The Celtics, as we knew them, are not here yet. The Celtics, as we knew them, would have found a way to beat a team on the second night of a back-to-back when the Garden was buzzing in anticipation of a dramatic comeback. They would get a stop. Ray Allen or Paul Pierce would hit a 3 and they would find a way to win a game they had no business winning.

“This is not easy,” Kevin Garnett said. “I know we made it look easy in the past. It’s not easy by far.” 

As it turned out, the Celtics did get stops and Pierce did hit a 3, one of only two shots he made all night. But they still lost to the Mavericks, 90-85, after Dirk Nowitzki made the kind of play that only he can make, beating Garnett off the dribble and finishing a three-point play over Brandon Bass.

“A player like Dirk, that man has a million moves,” Garnett said. “He made a hell of a shot and that’s what it was.”

It was more than just Nowitzki’s heroics and there’s a creeping feeling that the Celtics, as we knew them, may never get here. Yes, it’s still far too early to make those kind of judgments, even after yet another game in which they were pounded on the boards and their defense let them down.

What the Celtics are right now are Rajon Rondo and Allen and after that, it’s anyone’s guess. Rondo took 16 shots and went to the free throw line 12 times. To put that into perspective, there were only three games last season when Rondo took that many shots and zero games when he went to the line that many times.

He scored 24 points and had seven assists, but this wasn’t anything like a typical Rondo game in which he does a little bit of everything and the points just happen. This was a game in which Rondo had to do everything and in the bigger picture, this is what Rondo has to do every night because the rest of the Celtics, with the notable exception of Allen, simply aren’t there yet.

“This is his team right now until everyone gets it going,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. “We need him to be aggressive. We need him to be a scorer and attack. That’s a change but that’s what it is right now until everyone else gets it going, because they’re not.”

There were two notable developments on Wednesday.

The first is the bench played with the kind of energy that Rivers has been looking for this season. Avery Bradley, Keyon Dooling,Bass and especially Mickael Pietrus changed the tempo twice and nearly won them the game.

The second is that Rondo isn’t just carrying the offense. He is the offense.

“Rajon’s amazing, period,” Garnett said. “We talk about big things are coming, big things are here. Rajon’s keeping us alive every night and we just got to make sure we follow his lead and follow his effort and we’re going to turn this thing around.”

Beyond that, their latest loss wasn’t hard to figure out. They allowed 17 second-chance points and 20 more off turnovers. They were plus-nine at the free throw line, which almost saved them, but their shooting was off all night and they can’t win that way.

“I’m concerned, but we just got to keep working on it,” Rivers said of the rebounding. “Right now, it is what it is. We have to get better. It’s killing us.”
They started both halves poorly and had to rally from sizable deficits, but they couldn’t finish it off. That’s also not hard to figure out. 

Before the game, Rivers noted that Rondo and Allen came into the season in terrific shape. “Ridiculous,” was the word Rivers used. The corollary to that is that everyone else did not.

Pierce suffered a setback on the first day of camp when he bruised his right heel. One game after going 3-for-17 against the Pacers, Pierce made just two of five shots in 30 minutes. Rivers said that Pierce ran for an hour after shootaround, but his conditioning just isn’t there yet and it’s painfully obvious. 

Garnett is a rhythm player and that’s been slowly coming around in bits and flashes. He shot only 4-for-11 and couldn’t finish inside, but he did get to the free throw line eight times, which was a positive development.

So, this falls on Rondo right now because he’s not only the facilitator, he’s also the creator on offense. Half of their shot attempts at the rim are coming via Rondo attempts or passes. The old saying was, “As Rondo goes, so go the Celtics.” Now it’s get the hell out of his way or try to keep up. 
“Rondo is just playing terrific and we have to allow him to be terrific,” Rivers said. “We shouldn’t get in his way.”

Lately, that’s all they’ve been doing. They scored just 15 points in the first quarter and 18 in the third and this one was clearly on the starters. There was no flow, no ball movement, no anything really that could be identified as Celtics’ basketball. On defense there were breakdowns galore that began with dribble penetration and escalated from there to the point where Jason Terry was able to waltz through the lane for an uncontested layup while the help defenders were planted to the floor. 

“There’s cause and effect to everything,” Rivers said. “We always take the guy to the pick. We allowed him to reject the pick. Once you do that it’s tough to help because that’s Dirk Nowitzki on the left. That was on our guard to begin with and then the help had to be there.”

As great as Rondo has been, no one player can fix the Celtics problems.

“Practice and work,” Garnett said. “It’s not just going to show up. It’s something that we’re going to have to continue to work at every day like we’ve been doing throughout the years we’ve been here and we will get better. I know that.”