I really feel like people are sleeping on Boston this year.
Don't get me wrong, I don't expect the Celtics to be a top 3 seed or anything. But the NBA.com mock standings the other day had the Celtics something like 20th - well in lottery range - and I think that's extreme.
Sure Tatum is injured. Yes we lost Porzingis, Horford and Holiday.
But lets be honest. Porzingis was constantly injured last year so we were already without him half the season. Holiday looked like a shadow of himself much of the year. Horford also looked like a shadow of himself and had the occasional big moment but was largely ineffective for much of the year.
I also felt our defence and energy levels were not up to their usual levels last season, and I feel that may have had something to do with Horford and Holiday both looking old.
Truth is that we still have guys on this roster who have been part of championship runs (Brown, White, Pritchard, Hauser) and our roster has gotten significantly younger which should help improve our energy, our pace and make us a little quicker on defence.
Plus we got rid of a couple of health concern players (Horford, Porzingis) so our roster should be healthier and have improved continuitity.
Even without Tatum I think this will be a playoff team, and if he manages to come back in decent form before the playoffs I think we could surprise some teams.
Hell, Tatum being out will also give more opportunities to other guys to play meaningful minutes, which should help some of those guys further back in the rotation grow confidence, which could be big later down the line.
Theres also the old "Patrick Ewing effect". When you have a big name star player often teams can get complacent and start relying on that star guy to pull them along all the time. Sometimes when that guy missed extended time teams can start playing better team basketball, and this can sometimes carry over when the star player returns.
Topic: 76ers (0-0) at Celtics (0-0) Game #1 10/22/25 (Read 2340 times)