There is a moment between seasons in sports, a springtime that occurs even in fall, when the previous season has been set firmly in the past and the upcoming season hasn’t started.
Some fanbases live for this moment. The perpetual also-rans have their moment in the sun at this time. The offseason’s changes have yet to pan out—or not—and the future is wide-open. If a chance at that brass ring is a bit too far-fetched, there’s always this hope that some things will be better this year than they were
the last time around.
Such optimism can be found with the green and white, and it’s not without some foundation. The Celtics have added Mitchell Robinson, Michael Conley and Paul George—and Jayson Tatum, if you look at the broad trend of last season, and have lost Jaylen Brown. Now the Celtics won 56 games last season with a missing/recovering Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown stepping up.
So, to me, the question is whether Jayson Tatum can step up in a manner similar to Brown’s leap last season. I think he can.
Yes, the rest of the East has gotten better. Notably, the Sixers added LeBron James, who, I suspect, moved three time zones away from his family in order to have one last shot at Boston, and of course, they added Jaylen Brown. The Raptors added Kawhi Leonard, who managed to dodge the hammer that hit the Clippers as hard as any team has been hit in recent memory, but the Celtics have young guys that are still on the upswing of their career trajectories.
Right now, I would say that anything is possible. The league is as wide-open as it has ever been (there have been eight different champions in the past nine seasons, something that has never happened before). The Knicks showed last season that getting hot at the right time can be a successful path to a title.
A conflux of factors have made depth more important than ever in the league. For starters, the second apron has made talent aggregation almost impossible. You can’t stack your roster for the playoffs anymore.
And as Mazzulla said on Monday, “the standard and the expectation of playing all 82 isn’t realistic.” The intensity of the game has changed significantly, and with players training year-round, injury risk is significant and best-practices for letting the body heal have resulted in longer recovery periods than were common in the past.
While basketball is still a long way from adopting the line shift strategy employed by its winter sports partner, hockey, teams need to be prepared to go 10 deep or more, and those last few rotation slots seem to work best when they’re staffed by talent that’s been developed inhouse.
Here the Celtics are one of the best teams in the league. Perhaps Oklahoma City is better at identifying and developing talent right now, but it’s close in any case.
At the same time, Joe Mazzulla provided a thoughtful explanation and antidote for the preseason buzz that we all fall prey to at a media availability on Sunday. “Every team you lead is the most together team right now, because we haven’t traveled. No one’s gotten benched. No one’s been on a losing streak. No one’s gotten blamed in the media. No one’s had to go stand in the corner for 10 minutes and not get the ball.”
It’s a reminder that it’s not how together you are in practices—and blow-out wins—that counts, it’s how together you are during challenging situations that counts.
The Celtics, let’s not forget, blew out the Sixers during the two of the three games they won in May. They finished the series with a net score of plus 20.
Now this is not an argument that the Celtics should have won the series. The results are what they are, and if, for example, we as Celtics fans delight in the Boston’s 3-1 comeback victories over the Sixers in ’68 and ’81, then we need to own that loss in May as well.
That series is a reminder that, for as good as the Celtics looked during the relatively low-stakes contests of the regular season, they fell apart when they faced a Sixers team that challenged them.
The series reminded me, to a certain extent, of the 2022 Finals where Boston turned into a tightrope walker that looked down and caught a bad case of vertigo.
The Sixers made the Celtics uncomfortable, and Boston, suddenly, looked like they had no business being where they were.
A team that looked to be on the verge of great things wasn’t.
The Celtics—players and coaches alike—need to ask themselves if they’re prepared to stick together and respond to challenges, because that is what it takes to win a title. There has been enough turnover and time since 2024 that these are fresh lessons for some and lessons that others might need a refresher course in.
And it’s not enough to plan for challenges. The real test isn’t having a plan, everybody has one of those, it’s having the toughness to stick with the plan—or, if you’re on the coaching staff, having the flexibility and self-awareness to change the plan if it’s not working.
That’s why I’m intrigued by the Celtics’ roster additions coming into this season.
Michael Conley is coming into his 20th season, and has spent much of his career on teams that were mid-pack or worse. He’s not really here to score or defend. He’s here to keep this team grounded. All during the season, he should be teaching the younger guys on the team how to keep the game in front of them, and when the going gets tough, he needs to be there to steady these guys and keep everyone together and on the same page.
The same goes for Paul George. He’s developed a bit of an old man’s game, and should be able to offer some meaningful contributions to the scoreboard, but like Conley, I think he can be a steady hand on the rudder when the seas get choppy, again, keeping everyone together.
Mitchell Robinson is coming direct off a championship run. And although Mitchell played a relatively small role, minutes-wise, in the Knicks’ playoff run, the Knicks were just 13-9 during regular season games that he missed. He promises to be an important factor in the Celtics being able to make the front court a position of strength 48 minutes out of every game, and 82 games out of the year.
Do the Celtics have the talent needed to win a title this year? In a flattened NBA where parity has become the rule, I think they have that talent, both in players on the roster and coaches guiding the team.
Will they win it all?
Well, that comes down to how well this team stays together through the challenges along the way.
