How the Cs Offense will be different this year

[moiso]

Think about this: When was the last time a Celtics team featured uptempo as a primary weapon in their offense?

IT/Irving era?  Iso ball
Paul Pierce era?  Paul was great but very deliberate in his moves and not great foot speed.
Larry Bird era?  That was certainly a plodding half-court team.

I think you have to go back to Havlicek/Cowens era with Heinsohn as coach.  That was a long time ago.  I was a little kid and was amazed at how they could run teams off the court and get easy buckets.

The IT era was not iso ball. I would say IT fit in much more organically with Stevens's motion and ball movement system than Kyrie. And I think Kemba's role in that offense will resemble that of IT, more or less.

Lastly: The Larry Bird era was not "plodding" and "half court". Holy cow. Those teams could run.

The 1986 championship team was probably my favorite all-time.  But you have to admit that Bird and McHale were rather slow afoot, and Dennis Johnson was no speed demon.  Parish was quick for a big man and could get up-and-down the court.  Of course they took opportunities to run, but I recall their best was the half-court set.

That team was a very good fast break team despite having several slow guys.  That team threw great outlet passes and a couple guys always seemed to cheat to the other end of the court very early.  And I remember Bird catching  tons of outlet passes around the halfcourt sideline and immediately redirecting the ball to someone else cutting to the basket.  I thought it was beautiful.  Also the team from like 90-92 seemed to take it to another level as they added guys like Reggie Lewis and Kevin Gamble.

[Hoopvortex]

I expect them to pick up the speed and tempo of the Cs offense, getting more first option looks in the offense. I think they will set the tone for the offense, making it a bit more frenetic (not quite at the Warriors level of frenzy, but still).

I'd bet you're right about the tempo going up.

The standard way to measure tempo these days is to count the number of possessions - that's logical, but it doesn't separate offense from defense. (You may remember Doc Rivers saying that he wanted a quick tempo on offense and a slow tempo on defense.)

Having said that, here is where the Celtics have come down the last few years in pace (I included Golden State for kicks):

Boston was 16th in tempo last season. Golden State, incidentally, was 11th. Things change.

In 2018, Golden State was 5th, and Boston was 23rd.

In 2017, with IT and Horford, Boston was 12th and Golden State was 4th.

In 2016, Boston was 3rd, and Golden State was 2nd.

It's worth asking if Irving slows down the tempo by dominating the ball.

Free throws and offensive rebounds slow the tempo, and it looks like (judging from the personnel) that those things will go up. Rozier moved the ball up quickly, as well, so the loss of Terry won't help the tempo.

On the whole I lean toward your point of view, though; I think that the pace will be faster.