If you had the Timelord’s ability to travel through space and time, you could return to early November and view all the angst and hand wringing over the Celtics struggles as a neutral observer. Or perhaps more accurately you could smugly announce that all will be fine within a month.
We didn’t have that privilege at the time though and neither did the players. As much as all of us ultimately believed that the Celtics were too good to not figure things out, there wasn’t much evidence to support that faith. Some good teams just never figure things out (the Rockets, for example, are still trying to get their groove back).