How'd they do that?: A eulogy for the Celtics' historically unlikely win streak

Everything about this young Boston Celtics season has been cosmically unlikely, from the way it began - with their prized free-agent acquisition suffering a devastating injury on a complete fluke of a play just five minutes into his Celtics career - to the nutty run of games that followed.

Boston's post-Hayward-injury magic hit a dry spell Wednesday night when they finally dug a hole they couldn't climb out of and lost to the Miami Heat. But before Dion Waiters iced the game with a pair of back-breaking threes, the Celtics had slashed a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit down to one in the span of about four minutes, and a familiar thought crept in: "Oh my god, they're going to do it again."

Before that game, after all, they'd reeled off the most inexplicable succession of wins in recent NBA history. The idea they'd find a way to keep the streak going in still-more-improbable fashion Wednesday seemed almost ... likely. They didn't, though, and the streak came to an end. But before we move on, let's look back at the 16-game run that defied every particle of logic while simultaneously captivating the league.

Comeback season

Understandably shaken after seeing Hayward go down on opening night, the Celtics lost (despite a spirited comeback) to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Then they traveled home to face the young and energetic Milwaukee Bucks on the second night of a back-to-back, and predictably lost again. Two days later, they went into halftime trailing the 76ers by four in Philadelphia when an unclever fan asked Kyrie Irving where LeBron was. Irving responded, swiftly and crudely, and for a month after that, the Celtics did not lose.

They matched the 22nd-longest win streak in league annals, and they did so despite integrating seven new players, having three rookies in their regular rotation, and facing injury absences from Irving, Al Horford, Jayson Tatum, Marcus Morris, and Marcus Smart at various points along the way. They did it despite a below-average offense that produced the league's seventh-worst effective field-goal percentage during the streak, including a five-game stretch in which they ranked dead last in field-goal shooting (38.7 percent) and 28th in 3-point shooting (29 percent).

Some contests they won routinely; most, they didn't. They pulled out close game after close game. The Celtics' average margin of victory during those 16 games was 9.8 points. In the past 20 years, the NBA has seen 18 win streaks of at least 15 games, and of those, only the Denver Nuggets' 15-gamer in 2013 - with an average margin of 10.2 - was near as narrow. All the others produced MOVs between 11.3 and 16.8.

In 11 of Boston's 16 wins, the score was within five points in the final five minutes - which is what the league defines as a "clutch" situation. During the streak, just two teams played more clutch minutes. And yet the Celtics came out ahead each time because during those 39 minutes, they outscored their opponents by 59 points while posting a collective shooting line of .597/.400/.875. Leading the charge was Irving, who went for 62 points on 23-of-32 shooting, with seven assists and a plus-55 rating in 28 clutch minutes. Ho-hum.

They engineered comeback after comeback. They faced double-digit deficits in six of those 16 games - including four games in which they trailed by at least 15 - and trailed in the fourth quarter in nine of them. They won seven games in which their win probability dipped below 25 percent, and four in which it fell below seven percent. They came back from 18 down to beat the Thunder, overcame a 12-point fourth-quarter deficit against the Hornets without Irving or Horford, and put together a 19-0 third-quarter run to erase a 17-point deficit against the Warriors, who outscore teams by 24.5 points per 100 possessions in third quarters. In the streak's final win, the Celtics trailed the Mavericks by 13 with just over seven minutes left in regulation - their win probability bottoming out at 2.5 percent before they stormed back and triumphed in overtime.

Analyze this

There's no cogent reason for this to have happened.

The Celtics traded away arguably their two best perimeter defenders this past offseason, and have vaulted from 12th in defensive rating to first. The addition of Aron Baynes alone does not explain how they've morphed from the league's fourth-worst rebounding team to its third-best - a development that's helped them win seven games in which they've shot a lower percentage than their opponent. And their offense is ... well, Smart takes the third-most field-goal and 3-point attempts on the team, and he shoots 27 percent from the field and 25.3 percent from deep.

They've subsisted on Horford's pristine defensive rotations, Jaylen Brown's man-to-man clamp-downs, Tatum's ability to attack closeouts and finish at the rim, Baynes' nasty screens and dirty work in the low post, Irving's something-from-nothing playmaking brilliance, and on Smart's sprinkling of everything. The closest thing to a blueprint they created during their streak was, "defend like madmen, eke out enough points to keep things close, and let Kyrie take over down the stretch." It was maddeningly effective.

Again, the man who is arguably their best player has been sidelined the entire time. They are obviously a worse team without Hayward, but it's fair to wonder if they would've pulled this off had he remained healthy. His injury gave way to a kind of stubborn pride and fierce energy around the team. For 16 games, they got by on effort and creativity and sheer force of will. They turned resilience into a calling card. They turned vulnerability into a strength. They made the improbable feel probable.