Sunday Shootaround

BOSTON — When Al Horford signed with the Boston Celtics last summer it signaled an important shift in their long-term rebuilding plan. In addition to being one of the most coveted players on the market, Horford was the first max free agent to ever sign with the Celtics. The era of plucky overachievement was over. Now it was time for results.

To be sure, no sensible person suggested that Horford’s addition alone would be enough to put the C’s over the top. He made his rep in Atlanta as a smart and savvy player who could anchor a defense, make shots, and offer a bit of everything else along the way. Horford came to Boston with the reputation as the consummate pro’s pro, a player both widely respected by his peers and appreciated by savvy NBA consumers.

In that, Horford has been everything the Celtics had hoped for when they signed him. He’s a calming influence on the floor and a respected leader off the court. He has become so readily absorbed within their team culture that he was named this year’s winner of the Red Auerbach Award, given to the player or coach who exemplifies the spirit of what it means to be a Celtic. For his part, Horford has been suitably impressed by his new team’s approach, noting their preparation and attention to detail.

“As young as the guys are, they prepare really well for games,” Horford said. “They know their coverages and they know what’s supposed to do on the floor. Obviously we’re all pros here, that’s what’s expected, but they really go above and beyond. That’s really impressed me with this group.”

On the court, his willingness to guard both stretch fours and traditional fives has been a godsend for the C’s smallball lineups. His ability to stretch the floor as a perimeter threat has opened up the paint for Isaiah Thomas to flourish and allowed the C’s to play five-out offensive basketball. His playmaking, long an under-appreciated part of his game, has also been an integral part of Boston’s scheme.

“He’s been a huge part of us,” coach Brad Stevens said. “His presence has been huge and contagious. I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Still, the adjustment process has not been without some rough patches. He endured a frightening concussion aftermath early in the season and many of his numbers have dropped a tick. There were defensive issues at the beginning of the season, mainly stemming from a lack of cohesion and a team-wide lack of effort.

Most concerning, however, has been the defensive rebounding problem that echoes the same issue that plagued Horford’s Atlanta squads. The Celtics rank 28th in defensive rebounding percentage and as Pat Riley famously once said, “No rebounds. No rings.” To be sure, the Warriors have an identical problem, but the Celtics don’t have their kind of star-power to cover up their weaknesses.

Pinning it all on Horford is easy, but also unfair. The Celtics play small a lot of the time and with Horford pulled away from the basket, there are no verified glass cleaners of the roster. They were a bad defensive rebounding team with much of the same personnel last season, as well.

In the end, the Celtics are clearly better both physically and spiritually with Horford than they were last year, which was the whole point of the signing. They have met, and even exceeded, expectations for this season.

All of that leads to a broader set of questions: How is it that we measure success in the NBA? What is the criteria we’re using? How is the worthiness of a season framed? These are trickier questions than you might imagine.

Another Rileyism holds that if you’re not in first place you’re in last. That may apply to the Golden States and Clevelands of the world, but it gets more complex the further down the list you go.

The Celtics are a prime example. They crossed the 50-win plateau for the first time in six years and will likely finish no lower than second in the Eastern Conference. Division titles are essentially meaningless, but passing the Raptors in the standings was a notable achievement.

There has been individual growth too, starting with Thomas, who is an All-NBA performer and possibly a top-five finisher in Most Valuable Player voting. Young veterans such as Jae Crowder, Avery Bradley, and Marcus Smart have thrived in their roles. They have received contributions from their younger set of players and even rookie Jaylen Brown has carved out a productive niche.

They have done all that while maintaining a clean cap sheet and all their assets, including what could be the top choice in this year’s draft. From a distance, the Celtics are in great shape both now and in the future.

So, why does all of this feel incomplete?

Certainly there are postseason expectations yet to be met. These Celtics haven’t won a playoff series in two tries and a third first-round exit would be, if not disastrous given their future viability, an abject disappointment. While they have been trending upward for three years, without a bevy of superstars on command they are no sure thing this spring.

Perhaps it’s because of the idea that something better lies just beyond the horizon. Given their draft assets and their array of favorable contracts they have been linked to just about every superstar bidding war in the league. Parsing Celtic trade rumors is a bit like playing telephone. Players have been involved, or maybe they haven’t. Draft picks have been considered or maybe they were never explicitly offered. It’s either been too much or not enough. It’s all a bit unsettling.

What we know is that the Celtics have beaten every playoff team in the East and most of the West at least once while taking care of business against the lower half. (In one of the league’s great unexplained mysteries, the Nuggets have their number for some reason.) Even if no one knows what they may be in the future, everyone seems to agree on what they are now. They are good, but not great; respected, but not feared.

Is that damning with faint praise or a tangible sign of progress?

There was an interesting chart that made its way around the basketball Internet earlier this week, courtesy of a poster named Positive Residual who writes for Nylon Calculus. The chart graffed each team’s net rating during the course of the season over 10-game increments. In other words, it offered a wide lens into how teams’ play trended over the course of the season.

The Celtics chart was among the most stable. There were periods of high-level play balanced by the occasion dip in performance. It was within those fluctuations one could point to an injury or a particularly tough part of the schedule. While the Celtics had their share of individual slumps and periods of lethargic disinterest, their issues were quite normal and fixable.

Their chart showed a team that played pretty well throughout the season with a nice uptick to finish the campaign. That’s more or less how you’d like things to go if you were Stevens, who refuses to look any further than that night’s game.

“I’m pretty close to living under a rock,” Stevens said. “We don’t talk big game, small game, we talk about the next game. I know that sounds really boring but that’s the way I look at it.”

In that sense the C’s chart was perfectly emblematic of Stevens’ approach. It contained none of the dizzying runs that teams like Toronto and Washington had at various points in the season. Nor did it have their free-falls either. With the exception of a handful of elite squads, almost every team in the league would gladly sign up for that kind of stable performance.

While there is much to appreciate about this Celtics’ season, one final question still lingers: Is that all there is?

After rolling through March with the top overall seed in the East within their grasp, the Celtics were blown out at home against Cleveland and dusted off the next night in Atlanta. They held off Charlotte on Saturday night for a much-needed victory but still gave up 111 points.

Both mid-week performances were disappointing, but the Cleveland game in particular could not have been more instructive. Here was the biggest game of the Celtics’ season in their home arena with everyone healthy, rested, and available and they were out of it by halftime. During the second quarter when LeBron James put the hammer down and the C’s offered little resistance, the game and the chase for homecourt were both effectively over.

LeBron’s performance in a game he clearly cared about personified the biggest fear for the Celtics, that they will be no different from Indiana, Atlanta, or Toronto or any of the other would-be contenders for James’ crown. All those teams had phenomenal regular seasons sullied by postseason struggles against lower-seeded opponents, and all of them ended in defeat against LeBron.

The Celtics are not those teams, of course. This is not the culmination of a long, rebuilding process but somewhere past the mid-way point. Who they are now and what they could be this summer might be radically different entities if they can land another top-flight free agent or finally pull-off a blockbuster trade.

Or maybe not. There is also the possibility that they could continue to build organically with youth while at the same time maintaining this solid core of players. It’s easy to get lost in all of the possibilities and permutations. It’s also a convenient distraction from the present.

As we head into the postseason, all of these questions will finally have an answer. For this version of the Celtics, however, the time for results is now.