On Thursday night, in a rather abrupt wake-up call from their week-long vacation, the Celtics lost a nail-biter to the Eastern Conference-leading Milwaukee Bucks. It was a game that has stirred up a fair bit of controversy in just about every way you can imagine, from Kyrie Irving’s poor shooting night and last-second missed layup to the questionable officiating on the final possession. It was frankly a little bit exhausting.
Lost in the noise, perhaps, was the fact that the Celtics once played an incredibly competitive game against an Eastern Conference contender, and they did so without two key rotation players that might have swung the outcome in their favor if they had played.