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.

[Vermont Green]

More stats deep dive for consideration.  I was looking at Jaylen Brown and his shooting 15-19 ft.  Below are the shooting percentages for the best shooters from this range only, sorted for more than 1.6 FGA from this range (to filter out the low sample size oddities).  There are a lot of the top players that come out on this list.  And of all of them, Brown has the highest shooting percentage for this range and the most FGA by a wide margin.  Jokic, incidentally, is at 73.1% but only on 0.8 FGA so he got filtered out of my list.  Jalen Green is at 100% on exactly 1.5 FGA (per game), he hasn't missed, but he he has only played 2 games (so 3.0 total FGA).

15-19 ft.
FGM FGA  FG%   Player
2.4   4.3   55.6   Jaylen Brown
1.4   2.6   54.9   Kevin Durant
1.1   2.0   53.6   Jalen Brunson
1.1   2.0   53.5   Kawhi Leonard
1.0   1.8   53.3   Dillon Brooks
0.9   1.8   52.2   Kristaps Porziņģis
1.8   3.5   51.7   Brandon Ingram
1.1   2.3   50.0   Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
1.0   2.1   48.3   Paul George
1.0   2.1   47.6   Jamal Murray
1.2   2.6   47.2   Devin Booker
0.8   1.7   46.5   Anthony Edwards

[Vermont Green]

At the start of the season, there was a thread to predict the starters.  I predicted that Garza would be a starter, feeling that he was better than Queta.  I was wrong of course.  Garza started the season horribly and Queta was one of the biggest surprises.  But things are changing.  Below are NRtg for early season and recent:

Up to Dec 1:
Queta   19 games    +15.2 NRtg
Garza   17 games       -8.8 NRtg

Dec 2 to Current
Queta   13 games        +2.8 NRtg
Garza     8 games      +28.9 NRtg

It is really a remarkable swing.  I am not sure where steady state or "norm" is for either.  Queta is coming back down to earth relative to his early season play and Garza is coming on, but I don't expect Garza to be able to maintain his +28.9 impact.  If you look at the overall season, Queta is a very respectable +9.7 in 31 games and Garza is +5.2 in 25 games.

If you look at play with the starters (Brown, White, Pritchard, Walsh), Garza is overall -6 but only in 17 total minutes.  Queta is +16 total in 179 minutes, better, but not great.  Interesting (at least to me) is that Garza + Walsh is overall -31 in 75 minutes while Queta + Walsh is +79 in 300 minutes.  Queta + Walsh have been fine together but Garza + Walsh, not so much.  This trend may not hold up.

[keevsnick]

Highest season scoring average for a player in Celtics history is currently Tatum at 30.068 ppg in 22-23. After tonight's game Brown is sitting at 30.094.

[Birdman]

Brown top MVP candidate right now, he is carrying this team and playing at a high level

[SHAQATTACK]

Highest season scoring average for a player in Celtics history is currently Tatum at 30.068 ppg in 22-23. After tonight's game Brown is sitting at 30.094.

He makes it look easy on offense.

[Donoghus]

Highest season scoring average for a player in Celtics history is currently Tatum at 30.068 ppg in 22-23. After tonight's game Brown is sitting at 30.094.

He makes it look easy on offense.

But does he impact winning?

[Phantom255x]

I'm going to need Brad Stevens to add another big man at the deadline, even if it's just a backup to Queta. Tatum coming back to this team would already be a massive adrenaline boost but if they can add another guy to the frontcourt that'd be ideal. I give Garza all the credit in the world for the past two weeks but I'm not sure if it's sustainable. Pairing Queta with someone more consistent would be nice, and Garza being the 3rd big is ideal.

And god forbid, if someone gets hurt I don't think us or the team wants Tillman/Boucher playing consistent minutes lol

[slamtheking]

Highest season scoring average for a player in Celtics history is currently Tatum at 30.068 ppg in 22-23. After tonight's game Brown is sitting at 30.094.

He makes it look easy on offense.

But does he impact winning?

I would think that's an obvious Yes except for that last JB-hating curmudgeon that's still ticked off that the C's won the title in 2024 disproving his opinion (that he passes off as fact) that the C's can't win a title with Tatum and JB because there's too much overlap and worse yet, JB winning both Eastern Conference MVP and Finals MVP to show that he's just as good if not better than Tatum when the C's need a superstar to step up to the moment.

JB's having an MVP level year and it's shameful he's not getting more consideration in that discussion

[Phantom255x]

They are 22-12 with Jaylen Brown as the #1 option. Last year's team after 34 games was 25-9, the year before where they won it all was 27-7 with so much more talent.

Jaylen has absolutely taken additional strides and improved, but to debate if he's a winning player at this point would be dumb. No one's saying for sure he can lead you to a title as the #1 option but realistically how many of those currently guys exist? Maybe 3-4? But like Jokic and SGA for example still have legit talent around them in Murray, Jalen Williams, Chet, etc. and that matters too. The 2024 Celtics were loaded. Even this iteration of the Knicks, Brunson is the #1 option but they have talent around him hence they are legit contenders and even favorites in the East.

I saw a tweet online that kinda made a good point. If OKC traded away or let Jalen Williams, Chet, and IHart go similar to Horford/KP/Jrue/Kornet, is SGA guiding OKC to 22-12 or better? I would actually say probably the same, but not significantly better than 22-12. Jaylen's having an MVP-like season and it's not any outliers or that the C's have an easy schedule, in fact they've played one of the tougher schedules in the league so far (Top-10)