Who Knew The Secret To The Celtics Fantastic Season Was A Good Beard

Throughout history people have turned to science to help try and explain certain phenomenas. There has to be scientific evidence so that you can explain what you are seeing through rational thought and reason. It's why analytics have been such a big thing in sports and the NBA, they help provide concrete data to support what our eyes tell us.  Sure sometimes we go too far with stats and advanced metrics, but on the whole they do a good job of painting a well informed picture.

But when it comes to the Boston Celtics, you need to go deeper than just your normal analytics. For years I've sent way too much time running the numbers, running the experiments, trying to develop what sure as shit looked like a concrete theory to help explain what we saw. That was haircut science and it's stone cold. 

In each instance, from Marcus Smart to Kyrie Irving to Jaylen Brown, as soon as they got a fresh cut their production skyrocketed. It's about as concrete a theory as you'll find in any scientific journal. I thought that's maybe where this idea would end, but it appears as though we are living in a time of a new scientific discovery.

We know both Jaylen and Tatum are having monster seasons. They are destroying people and have been the entire year. So far the haircut science seemed to be doing it's thing again. But then there's this

Is it possible that the final infinity stone that truly unlocks the potential of Jaylen and Tatum isn't just their hair, but their beards? Think about it. James Harden, ever heard of him? Only one of the most terrifying and unstoppable offensive forces in NBA history. What is he known for? Strip clubs and beards. Let's focus on the beard part. You look at Jaylen and Tatum last season, Jaylen had the beard but it wasn't a full on monster. Way better than I can grow, but it was modest. Tatum as we know barely had a connected beard. Now look at them

And then let's compare their seasons

vs

I'm just supposed to sit here and think their breakout years can be explained by individual improvement, Kyrie not being there, everyone supporting each other and Brad's system? You can do that if you want, but it's pretty fucking clear that you combine haircut science with this new discovery of beard science and I think we have our answer. Better across the board no matter how you want to slice it up. 

Perhaps we should have seen this coming. You could tell they were in the early stages of developing this look this summer with Team USA

now here we are a handful of months laters, their beards are thicker, and their play has been All Star/borderline All NBA caliber. I don't know what else you need to see to fully buy into this science. We've certainly talked ourselves into less as Celtics fans and this is something that I feel is about as concrete as it gets.

Which brings me to my next point. I'm going to need every single player on this roster to grow playoff beards. You want to make a deep playoff run? Maybe pull off the massive upset and beat Giannis? You don't do it with buyout guys. You don't do it with health. You do it with beards. Prove me wrong.