Forsberg: Just enjoy the ride amid Celtics hot streak

The Boston Celtics have shimmied their way up the Eastern Conference standings with a rather improbable two-month surge that could soon land them in the top half of a crowded playoff picture.

With success comes expectations, and the conversation around the team has understandably shifted to what sort of playoff run might constitute a successful season. The notion of a dash to the NBA Finals is further fueled by glitzy computer projections like the one at FiveThirtyEight that gives the Celtics an astounding 30 percent chance of making the Finals and an NBA-best 18 percent chance of raising Banner 18.

Our advice: Just enjoy the ride.

Two months ago, this all seemed improbable. On January 7, the Celtics suffered a soul-stomping loss to the Knicks that left them 3 games under .500. The same FiveThirtyEight that was so bullish on Boston had the Celtics projected at a meager 43 wins and fighting for play-in position.

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Given Boston’s uneven play over the first three months of the season, we wondered out loud if the team might have to consider going backward to go forward, with eyes on how a potential lottery pick might be more valuable than trying to punch your way out of the play-in bracket and getting stuck on the middling treadmill in a beefed-up East.

The Celtics are 21-6 since that day. Their defensive rating of 102.7 in that span is 4.2 points better than the nearest rival (Miami). Boston’s net rating over those 27 games is a staggering plus-12.8, or 5.2 points better than the Phoenix Suns, who are the only team in the NBA with a better record (21-5) in that span.

It’s absolutely fair to label the Celtics legitimate title contenders. Boston owns the NBA’s best defense for the entirety of the season and that alone gives this team a chance in any matchup. The offense has shown encouraging signs of progress and, catch a trademark Jayson Tatum late-season hot streak, and it’s not unfathomable that this team could legitimately surge deep into the postseason.

But all Celtics fans should take a step back at some point before the postseason, consider the improbable nature of this entire turnaround, and just savor it. The Celtics were so maddeningly inconsistent over the three months of the season that Banner 18 felt impossibly far away.

And, in the blink of an eye, Boston is back in the conversation. All with a just-turned 24-year-old superstar and a dynamic supporting cast that could keep this window crowbarred open for the foreseeable future.

You can certainly make the case that, back on January 7, things weren’t as bleak as they might have appeared in the moment. The Celtics still owned a top-10 defense that had overcome a bumpy start under first-year coach Ime Udoka to suggest it could be the calling card of the team. Alas, some combination of COVID, injuries, and offensive inconsistencies left this team way below expectations at the midway point of the 2021-22 season.

Since that point:

* Tatum has made his typical second-half surge, producing two 50+ point games, including in Sunday’s showdown with Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets. More importantly, Tatum’s playmaking has leveled up to the point where he’s cemented himself as a top-10 player in the NBA. He has carried Boston’s offense back to respectability (they are top 10 since January 7) and is carrying himself like a superstar, particularly against some of the NBA’s elite last week.

* Marcus Smart returned from a COVID battle on January 23 and gave the Celtics the final spark they needed to achieve liftoff. Boston is 16-3 since Smart’s return with the fifth-best offense (117.5 offensive rating). What’s more, Boston’s net rating (plus-16.1) is double the next closest team (Denver, plus-7.5) in that span. Smart cranked Boston’s pace, upped his playmaking, and showed he can quarterback this team as the point guard.

* Udoka tweaked Boston’s switch-happy defense to allow Robert Williams to play in more of a roamer role. With 35-year-old Al Horford often dipped into the fountain of youth and holding down the back line, Williams is able to create mass havoc for Boston’s stingy defense. President of basketball operations Brad Stevens has gushed that, when Boston’s defense is locked in and operating in concert, they operate like no other defense that Stevens has ever coached.

* Stevens decluttered the roster at the trade deadline, splurging to add a high-level bench piece in Derrick White and leaving Udoka with a defined eight-man core to lean on. The team sold high on Josh Richardson and, while the jury will remain out on the total price for White, the Celtics brought in another piece that complements their best players and fits seamlessly with how the team wants to operate on both ends of the court. Moving Dennis Schroder was addition by subtraction and Stevens got a little emergency depth by bringing back Daniel Theis. Boston is still perilously thin on depth but Udoka has confidently leaned into this core and determined that this team will go as far as that group can take them.

The Celtics, once a chore to watch with the way their offense would routinely sputter, especially in crunch-time situations, are often basketball bliss now. There are instances when they defend like the 2004 Pistons and move the ball like the 1986 Celtics. They could still be far more consistent on both sides, and will need to be so to have playoff success, but no one is launching remotes at their TV any longer.

After the calamity that was the 2018-19 season, Stevens, then in his coaching role, openly expressed a desire to be a team that Boston could again embrace. That group -- and the one we saw for much of the start of this season -- were hard for fans to wrap their arms around. Stevens, now with a different vantage point in the GM role, fretted earlier this year that this team wasn’t playing to its potential and held out hope they could turn a corner.

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But even he probably didn’t see such a profound 180. And he, as much as anyone, has savored the enjoyability of this team.

So much of what this team accomplishes in the postseason will hinge on matchups. The Celtics, with this surge, could position themselves for a more favorable draw. Expectations will naturally climb if the Celtics match up with a young team like Cleveland in Round 1 as opposed to, say, Milwaukee, the defending NBA champs.

Regardless of how it all plays out, enjoy the ride. Stevens started tinkering with the roster after taking over last summer but it’s still very much a work in progress. There will be opportunities to address depth and shooting issues this offseason and potentially inject some additional talent to the mix. Tatum and Brown are still evolving. But the team is in a much better place than anyone could have envisioned at this point -- especially after the way the year started.

Maybe the Celtics make a playoff charge this year. Maybe some of their early season struggles come back to bite them at the finish line by delivering an unsavory matchup.

But, for now, basketball is fun again. And we should savor the unexpected change in course.