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How about those Celtics struggling lately? Well, don’t loose your sleep over them. The NBA season is a marathon, so don’t expect the Celtics to maintain the same pace for the whole campaign. This was a team that was destroying opponents during the first two months of the season and only had three losses. It is very tough to do that, and even though the Celtics are now among the NBA’s elite this is the first season that this roster is playing together.

 Only very special teams like the Michael Jordan’s Bulls were capable of sustaining that kind of pace for a whole season and ended eventually with 72 victories. And although these Celtics are good, they are not that good; however is very safe to say that this Celtics team can have between 65 and 67 victories by the end of the regular season .

Some Celtic fans are panicking not because of the number of losses (they now have four in the month of January alone) but because of some of the opponents to whom Boston has lost (Charlotte, Toronto and twice to Washington).

Although these defeats are dissapointing I don’t think Celtic fans have anything to worry about. Now that their team is among the league’s best it is easy for the other teams to be motivated and pump themselves up when facing the C’s, while on the other hand the Celtics may overlook some of the matches when they face “weaker” teams.

What the Celtics have to do is learn from their mistakes and change their attitude when facing these teams they have overlooked in the past. They have to understand that now every night they will have to play their best because all the other teams will try to prove themselselves and their home fans that they can beat the mighty Celtics.

If they do this, the Celtics will even learn from these defeats and will mature, a process that is necessary for every team with new key players on their rosters. A process that will eventually help them achieve the chemistry and toughness that is necessary to hopefully reach the NBA Finals for the first time since 1987.