The Boston Celtics should be the Eastern Conference favorite again

The Boston Celtics have won five straight games. After a three-game losing streak that included some public scrutiny between teammates, the Celtics are stringing together their best ball of the season.

Don’t look now, but the Boston Celtics have won five straight games. I’ve written previously that the Celtics were meeting expectations and no one was noticing. Of course, after that article was published, they slaughtered the Indiana Pacers in a 30-point bloodbath in Boston, and followed it up with consecutive road losses to the Miami Heat, Orlando Magic and Brooklyn Nets.

Bad road stretches happen. There’s a reason NBA teams play 82 of these games. While losing games on their own isn’t so concerning, the way they were losing certainly was. Kyrie Irving spoke out about the “young guys” and their lack of championship mentality, and Jaylen Brown quickly fired back, saying they need to look out for one another.

As Kyrie will tell you now, Jaylen Brown was right.

The Celtics came off of the three-game losing streak with a marquee matchup at TD Garden against the Eastern Conference-leading Toronto Raptors. All signs pointed to a Boston team in flux, unsure if Brown or guard Terry Rozier would remain as members of the team. Everything felt like the Celtics were hurtling toward a season-defining home loss to Kawhi Leonard‘s Raptors.

Except Kyrie called LeBron James.

No, his apology to to LeBron wasn’t a signal that the former Duke Blue Devil will don Los Angeles Lakers colors next season. It wasn’t a thinly veiled attention-seeking act, or a vaguely vindictive shot at his teammates. Kyrie’s phone call, and public admittance to it, was a striking sign of growth and maturation from a player who has rarely given us those indications.

The Celtics didn’t massacre the Raptors the way they did the Pacers, but they did drive a dagger into Toronto’s heart. After hitting a filthy turnaround step-back from mid-range to put Boston up two with 2:15 left in the game, Kyrie stepped into a 3-point attempt from a different zip code in the face of Kawhi and sparked the Celtics’ latest winning streak.

Kyrie tugged on his jersey a la Celtics legend Kevin Garnett, and then sat in the locker room displaying those signs of growth and leadership by acknowledging Brown was right. It’s as if his rejuvenated leadership has the entire team feeling rejuvenated.

The winning stretch has been particularly ethereal for Irving. While he missed the team’s latest effort against the Cleveland Cavaliers with flu-like symptoms, the Celtics star had been averaging 30.8 points and 11.0 assists per game while shooting 60.3 percent and 56.0 percent from 3.

It’s not just Irving who’s experiencing better play, either. I recently wrote a diatribe on the Celtics’ dire need to get Rozier out of town. However, Scary Terry experienced a return to his frightening self in the past two weeks. While Kyrie has been undoubtedly the leader of the offense, Rozier appeared to finally learn how to get out of the way and let the offense run through others instead of taking ill-advised shots.

In the first four games of the winning streak, he attempted lower than his season average in shots, while providing a rare positive in the plus/minus column. Then Rozier really reverted to being scary when Kyrie missed the Cavs game due to illness. Scary Terry fired 13 shots, hitting on nine of them for 26 points while only missing one of his five attempts from deep.

To be clear, I’m still of the opinion that Rozier’s future doesn’t lie in Boston; it’s just nice to see him get back to what made him such a threat in the playoffs a season ago, especially if it heightens his trade value.

The Celtics should return to being favorites to win the Eastern Conference. In the 28 games since starting 10-10, Boston has returned to playing like the best team in basketball. The Celtics are posting the highest net rating in the league since that time (Nov. 26) and are second in the NBA behind the Pacers in winning percentage at .714.

Boston ranks inside the top 10 in nearly every advanced metric, while also ranking in the top three in true shooting and the top five in assist-to-turnover ratio. Also, they’re occasionally acting like the Harlem Globetrotters.

Not enough will be said about the other difference in this team since the 10-10 start. It is the moment head coach Brad Stevens made the decision to move Marcus Smart into the starting lineup.

Smart is basketball cocaine. Not to become to self-referential, but I’d written about the way he was contributing to save the season way back in December. His contributions continue to be palpable, and maybe more so than ever.

Smart is enjoying by far his most successful shooting season as a professional. Having never shot over 37 percent from the field or 34 percent from 3 in any of his first four seasons, Smart is posting career highs in both categories at 40.2 percent from the field and 36.6 percent from deep. It’s also his first time clearing the 50 percent mark in true shooting.

Perhaps even more remarkably, ESPN‘s most recently updated real plus/minus rankings place Marcus Smart at 14th in the association. After an offseason in which Danny Ainge was ridiculed by many segments of social media for signing Smart to a four-year, $51.9 million contract, the dividends are clearly paying off.

The Celtics will need to continue to wait for Gordon Hayward to return to full health, but it feels like he’s finally turning a corner. We’ll get to find out how well they match up with the cream of the Western Conference when the Golden State Warriors visit Boston for the Celtics’ next game on Jan. 26. As for now, the Celtics at least belong back among the top of the list in the East.