A few weeks ago, it felt like the Boston Celtics’ season had ended before it had begun. Gordon Hayward, the team’s prime free-agent acquisition over the summer, suffered a season-ending ankle injury just a few minutes into the NBA’s opening night. Unsurprisingly, Boston went on to lose to the Cleveland Cavaliers, despite a valiant comeback attempt, and then fall to the Milwaukee Bucks the very next night.

And then, somehow, the Celtics became unbeatable. With their 94-95 win over the Toronto Raptors on Sunday, the Celtics improved their winning streak to 12 straight games, something the team hadn’t accomplished since the 2008-09 season, back during the peak era of the New Big Three era. At 12-2, the Celtics have the best record of the young NBA season. More impressively, they have managed to put together this streak despite the fact that both Kyrie Irving and Al Horford have had to miss games due to on-the-court injuries.



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The Celtics’ early success is even more baffling because one would expect a young team to be work through growing pains. This team features a radically different roster from those of the past few Celtics seasons. Most notably, they traded Isaiah Thomas, their best player in the last few seasons, to the Cavaliers for Irving, while Avery Bradley, their longest tenured player at the time, was sent to the Detroit Pistons in order to free up room to bring in Hayward.



It’s hard not to credit head coach Brad Stevens for how well these Celtics seem to play together. Since replacing Doc Rivers in 2013, he has shown a knack for putting his players in the best possible position to win, and his teams have consistently out-performed expectations. Under his watch, the Celtics have established themselves as the best defensive team in the NBA, which has allowed them to stay in games despite the fact they don’t have the offensive firepower that they thought they would.

If you had to pick Stevens’s signature game with the Celtics, you could do worse than look at Friday’s game against the Charlotte Hornets where Boston rallied to come back from an 18-point deficit without Irving, Holford or Hayward. Under his watch, the Celtics have established themselves as the best defensive team in the NBA, which has allowed them to stay in games despite the fact they don’t have the offensive firepower that they thought they would.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Cavaliers’ early season slump has shown few signs of ending. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

GM Danny Ainge also deserves some credit here. It’s far too early to evaluate off-season moves, particularly when it comes to teams focused on winning in the near-future rather than an immediate championship. Still, at the moment, Ainge’s two most contentious moves are paying early dividends. Many fans were skeptical when they traded their first-round pick to the Philadelphia 76ers, passing over sure-thing Markelle Fultz in order to select Jayson Tatum. As of right now, Tatum might be the (ridiculously early) frontrunner for rookie of the year while Fultz has already been sidelined with an injury. (The moral, as always, is never get drafted by Philadelphia).

Obviously, the Celtics’ most controversial move was the Irving trade, where they jettisoned fan-favorite Thomas for a player who had been publicly trying to force his way out of Cleveland. By all accounts, Irving wanted to escape from LeBron James’s shadow and establish himself as the star player on a championship-contending team. Well, he got his wish almost immediately after Hayward’s injury. Before suffering a facial fracture last Sunday, Irving was working his way into the MVP conversation, making clutch shots and even establishing himself as a leader, something he was unable to do during those first few LeBron-free seasons in Cleveland.

Fittingly enough, the Celtics’ success appears to be happening at the expense of Irving’s old team. The Cavaliers are struggling in a way that feels a little bit different than their usual “sleepwalk through parts of the regular season, then flip the switch during the playoffs” routine of seasons past. The Cavaliers have struggled to get over .500 for most of the early season (only a late blitz against the Knicks on Monday night got them to a 7-7 record). While Boston currently has the best defense in the league, Cleveland has featured the worst. While Irving has been helping the Celtics close out games, Thomas may not be cleared to play until January. While the Celtics are seeing contributions from a wide range of young players, the Cavaliers are attempting to squeeze out minutes from the likes of Iman Shumpert and the ghost of Derrick Rose.

Now, we’re only midway through November, so there’s a good chance that Boston’s fortunes could change. The Celtics are clearly a talented team but they are also playing above themselves; a regression to the mean is all but inevitable. It’s also hard to imagine that the Cavaliers won’t improve in time for the postseason, especially if Thomas returns and is anything close to the player he was in Boston. However, considering how dangerous this Celtics team have looked without Hayward, the Cavaliers, and the rest of the Eastern Conference, should start worrying how good this team could be when he returns.

