Win Over OKC a Chance For Boston Celtics to Quiet Noise, and Bask In Some Progress

There's something satisfying about coming home from a hard day at work, knowing you did a really good job that day.

That might not be as easy to quantify for some people as it is for, say, high-level professional athletes who keep score and have stats to back up their accomplishments. Jaylen Brown can sit on his couch, maybe sip on a glass of wine, and look back on a near triple-double as part of a true team win over the best team in the league.

“It feels good. It feels great,” he said. “This team has just been awesome all year. It’s been a very fun season because our guys have really developed. … “Very encouraging win. We got a lot of great contributions from everybody.”

It’s an especially satisfying win for a Boston Celtics team obviously going through some turbulence after Jayson Tatum’s return. The rational observer knows that this is still part of Tatum’s rehab, and that some of it will go well, and some of it won’t. It could be clunky for a whole game, parts of it, or maybe none of it. When it happens, like it did in the first quarter against the Thunder, the team has to keep their wits about them and figure things out.

“I think we just had the weather to storm,” Brown said. “We just didn't make shots in the first quarter … we felt like offensively, we were doing what we needed to do. It was putting a little pressure on our defense to start, because we weren't making shots. But once our shots started going, the game kind of evened up.”

One of the by-products of a win like this is, well … this. This narrative of satisfaction of a job well done. It is a valid and important one. Positive reinforcement of good habits helps in the long run, and quieting down the outside noise, even if for a few days, is a good feeling for everyone in the Auerbach Center today.

But it also doesn’t erase mistakes. Joe Mazzulla always pushes back on the absolutes of “everything was great” after a win and “everything was bad” after a loss.

“I mean, I go back to 48 hours ago, we lost, and you asked me, 'how are we going to respond to this?'” Mazzulla said in response to a question about this win being psychologically important. “If we don't take the 13 turnovers, if we don't take the possessions where we didn't execute, and if we laud over the win, then we'll be in the same position.

“I like the fact that we brought the physicality. I like the fact that we brought our offensive organization. I like the fact that we executed. I like the fact that we took it to a different level defensively, and so now it's, 'okay, where can we get better? How do we apply it to Friday's game?' [Atlanta is] playing really well. They're going to challenge us in different ways. How do we get better?

Mazzulla loves that the Celtics took their game to a different level against Oklahoma City. He’ll use that in his coaching to try to get the best out of his players for the next game. What he won’t do is dwell on it. To borrow from Mazzulla’s many analogies about the wild kingdom, lions don’t celebrate a kill. They eat what’s good, they leave behind what’s not, and they move on to the next hunt.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t get to take a nice nap with a full belly.

The Celtics needed a win like the one over the Thunder, if for nothing else, to just remind everyone of their capabilities. Their roller coaster ride will continue as Tatum continues to get his feet under him, so letting everyone on the outside, and maybe a few on the inside, know that they belong in the championship conversation is a nice feeling for them.

“It felt good,” Tatum said. “More importantly, just kind of bouncing back from last game as a team. It started yesterday, we had a really good practice and we just kind of wanted to come out here and play better and compete. And we didn't start that way, but we responded and we played really well towards the end.”