Boston Celtics: California trip a big help for team

The Boston Celtics, for all their ups and downs this season, have always seemed to be a sleeping giant. After a successful 3-1 stretch out West, the team’s pieces finally feel like they are falling into place.

At the beginning of the 2018-19 season, it would be difficult to look at early March’s West Coast trip for the Boston Celtics and think this could be a positive for the team.

Playing all four of California’s teams, one a perennial juggernaut, two in the middle of a dogfight to make the playoffs, and the other having LeBron James on their roster, the trip was not meant to be easy on the struggling Cs.

Any stretch that begins with the Golden State Warriors is not meant to be a point of excitement, but the Dubs barely showed up for their game against the Celtics. The lost 128-95, and were eaten alive by the Celtics’ talented bench pairing of Jaylen Brown and Gordon Hayward (48 points combined).

The Sacramento Kings benefited from playing a Celtics team without Kyrie Irving at the helm of the offense, but met the same fate as mostly every other team that has played the Celtics sans Kyrie this season. While they battled hard, the Kings fell 111-109, at the hands of a Hayward game-winner.

The Los Angeles Lakers game — like all Lakers-Celtics games — had a lot of hype, but was fairly anticlimactic in the midst of an under-30-minutes LeBron James triple-double. Boston won 120-107 despite the surprising strong performances of Moritz Wagner and Johnathan Williams.

The Los Angeles Clippers game did not do much else other then prove that L.A. nightlife remains undefeated. It’s always hard to play well on the final game of a long road trip, and the Celtics got smacked, plain and simple, losing 140-115.

However, the Boston Celtics should be extremely encouraged by this trip, and it all starts with their leader, Kyrie Irving.

Obviously, it takes a very long time to travel all the way from Boston to Oakland, and the Celtics took advantage of that long flight with some team bonding exercises. Kyrie led the charge, taking this opportunity to make sure the Celtics had open conversations, played card games and just loosened up after March 3’s disappointing loss to the Houston Rockets.

Also, another interesting point of this West Coast trip was Kyrie Irving taking a moment to apologize for how he has conducted himself with the media. It’s been a long season for Irving and the Celtics. He’s appeared to be short with the media and at times, his teammates, so this could go a long way in terms of his chemistry both with the team and local/national media.

Outside of the positive developments from Irving (who also killed it on the floor in his three games, averaging 22.3 points and 9.0 assists per game), the Celtics have gotten a few signs of encouragement from players who have seemed to struggle all season.

Gordon Hayward played the entire trip like a man with his confidence back. After averaging 16.3 points and 3.8 assists per game, shooting 46.1 percent from 3 and hitting some really big shots on this trip, Hayward can use this stretch to hopefully springboard into a more efficient and productive closing string of games.

Jaylen Brown has continued his hot play as well, averaging 14.5 points per game and playing some stellar defense on the way. Also, in his first start since Feb. 5’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers, he played spectacularly in Jayson Tatum‘s stead, putting up 22 points and three steals on a Clippers team that just could not seem to be stopped.

Terry Rozier had himself a solid stretch of games as well, averaging 15.3 points per game and only logging one game with a negative plus-minus — against the Clippers, where mostly everybody was a net negative on the floor.

While the Boston Celtics really seem to struggle putting together a full 48 minutes of winning basketball, something definitely seemed to click on this trip. Maybe it was the bonding on the plane. Maybe it’s Gordon Hayward playing up to where the Celtics need him. Maybe it was the funk blessings of Bootsy Collins and George Clinton.

The Boston Celtics desperately need to put together a string of solid games to close out the season. They are still very much in play for the 3-seed in the Eastern Conference, and will have to expand on the success they had on the West Coast if they want to keep hopes of home-court advantage alive.