Will the Boston Celtics be a better ball club this season? If you ask champion Celtics center turned Boston broadcaster Brian Scalabrine, the answer is yes – but in context. "Last year we had Jaylen Brown, and then this year we have Jayson Tatum," said Scal in a recent interviewwith WEEI Boston Sports Original "Rich and Ken with Ted Johnson" show. "I think the addition of Mitchell Robinson, healthy, puts our bigs in a whole different stratosphere."
"If we had Mitchell Robinson last year, we'd beat (the Philadelphia 76ers)," he continued. "We have a (glut) of wings; are we going to miss Jaylen Brown or not? I'm not sure. Paul George is going to be a supportive role. A lot of guys on the team would be (in) a supportive role. I think Payton Pritchard
will take – I don't know about a huge leap, but let me explain the leap."
"Pritchard will have more nights where he has 40, more nights where he has 35, more nights where he has over 30," added Scalabrine. "I think Tatum has the personality in which if Pritchard has it going, he'll just keep feeding the pig, as we say in the NBA, right? So I think there will be nights like that."
"I think Derrick White had a rough year last year," he continued. "Is that because his bestie (Tatum) was gone? I don't know. There's a lot of dynamics to the wings. We still have Hugo González. We still have Jordan Walsh. We still have guys that are in that role.
"Our biggest problem last year, and the reason we traded Anfernee Simons, who was awesome for us, is because we thought we needed size, and (former Chicago Bulls big man Nikola) Vucevic didn't work out. It's still a fault of his. It just didn't work going against (76ers center) Embiid, but we have a guy for Joel Embiid now, and that guy's name is Mitchell Robinson, and (Neemias) Queta got so much better that season. I'm expecting him to be good. So I expect this team to be better than last year, but everyone has to remember this. There were nine teams, nine, trying to lose every single night, so much so that in the middle of the night, the NBA changed the lottery reform."
"Now (the reformed NBA draft lottery odds are) flat and odd, so people weren't tanking," Scal said. "Tanking got out of control basically overnight. So are we going to win 56 games? Probably not, but our team could be as good or, if not better, in a really competitive East."
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This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: Brian Scalabrine thinks the Boston Celtics will be a better ball club this season
