The Boston Celtics are in a bit of a slump. Well, at least by their standards.
The C's entered their New Year's Eve matchup versus the Toronto Raptors at TD Garden with three losses in their last four games and four defeats in their last six games. Boston recently had a firm grip on second place in the Eastern Conference standings but now leads the New York Knicks by just a half game.
The Celtics' defense has received a lot of criticism amid this lackluster stretch of results. The C's rank 16th in defensive rating over the last six games, and they gave up 100-plus points in five of those matchups.
Even former Celtics guard Eddie House said on a recent Celtics Postgame Live that the team wasn't giving "championship effort" on defense.
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C's head coach Joe Mazzulla was asked before Tuesday's game about his team's defense and its effort on that end of the floor, and he gave a pretty interesting response.
"It is so easy to blame effort as opposed to just make a shot," Mazzulla told reporters in his press conference (watch full clip in the Instagram post below). "Because our expected defense is No. 1 in the last 10 games, and our layup percentage defense is No. 1 in the last 10 games, and our expected points per shot defense is like No. 3 in the last 10 games. But you know what our 3-point percentage is? It's 28th."
"... We do have to play better, though, on both ends of the floor. Let me be very clear. There's 10 to 12 possessions per game where we absolutely have to be better on the defensive end of the floor. I want to make sure I'm 100 percent clear on that. But it is very, very easy when things aren't going well to blame defense and effort. And it's very, very hard to let your brain or your heart rest in, 'We just got to be better offensively.' So you have to fight those two things. We've got to be better on both ends of the floor."
The real issue with the Celtics' recent play is that they just haven't hit enough shots. It's ultimately a make or miss league. The defense hasn't been amazing, but ranking 16th in defensive rating over the last six games is far from a disaster. It's not great, and it's not a top-five level the Celtics have played at defensively for much of Mazzulla's tenure, but it's not cause for panic, either.
The Celtics' lackluster 3-point shooting, as Mazzulla noted, has been the primary problem over this stretch. It's hard to win games when you're 28th in 3-point percentage during any sort of span, whether it's five games, 10 games or 20 games.
When the Celtics' shooting rate returns to what it should be, the results will be better. And when you consider how many above-average shooters are on Boston's roster, it shouldn't take long for that to happen.
