After the Celtics returned from their Wednesday night loss in Detroit, Al Horford took a glance at Boston’s upcoming schedule. His eyes widened.
“(I) was like, ‘Man,'” the veteran big man said Thursday. “A lot of games and tough games, too.”
Indeed.
The Celtics will begin a season-long seven-game homestand Friday night, during which they’ll face four of the NBA’s top championship hopefuls: the Cleveland Cavaliers (Friday), Denver Nuggets (Sunday), Los Angeles Lakers (March 8) and Oklahoma City Thunder (March 12).
The Cavs and Thunder own the NBA’s two best records and comfortable leads atop the Eastern and Western Conference, respectively. The Nuggets, NBA champions in 2023, entered Friday with the league’s sixth-best record, and the Lakers, whose blockbuster trade for Luka Doncic supercharged their title chances, sat in seventh place.
Seven players from those four teams were All-Stars this season (Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, Nikola Jokic, LeBron James, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams), and perennial All-NBAer Doncic surely would have joined them had he not missed time due to injury. Gilgeous-Alexander and Jokic are the clear front-runners for NBA MVP.
With the tail end of the Celtics’ schedule featuring mostly favorable matchups against lottery-bound teams — just three of their final 16 games are against teams currently above .500 — this will be the defending champions’ last real chance to test their mettle against other legitimate contenders. Boston entered Friday as the No. 2 seed in the East, 6 1/2 games back of Cleveland and 3 1/2 up on the New York Knicks.
“It’s exciting,” Horford said. “… But ultimately, we have to just focus on tomorrow and understand that we can’t look past anyone. It’s the same approach that we’ve had all year, and it’s going to be good for us. Especially it’s going to be good for us to be (at home) and to be able to continue playing good basketball.”
The Celtics took two of their first three matchups against the Cavs before Friday’s showdown. They struggled in their first meetings with the three Western Conference heavies, losing in blowout fashion to the pre-Doncic Lakers on the second night of a back-to-back on Jan. 23 and crumbling in the fourth quarter against OKC on Jan. 5. Denver also gave Boston a serious scare on Jan. 8 without an under-the-weather Jokic, tying the game early in the fourth before the Celtics pulled away.
“Each game is just a learning opportunity, especially if you’re going to see that team later on in the season, potentially,” guard Derrick White said at Friday’s morning shootaround. “We’re learning something about them, they’re learning something about us, and that’s what makes winning in the playoffs so difficult. There’s no secrets. Every game is a big game. The crowd, you can kind of feel it in the arena, and the teams kind of get up a little bit more. That’s the fun part of being a champion.”
Entering Friday, six NBA teams had records of 8-2 or better over their last 10 games. One was the Pistons, who continued their upward surge under first-year head coach JB Bickerstaff by routing a tired Boston squad 117-97 on Wednesday. The other five: the Celtics, Cavs, Nuggets, Lakers and Thunder.
“Obviously, these are what you live for,” White said. “You want to play really well. … Personally, I’m just trying to figure out what works for us and trying to be our best team as the season goes on.”
Rounding out the homestand are dates with the rebuilding Portland Trail Blazers (March 5), wildly disappointing Philadelphia 76ers (March 6) and actively tanking Utah Jazz (March 10).