After all of the turnover they experienced this summer, the Celtics’ sluggish start to the new season should not have been surprising.
That was Jaylen Brown’s message after Boston picked up its first win Monday night, 122-90 over the Pelicans in New Orleans, to snap a season-opening three-game losing streak.
“It’s going to take some time,” Brown told reporters at the Smoothie King Center. “We lost four All-Stars last season between Al (Horford), Jrue (Holiday), Kristaps (Porzingis) and JT (Jayson Tatum) being out. Luke (Kornet) is an All-Star … in all of our hearts. But we lost some big-time players. We didn’t lose one guy — we lost five. So to replace those guys does not happen overnight, I would say that, and it doesn’t happen in a week, either.
“So we’ve got to build some chemistry, we’ve got to build some identity and adopt a new style of play. But I believe in this group. I believe that we have the potential. But it takes a little bit of time. So I’m looking forward to growing with this group.”
Brown is one of the few rotation holdovers in that group, along with Derrick White, Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser. The rest of Boston’s new-look roster is made up of players who were either deep reserves a year ago (Neemias Queta, Xavier Tillman, Baylor Scheierman, Jordan Walsh) or brought aboard this offseason (Anfernee Simons, Luka Garza, Josh Minott, Chris Boucher, Hugo Gonzalez).
Excluding Tatum, who’s out indefinitely as he recovers from Achilles surgery, Brown is the only current Celtic who’s made an NBA All-Star team.
The process of fitting all of those new pieces together has been, as Brown noted, a work in progress.
The Celtics squandered a 13-point fourth-quarter lead in their season opener against Philadelphia, couldn’t complete a late-game comeback after falling behind by 24 against New York, then failed to maintain a 17-point first-quarter cushion in a loss at Detroit that dropped them to 0-3 for the first time since 2013. Boston finally broke through Monday against a winless Pelicans squad that was playing without injured star Zion Williamson, pulling away late thanks to clutch 3-point shooting from Simons (25 points, 6-for-13 from three) and much-improved defensive rebounding.
Head coach Joe Mazzulla has not settled on a preferred lineup, rolling out three different starting fives in four games and making substantial changes to his rotation from night to night. Athletic wing Minott, for example, was a DNP-CD at Madison Square Garden, then made his first career start two games later (and was an eye-popping plus-42 in his 28 minutes against New Orleans). The rookie Gonzalez has submitted one impressive showing off the bench and one start, sandwiched between two healthy DNPs.
Mazzulla has said this process could continue throughout the season — he views depth as a strength of his relatively inexperienced roster — but Brown would like to see the Celtics develop some consistency. And he wants fans to be patient in the meantime.
“Flexibility is good, but just trying to find an identity and also find a rhythm and a comfort level is something that we’re looking to build going forward,” Brown told reporters. “Kind of seeing what we’ve got, putting guys in the best position to maximize their potential. I think both I and Joe are looking to kind of figure out those moving parts. Obviously, you don’t want to lose games while you’re figuring that out, but like I said before the season — maybe it went on deaf ears — but it takes a little bit of time.
“I would have liked to see hopefully they give us more than a week, Celtics fans, but we know how psyched Celtics fans can be, so we don’t make any excuses. (Monday night) was good to get a win, but we’ve still got a lot of figuring out to do. We’ve still got to build some strength and just make smarter plays. So going forward, we’ve got to grow, we’ve got to learn and we’ve got to take some of those growing pains. But (Monday) was a good example of a victory.”
With Brown watching from the bench after picking up his fifth foul, the Celtics closed Monday’s game on a 31-4 run to put away the pesky Pelicans. They’ll face tougher tests this week, beginning with a Wednesday night matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers at TD Garden. Cleveland is viewed as one of the favorites in the wide-open Eastern Conference after winning 64 games last season and returning most of its core.
After that, Boston will head to Philly on Friday for a rematch with the Sixers, then return home to face Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets on the second night of a back-to-back.
“We’re definitely going to have to play at a higher level, especially with some of the games on the schedule this week,” Brown told reporters. “But tonight, in the fourth quarter, we played some good Celtics basketball.”
