Celtics aim for yet another bounce-back win

There has been a definite pattern followed by the Celtics over the past four seasons.

After going a dismal 25-57 during the first year that Brad Stevens was the head coach, the Celtics have improved their win total in four consecutive years.

They wee 40-42 in the 2014-15 season, tied for fourth place in the Eastern Conference at 48-34 in 2015-16, owned the best record in the conference in 2016-17 at 53-29 and were behind only the Toronto Raptors with a 55-27 mark a year [...]

There has been a definite pattern followed by the Celtics over the past four seasons.

After going a dismal 25-57 during the first year that Brad Stevens was the head coach, the Celtics have improved their win total in four consecutive years.

They wee 40-42 in the 2014-15 season, tied for fourth place in the Eastern Conference at 48-34 in 2015-16, owned the best record in the conference in 2016-17 at 53-29 and were behind only the Toronto Raptors with a 55-27 mark a year ago.

Unless there is an unexpected surge during the final quarter of this season, that trend is going to be coming to an end.

The Celtics are 37-23 with 22 games remaining, meaning they will have to go 19-3 the rest of the way in order to reach 56 victories and exceed last season’s win total.

Given what we’ve seen of the Celtics during the first 60 games, that kind of blazing finish is not in the cards.

All the evidence that is needed can be found in Saturday night’s head-scratching 126-116 loss to the Chicago Bulls, one of the NBA’s worst teams who took a 16-44 record into Monday night.

The Celtics trailed by as many as 25 points against the Bulls, a team they embarrassed, 133-77, for the franchise’s most lopsided win on Dec. 8.

That perfectly sums up the Celtics season — they can look so good on one occasion, then be lost in a fog on another.

So the Celtics are 0-2 since returning from the All-Star break, and the next two assignments are going to be difficult ones.

The Celtics are in Canada Tuesday night to face the team with the second-best record in the NBA, the Raptors. Twenty-four hours later, the Celtics will be hosting the Portland Trail Blazers, who are fourth in the Western Conference.

Once again, the Celtics find themselves in a position of having to bounce back from a brutal loss in a season that has gone anything but the way they expected.

“You’re going to have clunkers in the NBA,’’ Stevens told reporters in Chicago Saturday night.

The Celtics, the preseason pick to win the East, have had more than their share of clunkers, starting with an Oct. 22 loss at home to the Orlando Magic when they trailed by as many as 13.

There was a night-before-Thanksgiving humiliation by the New York Knicks when the Celtics trailed by as many as 26, lost by eight and were booed off the parquet floor, then an eight-point loss at home to the Phoenix Suns on Dec. 19.

Since the start of 2019, the Celtics have been swept on a three-game road trip by the Miami Heat, Magic and Brooklyn Nets, and most recently, couldn’t hold 18 and 28 points leads at home and lost to the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers in a three-night span.

Those horror-show defeats are why the Celtics are sitting fifth in the East, and they are closer to the sixth-place Nets than the first-place Milwaukee Bucks.

In addition to the Celtics having major problems in a season where so much was expected, other teams in the East have gotten better.

The Bucks (45-14 prior to playing the Bulls Monday night) have already exceeded last season’s win total of 44 and are headed for their first 50-win season since the 2000-01.

The Raptors picked up key pieces in Kawhi Leonard last summer and Marc Gasol before the trade deadline and are bound for their fourth straight 50-win season.

The Indiana Pacers (40-20) have kept on winning despite losing their best player, Victor Oladipo, to a season-ended injury on Jan. 23 Indiana should get to 50 wins for the first time since it was 56-26 in the 2013-14 season.

The Pacers dropped four in a row after Oladipo was injured, but were 8-1 since that losing streak, entering Monday night’s game against the Detroit Pistons.

The Philadelphia 76ers, who have landed Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris since the start of the season, began Monday a game ahead of the Celtics are should win at least 50 games for a second year in a row. The Sixers have had consecutive 50-win seasons since they ran off seven straight from 1979-80 through 1985-86.

The Celtics looked like they might have steadied themselves following those brutal losses to the Lakers and the Clippers, rebounding for wins over the Sixers and the Detroit Pistons before the break.

But with February about to end and just a quarter of the season to go, the Celtics are in Toronto once again searching for a way to straighten things out.