CelticsWeek #16: Into the break

A bit of an odd edition CelticsWeek this time around, as we’re lumping in the Celtics’ final two games before the break to create a jumbo-sized pre-All-Star Break version. Let’s get into it.

Boston Celtics, Weeks 16 and 17: 5-0 record, +74 differential

Wednesday, February 7: W vs Atlanta, 125-117

Friday, February 9: W vs Washington, 133-129

Sunday, February 11: W @ Miami, 110-106

Tuesday, February 13: W @ Brooklyn, 118-110

Wednesday, February 14: W vs Brooklyn, 136-86

The Celtics walked a razor-thin wire for the first four of these games. It’s the kind of stretch that stirs up some angst even as the team remains in the win column. The Wizards are one of the worst teams in basketball, and the Nets aren’t far behind — how are these teams pushing the best team in basketball so hard? These are the ups and downs of an 82-game regular season, though. It’s just how it goes. Leading the NBA in record by 5.5 games, the Celtics have a target on their back in every game that they play. What’s important is that they closed these games out and continued to stack up wins.

The Atlanta Hawks were playing reasonably strong basketball heading into Wednesday’s game, winners of four of their last five games before falling to the Celtics (sans Jrue Holiday). The two teams were closely knotted for much of the night, before the Celtics surged in the fourth to put the Hawks to bed. The Wizards game was uglier — the Celtics defense had no answers for a lowly Washington offense, allowing 81 first half points before reclaiming the lead behind a 36-16 third quarter.

Since losing seven straight games in January, the Miami Heat have regained some of their mojo. Similar to Atlanta, they won four of their past five games heading into their tilt with the Celtics, and though they lacked the services of Jimmy Butler (personal reasons), they gave Boston all they could handle. The Celtics took the lead at the end of the first quarter and never relinquished it, leading by as many as 12 points but having to fend off a late Miami surge to hang onto the win.

Finally, the Celtics closed out the pre-break stretch on a pretty decent note. Facing a home-and-home series with the Nets, they comfortably fended off Brooklyn in the first game behind a 41-point outing from Jayson Tatum, before absolutely busting the doors down in the second. A 50-point whalloping of the Nets at TD Garden has to feel good, as does becoming just the third team in NBA history to win multiple games by 50+ points in a single season. Tatum and the rest of the starters hit the bench especially early in a game where only Payton Pritchard eclipsed the 30-minute mark, providing an early start to an eight-day vacation.

Jim Rassol-USA TODAY Sports

Player of the Week: Kristaps Porzingis

4 GP, 28 MPG, 26.3 PPG (60% FG, 56% 3PT), 7 REB, 1.5 BLK, +28

It’s been difficult to find a window to talk about Porzingis in this space. Though he’s played at a consistently high level all season long and the Celtics have looked especially potent when he takes the court, a number of nagging injuries and the organization’s highly cautious approach to his health have made it quite rare to see the colossal big man to play all of the team’s games in a given week.

Indeed, we’re still missing a game here — he sat out the road win against Brooklyn as part of his usual back-to-back rest swap with Horford — but the other four are compelling enough to take him over the top. Apologies to Tatum, who had another strong week, but it’s time, at last, to talk about the unicorn in the room.

On the macro level, Porzingis is having the best season of his career on a per-minute basis. He’s scoring 20 points per game, grabbing seven rebounds and swatting about two shots, par for the course for his standards, but his efficiency has found a whole new level. Shooting 64% inside the arc and 37% behind it, he’s recording a comical 60% effective field goal percentage that easily breezes past his previous career high (56.5%, last season). Defensively, he’s as effective of a deterrent as he’s been in his career, averaging 1.9 blocks per game and allowing a defensive field goal percentage of 42.5%, best among centers facing at least 15 attempts per game, per NBA Stats.

Offensively, his hyper-efficiency was on display in these games. Porzingis maximized every shot attempt he saw during this stretch, and apart from the Brooklyn blowout, the Celtics needed every point. He eclipsed the 30-point threshold against Atlanta and Washington and tacked on 25 against Miami, and his averages for the week would look even gaudier if his services had been necessary for more than just 16 minutes against Brooklyn — 16 minutes in which he still managed 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting. He made at least two threes and blocked a shot in each game. That combination of skills may not be quite as rare as it was when Porzingis entered the league in 2015, but we can’t take for granted its value.

The Porzingis experience in Boston has been a good, if fragile, one thus far. The Celtics look like a different beast when he’s able to play, and though he’s missed a fair amount of games, he’s also avoided any injuries with longer term consequences. They need him on the court when the postseason arrives.

The Parquet Play: Boston’s (other) big-time dunker

Jaylen Brown may be the one in the Slam Dunk Contest, but let’s take a moment to appreciate Jayson Tatum for his work on the rim. He may not have the same kind of violent athleticism or creative flair as his co-star, but for my money, his brute-force, two-handed jams are nearly as satisfying.

Around the League: Trade deadline fallout

Thursday, February 8 brought perhaps the most-anticipated day of a given NBA regular season — the trade deadline. In all, we saw 16 trades finalized at the deadline, along with two the day before. Nothing matched the scale of the OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam deals earlier in the season, but a few contenders found improvements on the margins. It’s worth taking a moment to examine the moves we saw that could matter.

The headliner of the day was likely the most relevant move to the Celtics’ interests: the New York Knicks fortified their rotation by bringing in Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks from the Detroit Pistons. While I think the duo might be a little overstated on their own — we’re talking about two players well into their 30s who were rotation players for one of the worst teams of all time — they should be a net positive in New York. Quentin Grimes, two second-rounders and salary filler is hardly a steep price to pay.

On paper, these Knicks are deep now, but we’ve yet to see that depth on the court and don’t have an idea of how it will lend itself to postseason success. They’ve lost four straight games since acquiring the Detroit duo, really hurting in the absences of Julius Randle and OG Anunoby, and some of the buzz has toned down a touch. The Knicks can roll nine or 10 deep on quality NBA players (depending on how you feel about Precious Achiuwa), but they remain a playoff contender dependent on an undersized lead guard (Jalen Brunson) and a forward who has struggled greatly in the postseason (Randle). That’s not a combination historically indicative of title contention. How they assemble all of these pieces when they return to full strength will make for one of the most interesting storylines in the Eastern Conference down the stretch.

Elsewhere, old friend Grant Williams found himself on the move again, perhaps unsurprisingly. Never quite feeling like a clean fit in Dallas — and having fallen out of a playoff team’s regular rotation for a second season in a row — the Mavericks shipped Williams to Charlotte along with Seth Curry and a potentially very valuable 2027 first round pick (top-two protected) in exchange for fifth-year forward PJ Washington.

This feels like a poor piece of work for Dallas. Williams probably needed to be shown to the door, but it’s not entirely clear that Washington is much of an upgrade. Stylistically, he brings some shot creation juice that Williams lacks, but on a broad scale, he’s an inefficient scorer who has gotten worse every season and at best an unproven defender (Charlotte’s system certainly hasn’t set him up to look good on that end of the floor). Sending out a lightly-protected first rounder to make this swap could be a move we look back on as an utter catastrophe. Effectively trading a 2028 pick swap (via Oklahoma City) to add center Daniel Gafford ups the risk factor even more.

Other moves of note include the Thunder acquiring Charlotte’s Gordon Hayward, giving them a useful wing who can fill some gaps in their rotation (if healthy). The 76ers acquired Buddy Hield as part of their fence-sitting approach to the remainder of the season, as they wait to discover whether Joel Embiid will return for the postseason. The Suns and Bucks added some defense for relatively low cost, with the former picking up wing Royce O’Neal and the latter guard Patrick Beverley. The Minnesota Timberwolves added a useful rotation guard in Monte Morris as part of the ongoing Pistons fire sale.

Next Up: Vacation

Wednesday’s 50-point win sent the Celtics into a nice stretch of rest on a high note. Apart from Tatum and Brown’s appearances in the All-Star Break (and Brown’s performance in the Slam Dunk Contest), the Celtics will be off entirely through Thursday, February 22. A well-earned rest for the best team in basketball.

When they return, they’ll face a two-game half-week, traveling to Chicago to face the Bulls that Thursday before traveling to New York for an intriguing matchup with the new-look Knicks. Without a doubt, we’ll all be jonesing for Celtics basketball by that point, so we’ll be back with a new version of CelticsWeek to examine the team’s return to play — perhaps with some bonus coverage of this weekend’s All-Star celebrations.