Celtics Had Self-Reflecting Team Meeting Before Back-To-Back Wins

The Boston Celtics needed a momentum shift and they knew it themselves.

Boston closed the door on 2024 going 5-5 in its last 10 games of the year, awaited by a challenging four-game road trip to begin 2025. The Minnesota Timberwolves, Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets make up those matchups, and the Celtics didn’t want to extend its December slump.

So, that meant team meeting time for the reigning champs.

“We had a good meeting before this trip just as a looking in the mirror type of meeting, and see where we can improve and what we can do better,” Kristaps Porzingis told reporters after Friday night’s win over the Rockets, as seen on NBC Sports Boston’s postgame coverage. “Because teams are obviously coming for us and some of them are playing their best basketball against us. So, some small adjustments that we want to make and try to keep improving as a team and keep playing the same way. … So far, from the small sample size we have we’re looking pretty good.”

Without Jaylen Brown, marking Boston’s 16th consecutive game without the team’s top eight rotation players all healthy, the Celtics stepped up.

Porzingis returned after a four-game absence recovering from his Christmas Day ankle sprain, and Houston head coach Ime Udoka was dealt a rude awakening. The Celtics, at first, struggled against the league’s leader in offensive rebounds (14.2), but found their stride by knocking down 19-of-39 total 3-pointers en route to a 109-86 victory.

Boston’s Mazzulla-ball method, while effective, wasn’t the only factor in Udoka’s Rockets failing to take off in Houston.

The Celtics held the Rockets to a combined 30 points in the second half, opening the door for Mazzulla to unload the bench in the game’s final 4:53 and watch the team trot toward its third consecutive victory. That leaves now two boxes for the C’s to check — the Thunder and Nuggets — before returning home after their biggest test of the season.

“We’re making some adjustments,” Porzingis confirmed, per NBC Sports Boston. “I don’t wanna tell you all the things we’re doing but we’re doing some things differently and we just wanted to find another way how to improve. And as I said, from the small sample size, we’re looking good so far.”

The Celtics are standing strong as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, trailing the first-place Cleveland Cavaliers by 4 1/2 games and ahead of the third-place New York Knicks by two games. Considering Porzingis missed 23 of the team’s first 34 games coupled with a stray of absences from key players like Jrue Holiday, Jaylen Brown and Sam Hauser, Boston has been weathering all possible storms.

Next up, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the best of the West on Sunday afternoon.