Expectations are a funny thing.
They’re not real, or at least they certainly are not static. No team is more emblematic of their variable nature than the 2017-18 Boston Celtics. Prior to the season’s start, no Eastern Conference team had a higher win total expectation in Vegas than the Celtics. They were supposed to be great and then poof: Five minutes into the season, the expectations were gone when Gordon Hayward suffered a catastrophic leg/ankle injury.
“I don’t think anyone knew what the landscape was going to actually look like going forward,” Kyrie Irving said after Boston’s Wednesday afternoon practice at Target Center when asked about outsider expectations following the Hayward injury. “When [we lost] him, all hell broke loose a little bit.”
The Celtics lost that first game of the season without Hayward — to their main rival, Cleveland, no less — and then they lost their next game to a middle-class Milwaukee team the next night. All of a sudden, the Celtics were 0-2 — their expectations were stripped — and something funny happened (again): The Celtics won 16-straight games.
Poof, poof: Expectations changed again.
“A lot of guys took that personal and they wanted to come out and prove something, not only to the rest of the league but to themselves,” said Irving.
It was about “stemming-the-tide,” according to their coach Brad Stevens. He preached focus and calm but not necessarily a next man up mentality. Brilliantly, Stevens and his squad countered that cliche — the Celtics found ways to replace Hayward as a group; not simply with one man.
Of course, rookie Jayson Tatum’s ascension was critical but the Celtics wouldn’t be 45-20 — and on pace to exceed their pre-Hayward injury expectations — with his play alone.
Without focus from other new faces Marcus Morris, Aron Baynes, Daniel Theis and Semi Ojeleye; along with improved play from holdovers Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, Terry Rozier, and Al Horford it just would not have worked.
“It presented a lot of issues for the team,” said Horford on Wednesday. “Guys needed to be able to step up in different ways.”
Blessing in the Disguise of an Injury
Even if it isn’t this season, even if the Celtics come up short of whatever type of expectations they currently have, the team as a whole has found ways to benefit from the injury. Brad Stevens sees those same principles being applied to the Wolves following the Jimmy Butler injury.
“Jimmy is a really good two-way player. Gordon is a really good two-way player. Those versatile guys a hard to lose,” Stevens told Zone Coverage. “But they’ve got other really good players that have helped them and will continue to help them stem-the-tide until he gets back. When he gets back, they’ll all be a little bit better because of that.”
For those words to move from hypothesis to truth, the Wolves would do well to mirror the order of operations of the Celtics’ season. They can not try to swing for the fence with a one-to-one replacement for Butler, as tempting as that idea may be with Andrew Wiggins.
The Wolves reaching their pre-Butler injury expectations will certainly require a proverbial fire being lit beneath Wiggins but that will not be enough; just as Tatum alone would not have been enough in Boston.
“You can’t fill what a guy like Gordon or Jimmy — those [type of] guys — can do,” said Horford when describing how to best fill in the gaps. “As a group, you can try to chip in a little more to try to fill that void.”
Changes on the Margins
The questions, for the Wolves, are smaller; micro in nature. In Boston, Horford shifted positions and Baynes began starting at center. Who is going to be the Aron Baynes for the Wolves?
Perhaps Nemanja Bjelica who has shifted to small forward in Butler’s absence. Who is going to be the Terry Rozier; the player who takes on a bigger scoring role off the bench? Perhaps Tyus Jones who is, now, beginning to play alongside Jeff Teague, a la Rozier with Irving. Who is Marcus Smart? Who is Semi Ojeleye? The list goes on.
As Horford said, guys need to be able to step up and as Irving said, guys need to take it personally.
Boston rattled off 16-straight wins after Hayward went down. At 38-28, the Wolves are likely to be without Butler for the rest of the season; exactly 16 games. To what degree the Wolves respond will determine their playoff fate.
