Celtics 2025-26 Regular Season Discussion

[Neurotic Guy]

Brown, Queta, Minott, Walsh, and Gonzalez have exceeded expectations.  Some may say they expected JB to be top 10 level, but I didn?t.  Thought he?d be good, but not quite this good. Queta, Walsh and (lately) Hugo have been almost shockingly good. Queta and Walsh, two guys who I don?t think anyone thought were ready (or perhaps ever) NBA starters have actually been decent NBA starters so far. 

So I think the reason the Cs are better than most people thought is because we were wrong in evaluating their talent.  We didn?t know these players would be as good as they are.  Wheels could fall off, these guys (JB excluded) don?t have a track record of consistent performance in the league. But if they continue at this level, the Cs are a decent team, even without JT.

[DefenseWinsChamps]

It sure seems like Mazz has recreated Jrue Holiday in the aggregate with a combination of Walsh and Hugo (total 11 ppg, 8 rpg, 2 apg, 2 spg, 1 bpg with all-defensive team play).

Queta is a different big than Zinger, Kornet, and Al. He's better than Kornet as a rim runner, and has been a pretty effective defensive player (even in the face of the officiating changes that have given offenses a significant advantage).

I was hopeful that Garza and Tillman would be able to recreate some of the floor spacing that Zinger and Al gave us, but we can't win them all.

Overall, I think Stevens has once again shown that he knows how to build out an effective team, and Mazz has once again shown that he can develop effective role players.

This bodes well for extending our contention window. We still have the Brown-Tatum-White core for the next 4-5 years, and if Mazz and Stevens can continue to work their magic ...

[keevsnick]

Up to and including the Minnesota game on 11/29 Jaylen Brown has averaged 6.3 FTA's per game. He then vocally complained about his whistle after the game. Since then he has average 10.6 FTA's per game.

The moral of the story is complaining works.

[Vermont Green]

A stat that I like to track is the net of 2nd Chance Pts and Pts off TO.  Here are the current stats by team.  BOS is 4th at +4.9.  OKC is just ruling this stats but most of the other top teams are at the top of the list.  BOS is doing much better at the points off TO part of this (+4.0) than the 2nd Pts part (+0.9) but still in the black for both.  OKC is +9.1 on the TO pts part.  SAS, NYK, and ORL have the best net for 2nd chance pts.

  9.2   Oklahoma City Thunder
  6.2   Detroit Pistons
  5.2   San Antonio Spurs
  4.9   Boston Celtics
  4.5   Orlando Magic
  3.7   Cleveland Cavaliers
  3.5   New York Knicks
  2.0   Miami Heat
  1.7   Minnesota Timberwolves
  1.6   Phoenix Suns
  1.4   Philadelphia 76ers
  1.2   Houston Rockets
  0.7   Atlanta Hawks
  0.2   Golden State Warriors
  0.1   Denver Nuggets
  0.0   New Orleans Pelicans
 -0.8   Toronto Raptors
 -1.3   Portland Trail Blazers
 -2.2   Los Angeles Lakers
 -2.2   Milwaukee Bucks
 -2.4   Memphis Grizzlies
 -2.5   Brooklyn Nets
 -2.5   Sacramento Kings
 -2.7   Charlotte Hornets
 -2.8   Utah Jazz
 -3.0   Indiana Pacers
 -3.6   Chicago Bulls
 -4.7   LA Clippers
 -5.2   Dallas Mavericks
-11.0   Washington Wizards

[SHAQATTACK]

Boston plays very relaxed .this year .  I guess the lowered expectations and newer guys getting chance to grow their games is paying unexpected dividends.

Least it makes Brad look like a genius.

[Vermont Green]

I know that Per36 stats introduce some distortion but I see some interesting things in this.  Overall, there are a lot of BOS players doing very well on a per36 basis.  Simons for example, nearly 20 pts and a very good +/-.  Not all that different from White or Pritchard.  Garza has been coming on lately, particularly improving his +/-.  Tillman looks OK by this measure, until you get to +/-.  Hugo has an outrageous +/- Per36 but otherwise not all that impressive.  He has 354 total minutes in 25 GP, so his sample size is reasonable.  He is impacting the +/- by just being scrappy, not by traditional box score stats.

Per36 Stats
PTS   REB   +/-   Player
31.4   6.7   3.2    Jaylen Brown
19.8   4.5   6.4    Derrick White
19.5   3.2   6.2    Anfernee Simons
19.0   4.9   4.3    Payton Pritchard
16.3   9.8   1.3    Luka Garza
14.6  11.6   7.6   Neemias Queta
13.1   8.1   1.8    Josh Minott
12.3   8.5   4.0    Jordan Walsh
12.3   5.8   3.8    Sam Hauser
10.8   8.4   -5.9   Xavier Tillman
10.4   7.7   12.1   Hugo Gonzalez
 8.8    5.4    5.7    Baylor Scheierman
 7.1    7.1    2.8    Chris Boucher

An update on a previous stat, for most of the season, Brown + Simons had a very negative +/- (something like -38 in mid November).  Together, they are now up to +13, so I guess that was just an oddity (it didn't make sense).  Hugo's +/- (+119 total) may also be an oddity but nonetheless, he has been a very pleasant surprise.