I am no longer going to mention that the 2023-24 Boston Celtics resolved Modern basketball, but they were the kind of team that makes you wonder if this kind of thing is possible. They started four perimeter players who could dribble, move and execute, plus a 7-foot-2 sharpshooter who took 30-foot shots. All of the perimeter guys were elite defenders who stood between 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-8 and were either relaxed shifting or sick. The obese sniper also served as a rim protector and could shoot more out of defensive coverage, as could his replacement, a five-time All-Megastar who is close to his first name in Generation 17.
Boston didn’t change the game by turning to closer interchangeable defenders who can do everything, and they have been far from the first team to benefit from the 5-out space. Everyone has been trying to create rosters like this for years, including the Celtics themselves, who were eliminated in the 2022 Finals and 2023 playoffs. However, with Jrue Pleasure and Kristaps Porzingis in the picture, they had the foundation with the maximum stack of five in the league. and the lineup that best exemplified the best of fashion: everyone is a warning on the offensive, no one is a legal liability on protection.
Now they’re back, with the exception of Porzingis, who is recovering from offseason surgery, and they haven’t changed much. Jayson Tatum’s jump shot looks better in the preseason. Baylor Scheierman is likely to crack the rotation. If Boston does not repeat, it will not be because its structure is less strong, but because its show is even stronger. In the East, the Sixers received Paul George, the Knicks received Karl-Anthony Cities and Mikal Bridges, the Charm received Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and the Greenbacks and Cavs received health. There are also plenty of valuable rivals in the West, including a team in OKC whose roster is similarly constructed. Can any of those groups solve the Celtics?
The game climate.
extreme past: In addition to the playoffs, the Celtics played 101 games and won 80 of them. They had a plus-11.7 point differential in the regular season (Negative. 1 on offense, Negative. 2 on defense), spaced the floor higher than anyone else, and manipulated matchups on both ends by trying completely strange things. Pleasure and Porzingis match up exactly as expected, and they overcame Porzingis’ postseason injuries in part because his intensity remained higher than many expected, albeit more commonly against fighters who were also shorthanded. Stevens won the Executive of the Generation award, Tatum made the All-NBA first team, White and Joy made the All-Defensive second team and Brown won Finals MVP.
The low season: Tatum, Pleasure and White all won gold medals, and there was nothing strange about the experience for any of them. Brown didn’t win a gold medal, and there was nothing strange about that either. Tatum, White and Hauser signed extensions, and one of them was the largest in NBA history. Kornet was the first player off the board on distant guests because he thought this would be fun, and both Xavier Tillman and Neemias Queta also re-signed. Scheierman, chose Negative. 30, turns out to be an excellent compatibility, at least on offense.
Easiest case for 2024-25: The defending champions are so dominant without Porzingis that when he returns, more than one team tries to take a chance on Kornet; closer to every two 60-win seasons, knock out the full-strength Greenbacks (negative 8th spot due to a regular injury-plagued season), the Knicks and The Sixers, in probably the biggest playoff run imaginable, next take over Banner 19 with a sweep of other Knights.
Worst case 2024-25: Tatum’s catching mode is a topic of conversation all season, as is Porzingis’ ankle fitness and Horford’s lateral mobility; All three look great in some things and not so good in others, with the Celtics’ deeply disappointing second-round line against the Sixers landing squarely in the playoffs.
The dialogue
Believer of the Celts: What a beautiful choice of skills there is in this workforce. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown can be fantastic in any context, but with all the variety on the planet and top-notch defenders around them, they can be the best versions of themselves. Any contender would really like to have a Jrue Pleasure or Derrick White type, and Boston has either of them! I’m also inspired by the scoop that Kristaps Porzingis is recovering from surgery sooner than expected. Now it’s about watching how the team calms down and responds to the pain. In fact, I feel like the Celtics could win a championship, don’t you think?
Celtics Skeptic: Uh, they just did. Once there was a parade and all that. Why do you talk about the defending champions as if an extreme season never happened?
Believer of the Celts: Didn’t you get the memo? The Celtics aren’t “defending” anything else. This is an intact season, and they have an intact target, which they will attack with the ferocity and attention of a pod of orcas. As far as I’m concerned, the extreme season never took place. All we have is the prevailing weather, and Joe Mazzulla has made sure his team understands that.
Celtics Skeptic: Oh negative, you absolutely got caught Mazzulla. Won’t this ruthless man realize that there might be some problems here? Porzingis is a huge question mark, Al Horford is 38 years old, and the biggest offseason addition was… Baylor Scheierman, aka Sam Hauser 2.0? I’m no longer looking to put an asterisk on the name or anything else, however the Celtics have been very lucky this season. They had an easy path to the Finals, and once they got there, they didn’t have to endure the workforce that was once best suited to best them, as Tatum himself has stated. I think the road will be tougher in the past and I also wonder what will happen to this core in a year or two. The workforce is on the market and payroll may not be sustainable. This hesitation can create a feeling of unease that impacts what happens in the courtroom.
Believer of the Celts: Stream it! The suspicions are the same as always within the NBA, and the Celtics are not petrified by anyone. Horford has been hearing the nation write him off because of his momentum since his first season in Boston. Porzingis has triumphed over nastier injuries than this. You may even see potential “problems,” but they only see demanding situations. If the space isn’t as intact without KP, that’s great. It will be a problem for all ball handlers to put together more difficult reads. It will be a problem for Xavier Tillman to knock out his three-pointers. I resent the perception that I have been “caught by Mazzulla”, because of the way in which: he is a schoolteacher, no longer a cult leader, and is far from the only one within the group who understood the use of the transfer. Extreme June. Brad Stevens declared in the summer that he “put last season to bed” immediately closer to the show. The following week, he was once at a recruiting exercise.
Celtics Skeptic: How can you take forward this idea that they only see the challenges? If Tatum and Brown suffer serious injuries in the first game of the season, they will look obese for the rest of the season. problemappropriate? Treating setbacks and shortcomings as alternatives to expansion is not a modern idea unique to Boston, and it does not protect it from the repercussions of so-called demanding situations. When Mazzulla says the Celtics “shouldn’t miss a beat” without KP, I get that he’s trying to develop the “next man up” mentality that every team in the league claims to have, but it’s concerning! It’s also a little insulting to Porzingis. The nearest boy is not so excellent! I know I’m talking like I’m doing a bit of Jeff Van Gundy, but I’m serious: If you commit to faking every upheaval Boston can have, it’s a more or less unrevealed blessing on its way back to the top of the mountain. , I don’t see the point of uploading them.
Believer of the Celts: Negative, please move on. Let me know about those topics. The Celtics are not running away from their problems. They love problems. they love fixation affairs. (Also, that’s former Celtics senior guard Jeff Van Gundy.)
Celtics Skeptic: Well, before the Celtics won it all, they kept going their own way. They slightly escaped two seven-game lines that were tougher than they should have been in 2022, then went up 2-1 in the Finals before their offense fell apart. They fell ill 3-0 against the Negative. Eight seeds into the convention finals of the near past and, even with excessive roster updates, and a traditionally dominant regular season, many pros thought they would self-destruct once again. Some of this page’s panel of prognosticators picked the Mavs in the Finals, and more than some of ESPN’s did. Boston was given the completed activity that past, but I’m not sure it really solved all of its problems. After playing one of the best basketball games of the season in the third quarter of Game 3, he allowed Dallas to continue a 22-2 run in the fourth quarter. What if Doncic hadn’t fouled out with more than four minutes left? What if the Celtics had played Denver better? If the Celtics had lost, going into this season it would be a completely another conversation: about how they want to have poise in the playoffs, put momentum at the rim, generate additional returns and seize the moment.
Believer of the Celts: You are practically there. Come on, say it with me: Extreme season not subject! If they had lost in the first round, I would tell them absolutely nothing more about the squad and the demanding situations that lie ahead. I accept as true that the Celtics want to be ready, attack the rim, generate additional performances and play games with momentum. The playoffs, the preseason, the regular season, they continue, it doesn’t matter: the usual must be paramount. They are competing with themselves and execution is everything. That being said, there will be times when they play extraordinarily. The goal is not to overreact to a 22-2 run, a horrible loss, or a 40-point win. As Mazzulla says, winning is as bad as losing.
Celtics Skeptic: You may be making me upset. My take is that when the numbers suggest the 2023-24 Celtics have been head and shoulders above the competition, I’m no longer convinced they really have been. They never wanted to move toward a team like the Sixers of the past, who can include Paul George, Kelly Oubre and Caleb Martin in their perimeter players. They never wanted to move towards a team like the Knicks of the past, who can do the same with Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby and Josh Hart. Execution isn’t everything – skill is clearly the most notable variable, but it’s certainly notable, and it’s much harder to shoot against fighters like that. The irony here, though, is that despite my issues, I don’t think any other contender has matched Boston’s combination of spacing and defensive versatility. I wouldn’t push the Celtics into farmland, but when I had to select a workforce to earn the name, it would be them. Technically, this may make me more positive than you about its chances, because it seems like you’ve stripped yourself of gains and stripped yourself of any meaning, defeating the point of this entire exercise.
