Boston Celtics must improve their defense on road

Even with a solid past ten games of basketball, the Boston Celtics still can’t seem to perform well defensively on the road.

Prior to losing to the Miami Heat on Thursday night, the Boston Celtics were on a roll. Since Wednesday Jan.2, they demolished four straight opponents by an average of 20.5 points.

For a short period of time, Brad Stevens and company were the hottest team in the NBA. In fact, ever since that team meeting from Dec. 21, the Boston Celtics have shown a lot more consistency on both sides of the ball.

Despite the sudden prosperity midway through the season, there still continues to be one underlying issue with the organization; they can’t duplicate their success on the road.

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Put it this way; Boston is 6-0 at home since that fateful meeting and 1-3 on the road during that same exact time span. This includes tough losses to the Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs, and of course, the Heat.

Conversely, the Boston Celtics have lost by an average margin of 13 points per game in those three road contests since the 21st. Overall, the C’s are sitting pretty on their home court in 2018-2019 with a record of 15-5 for the season. However, their 10-11 output away from the Garden shows that they don’t bring the same energy when they have to travel.

Naturally, this idea usually pertains to everyone in the NBA, especially with such crazy schedules from October to April (and sometimes even May and June).

Nonetheless, the Celtics‘ situation is a tad troubling, notably since many consider them to be a top tier Eastern Conference force. Unfortunately, their defense goes through a significant dip in production when on the road.

To put it in perspective, their defensive rating goes from a 101 at home (which would be good for number one in the league), to a 108 at other arenas (which would put them in the middle of the pack). Statistics show that their insistence on creating turnovers also continued to drop as they head farther away from Boston (they create 8.2 turnovers on the road compared to 9.4 at home).

Their mediocrity on the road has indirectly lead to some turbulence throughout this up-and-down season, and even with the team meeting going so well, there still continues to be some obvious inner problems as shown following the Heat game on Thursday.

On the other hand, there have been quite a few positives to come out of the last week and a half of games. Gordon Hayward seems to be back on track (especially when facing the Minnesota Timberwolves, where he’s had his two best scoring games of the season). I still wouldn’t peg him as a $135 million guy, but the magnitude of his injury is definitely something that still needs to be taken into account. He might not be 100 percent until next year.

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In the end, we just hit the halfway point of the season, so there’s still plenty of time for Brad Stevens to turn things around on the road, specifically on defense. It’s unusual to see them struggle on that end of the court, but time is still on their side. With Kyrie Irving putting up big numbers, and Jayson Tatum continuing to come into his own, the future is mainly bright for the Boston Celtics.

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