I made this point on another thread: does each individual game really matter all that much for the Celtics? Is it life or death to acquire the #2 vs #7 pick in the playoffs? I don't think it does. The Celtics probably aren't going to win the NBA championship, so I'm more concerned about developing young players then squeaking out 58 wins vs. 50 wins. Cleveland is the only contender in the East, so you're more than likely going to lose home court advantage in order to get to the NBA Finals.
Felger missed a day of work for his kid, and he makes a lot of money. How silly.
To answer your question, it absolutely does no questions asked. Take last season for example.
If the Celtics had just won one more game than they did, they would have had the third seed. They would have faced Charlotte, who they were 3-1 against in the regular season AND would have had homecourt advantage as opposed to Atlanta, who they were 1-3 against in the regular season and didn't have homecourt advantage. That could have led to a much different outcome than what actually happened. Maybe we not only beat Charlotte, but we beat Toronto too, which makes could have led to a different outcome with certain players i.e. Kevin Durant but of course that's all hypothetical. Point though is that ONE GAME can change everything.
Better yet, had the Celtics not gotten so careless against Brooklyn last season, that could have led to not only two more wins, but increased odds at getting Ben Simmons or getting a superstar for Ben Simmons.
Most importantly, the Horford signing clearly showed the Celtics want to win now, not later, so I don't think youth movement is the first priority to them.
Having said all of that, I don't fault Horford at all for staying with his wife and newborn child. A man should value his family over his job. The saddest part about all of this is that I don't think anyone who's upset would be nearly as mad if Horford hadn't missed all those games with that concussion. If he had been healthy leading up to that Heat game, no one would be upset with him.
The bolded is all conjecture. We have no idea what would have happened vs Charlotte, or Toronto. Atlanta was not an impressive team. If we couldn't beat them, why would we have defeated a Toronto team with Biyombo playing out of his mind?
My point is that the Celtics weren't put together to win the NBA championship last year, and the same applies this year, despite the Horford signing. We still need a player or two before homecourt vs Cleveland matters.
Also, I have no idea how to project the flight path of ping pong balls. I'm not a physicist. While probability counts for something, it really doesn't matter all that much, esp. when the #1 seed has such a low probability of hitting (25%). The key is that Brooklyn will prob. stink so badly that we have a decent chance of a top 5 pick. Other than that, I think we're throwing darts when we try to predict what pick we get.
Hence why I said it was all
hypothetical. More importantly the hypothetical that I brought out wasn't the point. The point I was making was that I was answering your question. Does every individual game count in the regular season count? The answer is
absolutely and last season is living proof of it. Everything could have been a whole lot different had the Celtics just had one more victory last season. No one knows for sure what would have happened but just one more win could have changed the entire course.
To respond to your objection to my hypothetical, Atlanta may not have been an impressive team but they matched up with the Celtics SUPER well. That's very well evidenced by the fact that we were 1-3 against them in the regular season as I brought up before and they had homecourt. Compared to Miami and Charlotte, who the Celtics were 6-1 against combined in the regular season.
Also, the reason why I believed Toronto was beatable was because they barely squeaked by Indiana and Miami. It took 7 games in each of those series and it also took extremely lucky shots for them to get by two teams that were not definitively better than the Celtics were. Also Biyombo only went crazy because of the circumstances. Valanciunas' injury gave him the extended minutes.
Also, the whole lottery odds thing doesn't matter. No one here knows what would have happened. If you want to be a pessimist about it, go ahead no one's stopping you. This all is what makes a hypothetical a hypothetical. I think anyone who is anyone would have preferred Charlotte over Atlanta not to mention the homecourt advantage. Also I'm pretty sure we all would have preferred having higher odds in the lottery wouldn't you agree?
That all ties down to just answering your question earlier, which is yes. It's true the Celtics weren't equipped to win the championship last year or this year right now, but they could have been had things gone their way. Better yet, their equipped to make a move to better themselves now. You said you wanted to develop the young kids, which I don't think the Celtics primarily care about because the Horford signing was a win-now move.