Of all the Boston Celtics' encouraging early season stats, here’s one that shouldn’t slip below the radar: Boston is the only undefeated team in the NBA at home, posting a 10-0 mark at TD Garden this season.
That probably shouldn’t be notable. Except that Boston was impossibly bad at home during last season's playoff run, finishing 5-6 at the Garden and ending its campaign with painful Game 7 dud at home against the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Those struggles came after the Celtics went 6-6 at home during their 2022 trek to the NBA Finals. Home woes have routinely complicated Boston’s path and forced the team to play an absurd amount of Game 7s in recent years.
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Which made us wonder if protecting the parquet was a topic of conversation for this team entering the new season.
“We haven't said anything about it,” said Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla. "Obviously, outside of it just being the Garden and being at home and playing in front of a crowd that we have all the time, we haven't really spent too much time deciding what the difference is. Small sample size; we've only lost five games, too.”
Boston’s home dominance to start the 2023-24 season will be firmly tested this week with double dips against both Cleveland and Orlando. That includes back-to-backs featuring both opponents as part of four games in six nights.
The Celtics have played one of the NBA’s toughest schedules to this point. ESPN’s BPI ranks it the hardest in the league. Boston’s home slate has been relatively mild, though the team has posted home wins over Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Indiana -- three teams in the top five in the East. Boston also scrapped out a win over the Heat in its home opener (a much lower-stakes rematch of last year’s East finals).
For Mazzulla, his desire is for his team to be able to win regardless of location.
"There's two sides to look at it,” said Mazzulla. “Because then you could say that we're really tough, to go win on the road. So there's two sides to that.
"I think more about just learning what leads to winning regardless. I think that's the thing we're trying to really make clear to everybody and our team in general is like, the things that lead to winning are the things to lead to winning regardless of where you play and the hardest things to do are those things all the time.
"So we have to just continue to fight for that mindset.”
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Home court might have helped Boston prolong its stay in the inaugural In-Season Tournament, as eventual runner-up Indiana got a little extra juice playing on its home floor in the quarterfinals. There’s a whole lot of season left before the Celtics need to start obsessing about playoff seeding, but Mazzulla admitted he probably pushed too hard last season in the quest to land the top spot.
There’s a balance there, too. Health should be paramount with this team — as Kristaps Porzingis’ recent absence reminded us — but if Boston continues to take care of business at home, then it can ease the quest to get where this team ultimately wants to end up.
For now, the splits are jarring. The Celtics post a 125.9 offensive rating at home this season, which drops to 110.1 on the road. Boston has a +17.2 net rating at the Garden, and sits at +0.8 over 11 road games.
Last season, the Celtics were 6.8 points per 100 possessions better at home while posting a +10.1 net rating at the Garden. Boston finished 32-9 at home, which tied Milwaukee for the best home mark in the East. (Denver, Memphis, and Golden State all had better home marks in the West.)
Why have the Celtics been so good at home? One look at Payton Pritchard’s splits offers a reminder that role players tend to thrive in front of friendlier crowds. Pritchard has a +17 net rating at home, which dips to +4.2 on the road. He’s shooting 41.5 percent on 3-pointers inside the Garden and 21.1 percent everywhere else.
As Mazzulla cautioned, this is still a very small sample size. But Boston needs to bottle up its home efficiency and learn to take it on the road.
During the team’s 2022 march to the Finals, head coach Ime Udoka implored his team to develop a “road warrior” mentality. That Celtics team thrived going into hostile environments. While winning 17 of 22 games after the All-Star break that year, Boston dropped just three of 12 games on the road. The Celtics won more games on the road (eight) in the postseason than it did at home (six), and watched the Warriors celebrate their Finals victory inside TD Garden.
It’s high time the Celtics get sick of other teams celebrating on their court. The NBA’s best teams have routinely dominated at home. The 1985-86 Celtics are famous for posting a 40-1 mark at home (which included games in Hartford).
Mazzulla’s desire to simply tap into what makes Boston successful regardless of location is assuredly the right approach. But the Celtics need to take advantage of home cooking, especially in the postseason. This team has far too often complicated its path to its title goal by not maximizing games on its home turf.