Uhhhh everyone that realizes that trade was an abysmal disasterclass has disconnected from this subreddit & it’s now a self selected population of cope artisans & JB haters pretending that we will be better than as if we’d kept Jaylen. Personally I haven’t been less excited about an upcoming Celtics season since maybe 2015?

Maybe I’ll be proven wrong but every fiber of my basketball soul tells me this summer was the inflection point we will all someday look back on as the beginning of the end of this era of the Cs being good.

Gotta stop even looking at this dumbass subreddit but it’s become such habit over the last decade I just do it.  Oh well

Nothing else has really happened since then, and anyone who dooms gets downvoted to the ground, so it’s mostly just Celtics fans that are longing to watch the Celtics again. I’ve heard plenty of people in real life that are still kinda upset about the JB trade, just that the initial shock is gone now

A string of good games and good health at the right time nearing the Playoffs and into them is all we need

I think the fit of the team is absurd. We will exceed a lot of expectations provided Tatum can stay healthy.

My concern is that the team fits almost a little too well. We’re a little too committed to our Plan A, but the playoffs will often force a team into a Plan B/C/D.

We really have ~5 player archetypes.

Playmaking wing (Tatum, potentially George)

No-nonsense low-turnover guards (Pritchard, White, Conley)

Floor spacing wings (Hauser, Scheierman, potentially George)

Athletic defensive wings (Gonzalez, Walsh, Scheierman)

Rim running rebounders (Queta, Mitchell)

We’re waiting to see what George looks like, and where he’ll fit, but this team has a really well-established hierarchy, and everyone fits pretty perfectly into the team’s identity.

Teams that fit this well (e.g. the 2018-2022 Bucks or the 2023-26 Thunder) can look unbeatable in the regular season but are a lot more beatable in the playoffs.

What happens when that identity doesn’t work?

The playoffs are famous for challenging teams to try and win in other ways.

For example:

Our guards are almost too sensible, they will pass their way out of a possession if you put enough on-ball pressure on them. That sounds like a good thing, but as we saw against Philly, White and Pritchard sorta disappeared and put a lot of pressure on the Jays to do even more offensively.

We also don’t really have much on-ball defence at the guard position. Our guards are all capable defenders, but they’re team defenders. Guys like Maxey and Brunson have shown they can punch through that. Plus all our bigs are drop coverage bigs, which can make a Maxey/Brunson look even more dangerous.

A lot of our speed on the perimeter is tied to guys with questionable shooting. A coach like Nurse or Spoelstra will put Walsh, Scheierman and Gonzalez into difficult situations and dare them to shoot their way out. It’s one of the reasons Boston beat Dallas in 2024, we forced their defenders into taking tougher 3s and their offence lost its steam.

I remember talking about Homogenous depth vs Heterogenous depth years ago, and I think we lean far too heavily in that first category right now.

And this is where someone like Brown playing against the system can be really effective, he had some really great moments against teams that caused us issues. It’s where the hyper-versatility of Horford/Holiday has been really important as well. It’s also how someone like ~2021 Bruce Brown or ~2022 Grant Williams can be a real x-factor in a playoff run.

People always demand “adjustments” from coaches, but you actually need to have players who can make those adjustments.

any of whom could take that next leap forward,

I think this is really our x-factor. We need to see one of the young guys separate from the pack.

For example, the Nets Big 3 (Durant, Harden, Irving) were super reliant on their star players. When those star players got challenged, they ended up being reliant on Bruce Brown and his ability to work in the short roll.

We need someone who can change the way we play. I think that probably comes from one of the younger guys.

It’s one of those rosters that should be fun to watch as a scrappy, hustling team but ultimately even making it out of the first round is going to be tall task. I’d put us as underdogs against the knicks, cavs, pistons, raptors, sixers, hawks, and heat as of right now. Pacers too but with haliburton managing his injury I’ll hold off until we see what they look like.

We’re probably on par with the magic. I also think the wizards are one of the most interesting teams in the league but their ceiling is going to rely so much on health. If healthy the whole season they should make the playoffs imo

He doesn’t look to be playing against other NBA players, unless I’m missing something there. Any NBA player playing against regular people are going to look like they’re All-NBA players because they’re literally many levels above the average joe. I mean, there’s a clip out there of Gobert hitting a fadeaway three against Wemby before the 2023 draft

Looney had the same hip/labrum injury that basically ended Isaiah’s career before the draft, that certainly changed things for him. Cenac will probably be better off emulating Looney than KD, but at least his athleticism hasn’t been irrevocably diminished before his career even starts

Looney is an NBA champion 👀