Over the past month or so, people have been talking about the No. 1 seed in the East. The Boston Celtics are currently 2.5 games behind the Milwaukee Bucks.
I’ve seen a lot of Celtics fans talk about how they “need” the number one seed. My question is, why?
Sure, homecourt throughout the playoffs is nice, but chances are – you’re going to need to win on the road at some point. It was only a year ago when people wanted the Celtics to lose games so they didn’t have to face the Brooklyn Nets in the opening round.
What happened when we faced them? We swept them en route to our finals appearance against Golden State.
The Celtics proved this last season – they can go on the road to win. They won in Milwaukee, they won in Miami, and they won in Golden State. They also lost games in Boston, too. It’s not as if the Celtics were undefeated at home or anything.
I will say – Boston needs to be wary of not throwing the No. 2 seed out the window as Philadelphia is currently 2.5 games behind Boston with one more head-to-head matchup remaining.
Anyway, this team is built for the playoffs. There’s no need to worry about the recent form. I sense the players are just waiting for the playoffs to get back into gear – aka, when there’s a shorter bench and every possession means more.
And in the end, here’s what General Manager Brad Stevens built for this team: a deep squad with playoff experience and, at the end of the day, no matter if it’s at the TD Garden or in another team’s gym, everything is A-okay.
This team brings lots of experience from last year’s finals run, and you can’t teach experience.
Home or away, these Celtics will be a tough out. When, or if, the time comes and we meet the Bucks in the conference finals, the Celtics will need to win just one of their first two road games to get home-court advantage – that’s how I, an optimist, see it at least.
Banner 18 is all that matters, and if the Celtics want to achieve it, they’ll have to go through some adversity – both home and on the road – to bring the trophy back to Causeway Street.
