Give credit where credit is due. The Pistons played a great game today. The Celtics were missing both Smart and Timelord and it showed. With two of our best defensive players out, it makes sense that our defense took a step back. Without Timelord and his 10 rebounds per game it makes sense that the Pistons killed us on the offensive glass. With Smart out and Tatum given more ballhandling duties, it makes sense that he had 7 turnovers. It's never fun losing to a bad Pistons team and even with those two out, we still had more talent on the court than they did but they executed their gameplan perfectly and we didn't. Instead of going into the All Star Break on a 10 game win streak, we are going in with a loss but let's look where we are at.

With 22 games left, the Celtics are just 4.5 games out of first place and just 2 games back of 4th place which would give the Celtics home court advantage. If you went back to December and you said that, very few people would believe it. I think this is where everyone thought we would be before the season started but I don't think anyone expected a 9 game win streak to be the reason for it. With that being said, we are still very much in this and are poised to make a big run in the remaining 22 games.