Fw: Court Sense: Are the Celtics ... good? ☘️
5 views
Skip to first unread message
Jack Jemsek
Dec 9, 2025, 12:54:17 PM (5 days ago) Dec 9
to Celticsstuff Googlegroup
Begin forwarded message:
On Tuesday, December 9, 2025, 12:28 PM, The Boston Globe <newsl...@bostonglobe.com> wrote:
Want more Cs? Check out Globe.com.
Welcome back to Court Sense ☘️ A newsletter that was also locked up by Jordan Walsh
By Amin Touri
And so, as we've been saying all along, these Celtics are a beacon of consistency and reliability, just as we all expected. Or something like that.
After a few weeks of yo-yoing either side of .500 to open the season, Boston suddenly finds itself in third place in the East at 15-9 after five straight wins and 10 victories from the last 12 games.
The Celtics also haven't been, as my colleague Dan Shaughnessy likes to say, crushing tomato cans along the way. Boston has beaten each of the other teams in the top five of the Eastern Conference standings during this run.
The Celtics have found their rhythm offensively, currently holding the second-highest offensive rating in the league while reclaiming their place as the NBA's most prolific 3-point shooting team.
All this with a summer teardown, losing four key championship pieces, and Boston's franchise cornerstone still on the shelf with a torn Achilles. Kudos to you, Joe.
The Celtics ran their winning streak to five with a win up North over the weekend, weathering the storm of a rough third quarter to dispatch the Raptors in Toronto.
They did so behind another 30-point night from Jaylen Brown — his sixth in his last seven games, the only exception being a 19-point triple-double — and 27 points from Derrick White, who has been excellent on this winning run.
But you don't want to hear about them. You're here to hear about Jordan Walsh, whose emergence has coincided with Boston's hot streak.
The Celtics are 10-2 with Walsh in the lineup, as the third-year wing has taken a huge leap to help fill the void of Jayson Tatum's absence, particularly by becoming a real headache for opposing scorers.
The Lakers' Austin Reaves has been one of this season's breakout stars, going from a solid third option to averaging 28.4 points on elite efficiency. Reaves managed to find his way to 36 points against the Celtics on Friday, but only when he could get away from Walsh, who held Reaves to just 3 points on 0 for 3 shooting.
It's not like Walsh only guarded Reaves for limited stretches, either; he guarded the Lakers' top scorer on a team-high 23 possessions, and Reaves could barely get a shot off in that time.
“He just plays hard as crap every single possession,” Reaves said of Walsh. “[He doesn’t] take a possession off. His ability, his length, his athleticism. He’s physically gifted, moves really well. I could see him being one of the best defenders in the league for many years to come."
I mean, just watch him hound Reaves for 94 feet on Friday. What can you do against this?
Over the last seven games, Walsh has spent plenty of time guarding four All-Star scorers in Reaves (he will almost certainly make his first All-Star Game this year, so I'm counting it), New York's Karl Anthony Towns, Cleveland's Donovan Mitchell, and Detroit's Cade Cunningham.
Across 111 possessions defending that quartet — close to a game and a half's worth of time, as starters usually play around 75 possessions — Walsh held them to a combined 15 points on 3 of 21 shooting. He's turning star scorers into liabilities.
Welcome one and all to the Jordan Walsh Penitentiary. You will not enjoy your stay.
The Celtics are 10-2 since Jordan Walsh entered the starting lineup. (Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff)
A lot of people projected this sort of impact for Walsh coming into the league. Fewer forecasted the offensive jump, as Walsh has become a perfectly serviceable option with the ball in his hands, a crucial development if he's going to be a rotation option (or even a starter) on a contender.
Walsh has averaged 14 points on a very silly 76.5 percent shooting from the field over his last five games, including a stretch in which he made 15 straight shots across four of those games.
Also, he can do stuff like this now. Did you know he can do stuff like this?
Walsh is also shooting an elite 45.7 percent from 3-point range, something I have to imagine will come back to down to Earth as the season progresses. He's done that on a fairly small sample of just 35 attempts, and it's hard to imagine that he's truly improved that much on the 26.6 percent he shot on 64 triples over his first two seasons.
But he doesn't have to be a deadeye shooter to make an impact. The defense speaks for itself, as Walsh's breakout has helped the Celtics look like a team that's recalibrating people's expectations.
Without wishing to overreact to two weeks of basketball — Boston has stared down one of its toughest stretches of the season and responded with its best winning run, looking much more like a solid playoff contender than a play-in candidate.
The idea that the Celtics could be approaching 50 wins and fighting for a top-four seed come spring — with a potential Tatum return looming — doesn't seem all that unrealistic.
Or, as my colleague Chad Finn picked a very amusing time to suggest, they could tank. Both equally good options!
(If you'd like to yell at Chad regarding this take, you can do so here.)
Fast break
Here's the latest on the Celtics and the most important things to know from around the NBA.
Jaylen Brown and the Celtics have won 10 of their last 12 games. (Barry Chin/Globe Staff)
Time to alter expectations for this Celtics team ever growing in confidence, and getting results
By Gary Washburn
Now that the Celtics are nearly through their treacherous stretch against Eastern Conference contenders and a pair of Western heavyweights, and they coasted to their ninth win in 11 games over a shorthanded Lakers club, it’s time for the expectations for this team to rise dramatically.
Competing for a play-in spot should be replaced by a top-four seed. About a quarter into this season, when teams are developing identities, the East is simply a collection of mostly evenly matched teams that will spend the season beating up each other.
There is a pathway for the Celtics to make noise in the conference, and that’s not considering if a certain superstar recovering from a torn Achilles returns later this season.
Continue Reading
Other top stories we're watching ...
- The Celtics went on a late run to beat the Raptors in Toronto on Sunday. Adam Himmelsbach has the game story.
- Jordan Walsh has taken his game to another level, and opponents are noticing. Adam Himmelsbach has more.
- Chris Paul's dismissal is just the latest in a long line of blunders by the Clippers. Gary Washburn covers that and more in this week's Sunday Basketball Notes.
- Do you follow Massachusetts high school sports? Sign up for Varsity News, the Globe's new weekly newsletter.
Trivia Tuesday
Each week, we’ll be asking a piece of Celtics trivia to test your knowledge on the 18-time champions.
Congratulations to David McMenimen of Marblehead, the first person to correctly answer last week's question. As a refresher, we asked you to name the player who led the Celtics in scoring in each of their first four NBA Finals wins (in 1957, 1959, 1960, and 1961).
The answer is Tommy Heinsohn, who handled much of the scoring load through Boston's first four title wins. Heinsohn averaged at least 22 points in each of those four series before taking a little bit more of a backseat for the Celtics' next four championships until his retirement in 1965.
Tommy Heinsohn and Red Auerbach pictured at the Celtics' 1965 championship parade. (Globe Archives)
Here's this week's question: Which Celtics Hall of Famer abruptly retired just before the start of the 1980-81 season (and missed out on winning the title with Boston in 1981)?
Know the answer? Send us an email at court...@globe.com, and the first person to write in with the correct answer will get a shoutout when the answer is revealed in next week's newsletter. Good luck!
Up next
The Celtics have a few days off before heading to Milwaukee Thursday to face the Bucks (8 p.m., NBC Sports Boston).
See the full Celtics schedule here.
Sign up for our Sports Alerts newsletter for more sports news from the Globe.
View in Browser | Update Your Preferences | Unsubscribe
Manage Your Account | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Help Center | Advertise
You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for Court Sense.
Follow Boston Globe Sports:
SUBSCRIBE TO THE GLOBE
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages