All good things must come to an end, and that was the case for the Boston Celtics' win streak Wednesday night.
Boston's nine-game unbeaten run was ended with a 112-111 loss to the Detroit Pistons at TD Garden.
While it was disappointing for the Celtics to lose some of their momentum entering the NBA All-Star break, this win streak did show that when the C's are playing at a high level they can compete with anyone in the Eastern Conference. Heck, some analytical models have the Celtics as a top-three favorite to win the 2022 NBA Finals.
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Perhaps the most important aspect of Boston's recent winning ways was finding an identity that can carry the team the rest of the regular season and playoffs.
"I definitely look at it and see we did a lot of good things," Celtics center Al Horford said after Wednesday's defeat. "I felt we established a little bit of an identity of how we want to play on the defensive end, setting the tone defensively and then playing faster on offense -- playing fast and getting some good ball movement. At times, we go to isolation.
"But that's what I'm going to look at and the blueprint of how we want to play moving forward."
Sure, the Celtics played better offensively and the ball movement was much-improved during their win streak, but the primary catalyst was a huge uptick in defense. The Celtics own the league's best defensive rating since Jan. 1 and rank second for the entire season. The trade deadline addition of guard Derrick White has given the Celtics even more size, length and versatility on defense.
If the Celtics are going to compete for an Eastern Conference title in 2022, defense will have to propel them into June. Based on what we saw over the last 10 games, that scenario is absolutely possible if the team is healthy in the playoffs.