Boston played the whole regular season last year in cruise control, having won 61 games while being a top 5 team in both offense and defense. Then, after beating the Magic in the first round of the playoffs, Boston had two epic collapses at home during their series against the Knicks after having big leads in both games.
Those two games showed how dangerous it is for a team to be too dependent on 3pts shooting. I remember that Boston was by far the #1 team in the league in 3pts vol% with 50.1% (half of their shots were threes!), while Golden State was #2 with just 43.4%. In those two games, the Celtics ended up shooting 15-60 and 10-40 3pts…
In order to make things worse for Boston, Jayson Tatum suffered a terrible injury in the Game 4 of that series against the Knicks and the Celtics not only lost that series but they also lost Tatum for the entirety of this upcoming season. In a single moment, they lost two seasons: last year’s and this year’s.
Knowing that Tatum won’t be available this season, Boston’s front office believed that the team would be unable to fight for the title this season and made some moves in the offseason in order to cut costs. Jrue Holiday, Al Horford, Luke Kornet and Kristaps Porzingis all left the team and with that, three of their five starters last season won’t be returning this season.
The Celtics traded Holiday away to Portland in exchange for Anfernee Simons, who has been a consistent 3pts shooter. So, he should be a good fit in Joe Mazzulla’s offensive system, but he should also be a big downgrade on defense in comparison with the veteran Holiday. However, it is on the frontcourt where Boston has clearly gotten weaker. Their three best players are gone and they didn’t make a considerable effort to improve this unit. Chris Boucher has joined the team from Toronto, but he is an undersized big man who played less than 20 minutes per game in his last two seasons with the Raptors. Neemias Queta is expected to jump into a larger role this season and he is coming off a strong showing in FIBA Eurobasket 2025, but it seems too much to ask him to replace both Horford and Porzingis. So, the Celtics will have to merely survive in this position this season.
Jaylen Brown and Derrick White will have to assume a huge role this season without Tatum on court. The Celtics could have still been a competitive team this season if they had built a better frontcourt. However, given how this team’s offense is built to shoot a huge volume of threes, they should be able to beat anyone on a good variance game, but asking them to be consistent on a 82-games long season with their current roster should be too much to ask them this season.