The Boston Celtics and the fleeting nature of the championship mindset

Why the Celtics’ tough stretch might just be part of the championship process.

It was very easy to see the vision for the 2023-24 Boston Celtics. Coming off an embarrassing loss to the 8-seed Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Celtics were on a mission: win the NBA Finals and dominate every step of the way. That goal was the baseline for their performances game-in, game-out. The desired result was emphasized and realized with a nearly spotless end-to-end season, one of the very best in NBA history. The Celtics embodied the Championship Mindset (TM).

We shouldn’t be surprised that they’ve been unable to repeat that performance this season. Basketball players are humans after all, even if they do things on the floor that make it feel like they’re another species. Off the floor however, you can’t fake motivation, no matter how hard I try on Friday afternoons. The Celtics are no exception to this maxim. They are very much proving the rule this season.

But does it matter? Do the Celtics actually need to repeat the sustained, concentrated excellence of last season to win another championship? Do losses in December or January matter when you’ve established a baseline of engaged performance like the Celtics have? Do the Celtics have what it takes to be champions when they aren’t attacking every game with the intensity of a playoff game (bar a handful) like they did last year? Has the championship mindset slipped out of their grasp?

It’s probably worth defining what I mean when I say they “aren’t attacking every game with intensity.” I’m not even necessarily talking about physical intensity, although you could make a pretty good argument they aren’t doing that regularly either. What’s stuck out to me is the lack of mental intensity that manifests itself in a few ways. The first, and most obvious, is lazy, careless, dumb, frustrating turnovers.

These types of plays aren’t, in and of themselves, a death knell to a game, but they are illustrative of the larger problem of a lack of focus.

It also manifests itself in execution on both ends: blown switches, attacking the wrong defenders, not boxing out, not moving the ball quick enough against a double team, wild closeouts against non-shooters.

These were not problems for the Celtics last year, at least not regularly. We are now going on a month and a half of them appearing more often than Payton Manning during commercial breaks.

However, frustrating it may be to watch, this is not a novel problem post-championship. Here’s the list of teams coming off 64+ wins and a championship since 1986:

One team gained wins in the regular season, the 2016 Warriors, and they lost in the Finals. Every other team had a worse regular season the following year, with 6 of 9 losing 8 or more games than the year previous. Six of these teams won the Finals as repeat champs despite the large drop-off in the regular season, and 3 of the 4 with the largest reductions won it all. I like those odds.

Falling off in the regular season seems to be a hallmark of many of these teams, several of them regarded as some of the best of all time. It raises the question, if the majority of the most dominant champions since 1986 had the exact same mindset as this version of the Celtics, doesn’t that make this a part of the Championship Mindset? In other words, if many of these great teams share this “fault,” isn’t it just as representative of what makes a champion, or at least a repeat champion, as what we saw the Celtics do last year?

It seems counterintuitive, right? What if playing poorly has been the way to win a championship all along? If that were the case, the Charlotte Hornets would be the pinnacle of the NBA. But beyond the surface level, it does start to make sense.

The Celtics, and especially the Jays, had a lot to prove last season. Coming off the Miami loss, the ever-present buzzing of the media hit a restless pitch culminating with stupidity like this from Kendrick Perkins.

Twelve months later, they were lifting the Larry O’Brien trophy together. The Celtics didn’t just bring home Banner 18, they showed up the entire NBA universe.

The Celtics know what it takes to win a championship, and they especially know you can’t win them in December and January. Perhaps the final level for a great team is understanding that the NBA is a war of attrition, and it must be attacked strategically with the larger picture always in mind. That might mean you don’t bring your best effort against the jersey wearing dearth of talent that is the Toronto Raptors. Maybe it means you go to OT with an undermanned Clippers team.

You have to have a true measure of greatness to dole out your good performances and not fall into the trap of bad habits. Only a great team can flirt with disaster and come out unscathed. I’m not totally convinced the Celtics will be able to avoid the trap, and if anything sinks them, it will probably be that.

But, they’ve had enough premium performances this season that reveal the contender wearing sheep’s clothing. That team still very much exists — they just haven’t shown it all that often recently. There’s a level of intensity this team is capable of that only comes out when they really need it this season, and perhaps that’s by design. Or perhaps it’s a symptom of a dominating run, the championship hangover if you will. Regardless, it is not a novel phenomenon, and it hasn’t held teams back from their next championship.

If there’s one thing that’s true about this team it’s that the results speak for themselves. The Celtics are regular attendees of the conference finals and are shooting for their 3rd Finals appearance in 4 years. We may not see that dominating, intense mindset every night during the regular season, but there is zero doubt they will bring it for the playoffs. And that is where champions, and championship mindsets, are made.

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