Feels optimistic. Would be pleased with 3rd.
That said, the Celts' best players are on team USA right now spending time getting to know each other better, developing chemistry. Hopefully that will give the Celts a boost heading into the season and propel them to a strong start.
It's really hard to project the Celtics right now though.
Some things that seem likely:
Kemba - 80 games, 34 mpg
Kanter - 70 games, 24 mpg
Hayward - 75 games, 32 mpg
Tatum - 80 games, 32 mpg
Smart - 70 games, 29 mpg
Brown - 75 games, 28 mpg
Theis - 16 mpg, 65 games
Semi - 16 mpg, 65 games
That's just based on averaging out the last few years and making some safe guesses.
That leaves almost 60 minutes per game left in the rotation.
I think we know what to expect from Kemba, Kanter, Smart, and Theis. Semi probably is what he is.
Tatum and Brown are the wildcards in terms of how effective they'll be. I think we probably know how much they're going to play, relatively speaking.
Hayward could come all the way back to the guy he was in Utah a few years ago. He could continue to be more or less the guy he was last year. Or he could be somewhere in between. The average of the two would be my guess.
The back end of the roster is rookies and unproven guys.
I think we could see anything between a roughly .500 team (in a super pessimistic scenario) or a team with a shot at winning 55 games and earning a #1 or #2 seed (in a wildly optimistic scenario the involves Tatum and Brown or Hayward making the All-Star team).