Scal, Eddie identify ‘bad habits’ affecting Celtics amid rough patch originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
The reigning NBA champions are playing like anything but reigning champions at the moment.
The Boston Celtics are 5-5 in their last 10 games and 11-9 over their last 20 contests, their latest loss a 117-96 blowout at the hands of the middling Los Angeles Lakers that represented their largest defeat of the season. They’re an eye-opening 3-8 after wins since Dec. 15 and have won back-to-back games just twice in that span, a concerning development for a team that had seven winning streaks of at least five games last season.
Boston has been mostly healthy since Kristaps Porzingis’ return from offseason surgery in late November and returned the entire top nine from its 2023-24 title squad. So, why is this championship-caliber group playing .500 basketball?
You could point to shooting woes — the Celtics are shooting 44.7 percent from the floor and 34.9 percent from 3-point range in January, both their lowest in a calendar month this season — but Brian Scalabrine and Eddie House believe there’s more to the story.
The former Celtics teammates and 2008 NBA champions outlined their concerns on Celtics Postgame Live after Thursday’s loss to the Lakers.
“We don’t have good habits right now,” Scalabrine said. “… Habits are like, you come into a game and you have a purpose. You have good spacing. Are you going over a screen or are you going under a screen? Are we in drop (coverage on defense) or are we not? Habits are those things.
“… When I watch right now, I’m not sure what I’m watching. I’m not sure what we’re doing on a lot of our coverages, and then a lot of times when guys are just cracking us off the dribble, we’re not reacting to the ball or anything like that.”
The Celtics still boast strong defensive numbers for the season — fifth in the NBA in defensive rating and sixth in points allowed per game — but have had some notable lapses in the past month, allowing 110 points to the lowly Toronto Raptors, 119 points to the Atlanta Hawks and 117 points to the Lakers on Thursday night.
What most concerns House is Boston’s recent unpredictability, particularly on the defensive end.
“We’re consistently inconsistent,” House said. “Some games we have it, we bring it, we have energy, we’re locked in defensively, the ball’s moving, the spacing is on point, everything like that. I’m not talking about make-or-miss shots. I’m talking about the purpose and the principles on how we get to shots, how we play defense, where we’re at defensively, our pickup points and things like that.
“So, the bad habit that I’m seeing this season is that we’re consistently inconsistent. From night to night, you don’t know what team you’re going to get.”
The Celtics have shown flashes of quality play even amid their recent funk. They grinded out two wins in two nights over a pair of Western Conference playoff teams in the Minnesota Timberwolves and Houston Rockets earlier this month, and thumped the Golden State Warriors (who were shorthanded but still had Stephen Curry) by 40 points this past Monday.
More often than not, however, encouraging wins have been followed by head-scratching losses. And if the Celtics are serious about becoming the first NBA team since 2018 to repeat as champions, they need to find more consistency very soon.
Check out more reaction from Scal and Eddie in the YouTube video below.
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