BOSTON – The mood inside the Boston Celtics locker room was very business-like after they absolutely gave the Chicago Bulls a 111-82 beating.
Boston (8-6) is considered an NBA power this season while the Bulls (4-11) are just bad.
This is how it’s supposed to go, right?
While pleased with the victory, Celtics players have a cautiously optimistic outlook going forward.
“It’s much needed,” Marcus Smart told NBC Sports Boston following Wednesday’s blowout win. “But it’s only one game. We got tough tests coming up Friday (against Toronto) and Saturday (against Utah). That’s going to be the real tests, to see how we do. But this was a good start.”
Having lost four of their last five games - all on the road - has left Boston few positive takeaways from the trip.
Boston Celtics
Among them?
A renewed humility as well as a better understanding of what they thought was a good effort, just isn’t good enough when you are the hunted and no longer a hunter.
“As a team, it’s our second year together. For most of us guys, we’ve never been in this position,” said Boston’s Al Horford. “So, we went from, ‘I feel like going after people (to)' ... people are coming after us; just making that adjustment. We’re learning that right now.”
And it is a lesson that brought about a performance on Wednesday that ranks among the team’s best this season.
Yes, it came against a Bulls team that on so many levels, stinks.
But the fact that the Celtics took control of the game in the first half and never relented for the rest of the night, speaks to how – at least for one night – they played the right way and the result was exactly what a team picked to be among the last teams standing at the end of the season, should expect.
It was the kind of performance that frankly, many expected to see more often from the Celtics this season.
“Coming into the season, we were all expecting that we were just gonna take over, and we’re very dangerous,” Horford said with a grin. “I feel we’ve been humbled a little bit. We’re in a position now we have an opportunity to start building that. We have to do it every night. If we do that we have a chance to be special.”
There’s no getting around how Wednesday’s victory was indeed a feel-good win.
But this team has been through enough ups and downs this season to know that going forward, there has been a high level of cautious optimism, the kind that comes about with a renewed humility and better understanding of what it means to be the team everyone’s aiming to take down.
“We have to get back to playing hard,” Terry Rozier told NBC Sports Boston. “We needed that. We just have to keep it going.”
And as far as the upcoming schedule, Rozier added, “we’re trying to get back to playing good basketball so this is the best way to test us.”
Indeed, the significance of this week is not lost on Boston's Jaylen Brown.
“We got a big week coming up, this weekend two back-to-back games, two teams that we lost to previously," Brown said. "We got to do what we got to do to get a win.”
Click here to download the new MyTeams App by NBC Sports! Receive comprehensive coverage of your teams and stream the Celtics easily on your device.