The Celtics’ Rajon Rondo, right, attempts to pass around the Nets’ Eduardo Najera in last night’s game.

AP / Elise Amendola

BOSTON — The Celtics became the first team to reach the midway point of the season last night, playing their 41st game, against the New Jersey Nets.

With their grueling first half of the season over, the Celtics will get three months to play their remaining 41 games, which is something Boston coach Doc Rivers is happy about.

“It will help us big,” Rivers said. “We’ve played 41 games and the Cavs have played 36. It was just a tough beginning for us. We played a lot of games squeezed into a short time. Now we get from this point on until the rest of the season to play 41 more games, and that will be great for us.

“For me it will be great if we could rest, but more importantly we get practice time the rest of this year. There is a stretch in February where it’s tough, but other than that we get to practice the rest of the season, and that will make us a much better basketball team.”

The defending world champions own the fourth-best record in the NBA, but they would like to have the best record by the time the season ends. Even so, Rivers is happy with where the Celtics are at right now, under the circumstances.

“We have a great record,” Rivers said. “Our young guys are improving. I think our bench has been up and down, but I think it has shown improvement. Before the year, if someone would have said, ‘Your record is where it’s at,’ I wouldn’t complain about it, so, yeah, I’m happy.”

So are his players.

“We have a pretty good record, especially with the amount of games we played in the time span,” Boston guard Rajon Rondo said. “We hit a tough stretch here, and I’m hoping that we are over it.”

Rondo doesn’t expect things to get easier, even though their games will be more spaced out during the second half of the season.

“I don’t think it will get easier; I just think we have to prepare better mentally,” Rondo said. “Not that we didn’t in those games, but we had tough stretches and we needed to get over the hump and just handle adversity. Things aren’t going to go perfect throughout the entire season. We won 19 in a row but we lost seven out of nine. It’s part of the NBA season, and hopefully we’ll never go through another stretch like that the rest of the year.”

The Celtics began the season with the best start in NBA history (27-2), won a franchise-record 19 straight games from Nov. 15-Dec. 23, and had their longest drought since revitalizing the franchise, losing seven of nine from Dec. 25-Jan. 9.

Rondo adjusting

Rondo said he has slowed down a bit because some teams have put a bigger defender on him, which is something he is not used to.

But he is still among the top guards in the NBA in shooting percentage (.500, ranked third) and steals per 48 minutes (3.26, tied for third).

“There are only really two different looks that teams are giving me right now,” Rondo said. “They either put a bigger guard on me or the point guard. We are still trying to adjust and make those changes throughout my game to better the team.”

Rondo said he needs to continue to be aggressive, no matter who is guarding him, and he feels that will make the Celtics a better team.

roblee@projo.com