It’s time for the Celtics to breathe.  They’ve earned it.

The Jazz were 21-6 at home before Paul Pierce took over Salt Lake City Monday night.  After a 110-107 overtime win in Utah, Boston has just one game to play in a week.  Not even the All-Star break allotted the team this much time to regroup.

At 30-27, Boston is the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference with less than a third of the schedule left.  Doc Rivers has his team two games ahead of Milwaukee, two games behind Chicago and five games away from home court in the first round of the playoffs.  Like Kevin Garnett said after Game Six of the 2008 NBA Finals, “Anything is possibleeeeeeeee!!!”  Right?

Technically no.  Rajon Rondo and Jared Sullinger won’t tear off warm-ups and check in another time in the regular season.  Boston is 10-4 since Rondo partially tore his right ACL, but only 3-4 on the road in that time.  Those road victories came against opponents who have won a combined 42 percent of their games.  Three of the home wins were against Sacramento, Orlando and the Chris Paul-less Clippers.

There is a miniscule sample size to predict future behavior with these Celtics.  They have played only 19 games without Rondo this season and only three games since acquiring Jordan Crawford before the trade deadline.  The more data the better, and right now there’s hardly any on how this team plays together.

Another indicator of future success or frustration is the Celtics’ remaining schedule.  Boston’s March is bearish: sixteen games in a month is a larger workload than the team has seen all season.  Nine of those 16 games are against teams that would make the playoffs if the season ended today.  Six of those teams would have home court advantage for at least one round.  The road games include:

 March 5: At Philadelphia

March 6: At Indiana

March 10: At Oklahoma City

March 22: At Dallas

March 23: At Memphis

March 31: At New York

Philadelphia and Dallas are 10^th and 11^th in their respective conferences but are noteworthy because of who comes next.  The Celtics have two back-to-backs in March with top-tier talent looming on the back end.  Boston is 7-8 this season in their second game in as many days.  That isn’t horrible, but consider that the team has won both games of a back-to-back just twice all season.  The most recent instance was February 6 in Toronto and February 7 at home against a lost Lakers team.  Neither team was (or is) above .500.  Boston has 10 wins in 28 tries on the road, the least of any Eastern Conference playoff team.

To move ahead to the sixth or fifth seed in the East, the Celtics need help.  Chicago is giving a little right now.  The Bulls have dropped seven of their last ten games.  They are home for over half the month of March, but this season that hasn’t mattered.  Chicago is 15-14 at home and 17-11 on the road.

What does matter is that 14 of the Bulls’ remaining games are against teams under .500.  Eight of those games are against the Magic, Wizards, Pistons and Raptors.  All four teams are at least 11 games under .500.  Kirk Hinrich, Taj Gibson and Joakim Noah are all recovering from injuries, and the Bulls have still allowed the third-lowest points per game this season.  Plus there is the slim chance Derrick Rose gets back before May.

What about Milwaukee?  The Bucks landed J.J. Redick, the biggest moving piece of deadline season.  They are 27-28, comfortably five games ahead of Toronto for the last playoff spot in the East, but like Chicago are 3-7 in their last 10 games.  Distinguishing home and away games is difficult here, too: the Bucks are 14-14 at home and 13-14 on the road.  But their last three losses were by a total of six points.  Two losses came against Brooklyn and one came against Atlanta.  Milwaukee has 13 sub-.500 teams left on its schedule, and only has three stretches left with successive games against teams with winning records.  Also noteworthy: The Bucks already swept their season series with the Celtics, 2-0.

The Celtics are a different team without Rajon Rondo.  They’re a different team than they were a week ago.  But their upcoming schedule looks more difficult than what is behind them.  For Boston to move up in the Eastern Conference it must prove it is more than a different team. The Celtics must prove they are a better team.

Missing an All-Star, an all-rookie and starting 35 and 36-year-olds down the stretch will make that difficult.  Boston may struggle to stay ahead of Milwaukee.