By Tom Westerholm | twesterh@masslive.com | Posted October 08, 2018 at 06:30 AM
The Boston Celtics wrapped up a disappointing preseason slate with a loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday, finishing 1-3 in their first four contests and showing essentially every warning sign a team that expects to play deep into the postseason can show in four meaningless games.
With the caveat that all of these takeaways could be proven silly after a few regular-season contests, here are 15 takeaways from the first four games of the 2018-19 season.
1. Gordon Hayward is not 100 percent.
Charles Krupa/AP Photo
1. Gordon Hayward is not 100 percent.
This much was evident from the opening tip against Charlotte: Hayward is going to need some more time — and maybe a significant amount of time — to return from the ankle injury that ended his season on Opening Night last year.
Hayward doesn’t look hobbled, necessarily, and Brad Stevens said his repaired ankle has been great. But it takes a while to get back into game shape at the NBA level, and Hayward is yet to reach that point.
How long it takes Hayward to return to full health could determine how successful the Celtics are, at least in the early going. The Celtics’ rotations will be built around cycling their stars through the second unit, and Hayward — with his play-making off the bounce and 3-point marksmanship — was expected to be a key part of that.
Hayward will continue to get better and better as the season goes on — he won’t shoot 25-percent from the floor and 10-percent from behind the 3-point line for the entirety of the season, obviously. But returning from traumatic injuries takes time, and Hayward has a ways to go.
2. There is some natural malaise.
At media day and throughout training camp, Brad Stevens preached the importance of not skipping steps.
Throughout the preseason, the Celtics looked like they desperately wanted to skip this specific step and get to the regular season, when games start counting.
That was to be expected. The last time Boston took the court was Game 7 against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers — some of the highest stakes that exist on a basketball court. On Saturday, the only thing at stake was bragging rights against a decimated Eastern Conference squad who at best might scrape their way into the seventh or eighth seed.
Whether skipping a step comes back to haunt the Celtics remains to be seen. There is some value to be gained in continuity, which the Celtics may have improved by taking their preseason seriously, but four games can only do so much anyway, and Boston has 82 regular season games to tune up for the postseason.
This is a long way of saying “It’s preseason, everyone calm down,” but it IS only preseason.
3. The Celtics look like a make-or-miss team.
The Celtics look a whole lot different when the threes they launch are falling. Just compare the difference between the first quarter of the preseason opener and … well, every other quarter of the preseason.
Stevens said the Celtics need to focus on taking better shots, and you can bet they will once they work through some of the offensive kinks. But there may be some really ugly stretches if the Celtics continue to launch 3-pointers at a higher rate than last year.
