Yesterday was an ugly loss for the Boston Celtics.
A Christmas game on network television against one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference is something you’d love to win with the whole country watching, and traditionally you’d feel very good at home. But that didn’t happen as the Washington Wizards wound up pulling ahead late during the back-and-forth affair, which might now make it fair to question if the Celtics have any advantage left when they play on their own floor.
The TD Garden was where good teams went to die during the 2008 postseason. Boston posted an incredible 13-1 at home during the playoffs that spring, outscoring opponents by an average of 14.9 points per game on the famous parquet floor as the Celtics went on to win their 17th championship in franchise history. But this run to the title also featured a lackluster 3-9 road record during the postseason, as Paul Pierce and company always seemed vulnerable outside of New England.
This trend continued throughout the “Big Three-era” as they went a combined 38-10 at home in the postseason from the beginning of that 2008 title run until Ray Allen’s departure after losing in the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals; Boston was 16-27 on the road during that same stretch of playoff games.
But things have now taken a turn under Brad Stevens, who is just 7-8 at home in the playoffs during his tenure as head coach so far after going 5-5 at the TD Garden last spring when they were the top seed in the Eastern Conference. What’s odd is that this included an entire seven game clash with the Washington Wizards where the home team won each game, but the Celtics went 1-2 at home against the Chicago Bulls in the first round and 0-3 against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals to drag their overall mark down.
Stevens helped Boston become competitive once again during the 2015-16 campaign – their first full season with Isaiah Thomas – and their regular season record at home has been rather good. They’re 58-24 on their own floor compared to 43-39 on the road over the past two full seasons, but you can still see signs of what was once considered a top “home court advantage” fading away. The Celtics went just 21-19 at home against teams that clinched a playoff spot during those two seasons while they just simply took care of business against the league’s weaker teams, going 37-5 at home against teams that failed to make the postseason during that same stretch.
The only difference between home and the road for the Celtics right now seems to be that playing outside their own arena seems to open up the door for bad losses. While they’ve absolutely dominated the bottom part of the league on the parquet, they lost six road games last year alone to teams that missed the playoffs and eight during the 2015-16 campaign.
Meanwhile, they’re able to pull off many impressive road wins. Boston had won their last two games at Oracle Arena while playing against the mighty Warriors and their third biggest regular season win during that stretch is arguably a 2016 contest when Avery Bradley drained a buzzer beater at Quicken Loans area to knock off Cleveland. When it comes to playing the league’s best team, it just doesn’t seem to matter if the Celtics are home or on the road.
Beantown Baskets 