said. “That’s what it should be. In a rhythm or not in a rhythm, what matters is winning games. At this point of the season, I think that we are fighting to get in our own rhythms a little bit too much. And that’s from the top to the bottom.”

From the top to bottom. After the Celtics beat the Trail Blazers in the following game, Brown repeated that line again. Though Boston won comfortably, Brown didn’t love the way his team played.

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“As we are focusing on playing the right way, we gotta continue to make an emphasis,” Brown said. “We can’t get caught up in our stats and get caught up in our own individual way of thinking. At this time of the year, it’s about us. So we need to just display that from the top to the bottom.”

(Top photo of Jayson Tatum: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)