What the Celtics learned against the West’s best, despite two losses

Nobody celebrates losses, let alone ones in the dog days of March. But if you’re looking for signs about where this Celtics team is headed, this road trip provided plenty of those.

The Celtics beat Cleveland to kick off the road trip, but then fell to the top two teams in the West. They gave one away in San Antonio after Jaylen Brown’s ejection and fell two points short in Oklahoma City without Jayson Tatum and Derrick White. Nikola Vučević continues to recover from his right ring finger fracture, so he missed both games as well.

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In the standings, these are just two losses. Zoom out, though, and this was about as encouraging an 0–2 stretch as Boston could have produced. The road trip won’t satisfy anyone’s appetite for wins, but this time of year is more about figuring out what you actually have, and whether it will be enough when the games start to really matter.

If the point of this trip was to learn how Boston stacks up against the best of the West, the Celtics came away with plenty to like. They were short-handed, still integrating Tatum back into the mix versus San Antonio, and asking a lot of role players and young guys in high-leverage spots. Even so, they looked competitive, deep, and annoyingly resilient against two teams that could absolutely be playing in June.

The Celtics did not leave San Antonio and Oklahoma City with wins, but they did leave with evidence that this group might be sturdier and deeper than many of us thought — and capable of making elite teams uncomfortable even when the circumstances are far from ideal.

San Antonio tested the Celtics’ composure

The Spurs game could have unraveled in a dozen different ways, none of which would have involved Jaylen Brown being ejected.

Boston was already without Payton Pritchard and Vučević, then lost Brown in the second quarter on a double technical that everyone in green seemed to find absurd. Joe Mazzulla had his principal-versus-hall monitor line ready postgame. Derrick White called the second tech “bulls—.” Jayson Tatum made it clear he thought the officials were too eager to make themselves part of the…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/celtics-learned-against-west-best-140413508.html

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Publish date : 2026-03-14 14:04:00

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