Maybe for a little bit of catharsis, maybe for a preemptive defense against an inevitable "look how much we need a star" post, I just wanted to point out some things that this road trip taught us about strengths and weaknesses of our team as we head into the later stretch of the season. For the most part, they are things we know and can fix in the near future of the franchise (or in a few weeks, depending on injury returns), even without a big star option (not getting one wouldn't be a great and essential step in the development of this team).
First things first, going 1-2 on the road against the Jazz, Nuggets, and Timberwolves is hardly the end of the world. The Jazz are a good, good team, and though the Timberwolves loss was definitely a disappointing one, lapses like these are inevitable and also informative. One takeaway is certainly that as a team we have a lot of trouble with lengthy teams. Pretty obvious, especially after the Bucks loss before the All Star Break. Zeller is just not a functional enough big to rely on to combat height and fight for rebounds against true centers. But the good thing is that the whole organization knows this top to bottom, and that's why we are 99% letting him walk and exploring other options this summer. I am interested to see how Brad Stevens changes his game plan in the coming repeats against the Bucks and Jazz.
Also obvious, and slightly related to our trouble with size, Olynyk is a really, really, really important feature of this team. He's a rare commodity that many teams do not have an answer for, and a huge part of why a lot of slightly-above-average players can look really really good on the Celtics. When he spreads the floor, things just get easier. Again, this is a positive, because barring a big trade for someone of high value, it has seemed like an intention of the organization to keep Kelly around and develop him even further. Hopefully he gets back soon as possible.
Third, good and bad things regarding Smart. The good things: it's really time to start giving him more minutes. Smart's tenacity has kept us in games like the one against the Timberwolves (and, before that, the Clippers), and making the position for starting SG a competition between him and Bradley. I think it would bring out the monster we saw in Bradley when he flared up his numbers after being benched. Another option is to limit IT's minutes when he's less effective against bigger teams.
Quickly, the bad things: Smart has sustained his weakness for taking dumb shots and making stupid fouls. This is an easy thing that time will fix.
Fourth, I wanna say something about Turner but I don't know what. It's been a weird stretch for him, but I think he is asserting that he is an important feature of this team and, as everyone is saying, worth exploring for the right price this summer. It seems like he wants to stay around, so there might really be a good deal with him around the corner.
EDIT: grammar
Submitted February 23, 2016 at 10:16AM by mmenace