without PREDICTING injuries where do you rank Celtics out of east?s 15 Squads ?

[Celtics2021]

What does without injuries even mean?  Take Philly, for example.  Are we supposed to assume that Joel Embiid plays 70 games for the first time in his career, or even 60 games, something he has only done four times in his first 11 seasons?  Does Paul George hit 60, something he has reached only once in the last six seasons?  I frankly will not be surprised if Tatum plays more games this season than at least one of those two.

Or that we are the only team with a gaping hole or two.  Look at Milwaukee for instance.  While I would absolutely love to have their PF and Center rotation of Giannis, Turner, and Portis, have people looked at their guards?  Kevin Porter Jr, Ryan Rollins, Gary Trent Jr, and Cole Anthony would not even sniff our healthy guard rotation.

Or that we are the only East contender to have suffered multiple major losses this offseason.  Indiana has Halliburton out for the year and lost Turner to Milwaukee, and their big offseason addition is Jay Huff?

Or the perennially mediocre Bulls, who have exceeded 40 wins once in 8 seasons and who made the major move of swapping out Lonzo Ball for Isaac Okoro?  Or the similarly mediocre Raptors, who did bring in Brandon Ingram, but also have won fewer games in the past two seasons combined than we won in either season individually?

The Celtics will be better than some of those 5 teams; and I would argue than most or even all of those teams.  Not to mention the true bottom-feeders that are Washington, Brookyln, and Charlotte.    Add in Atlanta, which is very good at finishing .500 but not much else, Detroit, who made a nice leap last year but is relying on internal improvement this year to take another step forward, and Miami, which has seemed directionless the past few regular seasons, and I feel it is far more likely the Celtics, flaws and all, finish in the top 6 than miss the play-in altogether.  I look for them to win 44-48 games.  The sky is not the limit this year, but nor is it falling either.

[Goldstar88]

NBA.com's John Schuhmann basically thinks we suck balls and are only better than Washington, Charlotte and Brooklyn. He thinks we will finish 12th in the East.

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https://www.nba.com/news/offseason-power-rankings-east-2025

Basically, everyone thinks our team is a useless bunch of no-hopers.

If both teams are healthy, I don?t see how the Celtics are better than the Hornets.

Starters: LaMelo Ball, Colin Sexton, Brandon Miller, Miles Bridges, Mason Plumlee

Bench: Mann, Dinwiddie, Josh Green, Knueppel, Grant Williams, Salaun, Kelkbrenner.


That?s a much better roster than what Boston has.

Do you feel like our team is worse than the team we had just before the Jays were drafted, in 2015-16?

This is what we had:

Ball handlers: IT, Avery, Smartacus, RJ Hunter, Terry Rozier
Wings: Jae, Evan Turner, James Young, Coty Clarke, Jerebko
Bigs: Amir Johnson, Kelly, Sully, David Lee, Tyler Zeller

We had more depth in bigs back then, this season we have more in ball-handlers and wings. We weren't paying anyone max contracts then either.

This team finished 48-34 for 5th in the East. Obviously the competition we had might have been different back then.

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That 2015-16 team really didn?t have any players that were defensive liabilities in their rotation outside of IT, though. This years Celtics team has a bunch of them with Simons, Queta, Pritchard, Scheierman, Garza. Niang is average at best defensively. This season there will be multiple weak links on the court at the same time that other teams can target.

I?m also note sure how JB is going to be able to handle double teams. He did not look good with the passing and dribbling after JT went down in the playoffs.