The Celts are one move away in the sense that every team that lacks a clear cut MVP player is one major move away.
The easiest way for this roster to pop would be if one of the guys they've drafted in the last few years makes an unexpected leap.
Otherwise, we know what we've got. Tatum is a signature star in the NBA, an All NBA fixture for years to come, but not yet a top 5 guy. Kemba and Brown are very nice secondary stars who may or may not make All Star. Smart is an elite defensive role player. Mixed bag of role players and young guys otherwise.
The Celts enter this next season in much the same position they were in at the end of their bubble playoff run. That's both good and bad.
How many teams with clear cut MVP players are legit contenders?
Giannis hasn’t made a Finals. Harden and Westbrook didn’t make it since ascending to MVP-level players.
Teams with MVP’s are sometimes further away than a team like ours. Look at the flurry of moves Milwaukee made after running away with the best record.
1. Making the finals or being unable to do so doesn't really determine whether a team is a title contender or not. Milwaukee had two fantastic seasons by smashing indicators that are more reliable than playoff wins that have a ton of variance while Houston had some really good years with Harden as their centrepiece (they almost beat one of the most dominant teams of all time), those teams were absolutely good enough to win NBA titles.
I think there's merit to this, but I also think that you can be a very good team without being a title contender. Ultimately, in order for a team to hit that bar they would actually have to put themselves into title contention.
Houston's "very good years" with Harden resulted in more first round playoff exits than Conference Finals appearances. As memory serves, with the exception of the WCF loss to the Warriors three years ago, none of their exits were particularly competitive:
'13: 2-4 against the Thunder in the first round
'14: 2-4 against the Trail Blazers in the first round
'15: 1-4 against the Warriors in the WCF
'16: 1-4 against the Warriors in the first round
'17: 2-4 against San Antonio in the Semis
'18: 3-4 against the Warriors In the WCF
'19: 2-4 against the Warriors in the Semis
'20: 1-4 against the Lakers in the Semis
What's the old saying, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades? At a certain point, if you can't make it to the NBA Finals you self-evidently cannot be good enough to win them.
Milwaukee is a special case so far but save this year they've shown solid incremental improvement around Giannis. Time will tell with them.
Their run from '17 to '19 were title contending years imo, Harden really started hitting his stride in '17. Pushing some fantastic teams to 6 games or more is competitive.
Btw the bolded can only start to hold true with dozens or even hundreds of simulations, it is very much possible for a title contender to lose in the conference semifinals or finals to other really good teams in a few years. Heck, it's even possible for a team that's good enough to win an NBA title to lose to an eighth seed (see the '07 Mavericks)!
Sure. I just don't think Harden in Houston qualifies, even if we shorten the window.
San Antonio with Duncan is the platonic ideal of what you would expect to see: from '97 to '13 they had multiple deep playoff runs, three first-round outs, and five titles in seven finals appearances. LeBron's Heat (or really "any team with LeBron James" for the last 10 years or so) and Golden State with 4+ straight finals appearances, Chicago with Jordan obviously, Los Angeles with Kobe & Shaq in the late '90s to the turn of the century (and a minor reprise after the Gasol trade), so on and so forth.
The obvious rejoinder here is that yes, of course, winning distorts the history of the season... but this isn't football - you don't get a prize for the regular season. For me, Harden on the Rockets is about on par with Iverson with the 76ers. Good team, just not really good enough.
Houston was the 2nd best team in the world for a 2 to 3 year period. They weren't better than the Warriors, but no one was. Had the injuries to Durant, Klay, etc. happened earlier, Houston probably wins the title that Toronto won.
This is a wonderful hypothetical delivered as an assertion 
I assume you are ready with all manner of glorious discussion points regarding points per possession, pace, wins per 100 games, strength of schedule, ORtg/DRtg differential and all sorts of other filigree to disguise the fact that Houston, having claimed the #1 seed in the West once in the regular season (the same year they got bounced by Golden state in the WCF), were the undisputed second chair for multiple seasons.
Let me save you your time. I don't agree with that assertion. They had one great year. They had a few good years. Ultimately they always lost as they played: with a complete absence of grace, joy, and any redeeming aesthetic quality.
That said there is a difference between a MVP caliber player/season and an all time great ceiling raising player. To be a consistent long term contender you need the ceiling raising player, guys like Lebron, Duncan, Shaq, Jordan, Bird, Magic, Kareem, etc. To be a contender over a couple of seasons, you don't need that sort of player. A player like Harden fits that latter category. Where in the right scenario he could be the best player on a contender or even title winner. I think Kawhi is more in that mold. I don't think he is a guy that you can count on for a decade, but certainly, as we saw in Toronto, can be the best player on a title team. Giannis it is still undecided if he is a ceiling raiser like a Lebron or a MVP player more like Harden/Kawhi (I believe he will break through and be more like Lebron than Harden, but it could still go either way). I think Curry and Durant are both in the Lebron category (though obviously not as good as him), but you don't anchor a 5 year contender (like Curry) if you aren't a ceiling raiser (and we've seen Durant lead several teams to the finals as the best player both in OKC and GS). Then there are the guys more like Davis (or going back a few years Wade), who I think are much better suited as a #2 type guy. Great player, but not the guy that is going to put a team on his back and carry it over the course of a season or multiple seasons. We saw in New Orleans that Davis just wasn't that type of player.
This, however, I agree with entirely.
"Hurr these metrics don't agree with my preconceived notions of basketball so anything they tell us, even when context and the eye test are applied is WRONG! They are trying disguise the 'fact' that Houston wasn't a title contender because narrow losses in small sample sizes say so!"
What a glorious meltdown by a person who couldn't handle any analysis deeper than "this team lost in the few years where they were at their best, so they weren't a contender!", it's not like people are saying that Houston was a perennial contender throughout the entire decade 
If that is what you took away from my post I suggest you read the rest of it
Not that it matters one way or any other, but having in a former life been a paid professional in the world of sports takes, take it from me: you can more or less find or fit any advanced metric to tell the tale that you want it to tell.
Sometimes the discussion is fun and worthwhile (was Kobe more valuable than Paul Gasol?, Was Kevin Garnett really as good as people believed in Minnesota? And so on).
Sometimes the discussion about Harden’s Rockets, who are to basketball what Trump was to the presidency: ugly, artless, and with lots of complaining about the referees.
At this point in my life, I’d rather talk about basketball teams I care for. I have no interest in going deeper than the assertion that the team built to beat the warriors, which never beat the warriors, was nothing less than a failure attached to a bin fire. Happy to disagree with you on that one
For Moranis: I think you have a good point, but as I just don’t like James Garden’s game as a primary option, I will continue to doubt his ability to succeed at the highest level.
Unless he joins the Celtics, obviously.
