Love, love, love this signing. Last year our team was a bit soft at times, especially in the bigs department. But adding Morris, Baynes, and Zizic should really make us a lot tougher as a team. I'm really loving our depth chart about now:
PG: IT, Rozier
SG: Brown, Smart, Green (?)
SF: Hayward, Crowder, Semi
PF: Morris, Tatum, Yabu
C: Horford, Baynes, Zizic
That is a DEEP team. If we stay healthy, with being in the East and our overall talent and depth, we have a chance at being a 65 win team, and I really don't think that's hyperbole. With that depth, great mix of youth and vets, and overall talent level, we have "elite regular season team" written all over us.
I'm excited too, but you're going to be disappointed if 65 wins is a target. That's championship elite, and the Celtics won't be there without one more major acquisition or substantial growth from Brown or Tatum. 55-58 wins is where I see us -- legitimately improved, perhaps the top team in the conference, but we're still a pretty young and inexperienced team, relying on multiple players who are not yet of legal drinking age for significant contributions. We could have up to 7 players who are rookies or in their second year. There will be very real growing pains. There's a lot of talent in the depth, but short on inexperience, and during a long season with both injuries and necessary rest, that will put a lower ceiling on the wins.
If healthy, 60 is expected in my book!!
Smitty77
Another glutton for disappointment.
60 wins isn't some unattainable goal. The East got worse the C's got much better.
Yeah, I'd say 65 wins is the ceiling/everything goes right limit for this team, but not something that should be expected with all of the contingencies involved, e.g. health, youth development, etc.
But 60 wins should be an actual goal that we can and should hit. People forget that we actually dealt with quite a few injuries last year, and that really cost us several games, especially early in the year when we were still learning to play together with Horford. Adding significantly more high-level talent, along with significantly improved depth, should easily push us to the level of a 60 win team, especially when you consider the fact that the East is weaker than it has been for a long time.
And as for this "us being younger" narrative, I'm not sure I buy it. Of our top-10 rotation players (IT, TR, JB, MS, GH, JC, MM, JT, AH, and AB), only two of them are 21 years old or younger, and only four of them are on rookie contracts. But both Rozier and Smart, especially Smart, are vets at this point with as much high-level winning basketball as they've played.
We only get really young with the third stringers/end of the bench players, which is pretty standard. Personally, I love the balance of veterans and young guys we have on the team.
EDIT: We're also a significantly more balanced team this year, which will also help greatly. Having a true secondary scorer is going to really help us in crunch time and when IT sits, and Jae moving back to the bench along with Tatum should further help the bench scoring woes. I think we're definitely seven wins better than last year, especially in a significantly weaker East.
Topic: Aron Baynes agrees to 1-year, $4.3M deal with the Celtics (Read 52427 times)