Given the Celtics are four wins away from an NBA championship, it's easy to forget where this team was over the first few months of the 2021-22 season.
Boston was on a roller coaster of sorts until late January, and there were more downs than ups. After a very rocky fall, the Celtics were three games under .500 a few days after Christmas. Some C's fans surely gave up on this season's team around that juncture, and others might have questioned the future of the franchise as well.
While Boston proceeded to bury those struggles six feet under, Jaylen Brown still remembers what some naysayers were vouching for when times were tough for the Celtics.
"That trade talk was loud, and most of it came from Boston fans," Brown told Yahoo Sports. "It's a city that doesn't tolerate excuses. But in reality, early in the season we had a new coach, we had a new front office, I missed about 15 games early in the season and that caused us to not be clicking on all cylinders like we wanted to be. People were impatient, so I understand. But fast forward, we got healthy, we got everybody back and now the sky's the limit."
Capping off the season with the Larry O'Brien Trophy would mark one of the more impressive turnarounds for an NBA team in recent memory. The Celtics can inch closer toward their ultimate goal Thursday night when they visit the Golden State Warriors for Game 1 of their best-of-seven series.
