I get that the Cs are a top three team, but to me, there’s a large separation between them and the top two teams. The Cs aren’t great at home, they play inconsistently, they are prone to giving up big leads, and they haven’t been healthy all season. The bench has also underperformed in big games, and they are overly reliant on the three point shot. They look competitive, but not like a championship team to my eyes unless OKC or Cleveland have significant health issues. Thoughts? --Sean Seattle, WA
I think your assessment comes to a few different factors that are also worth considering. To begin, the Thunder and Cavs are having historic regular seasons in terms of point differential and could finish better on that front than the Celtics did last year. That in itself is a pretty high bar for any team to match in the regular season so it’s tough to knock this Celtics team for not getting there after a Finals run.
Whether the regular season dominance of the Cavs or Thunder translates to the playoffs remains to be seen to some degree. The Cavs are undoubtedly better coached this year and made some improvements to their bench but maintaining this level in the postseason is a different animal. Matchup wise, I’d still like the Celtics in that series, even though I’d expect it to be much closer than last year.
The same questions remain for the Thunder for me, particularly on the offensive end. When teams are planning for seven games against you, is there secondary creation around Shai Gilgeous-Alexander good enough? The Celtics answered these questions about themselves already in the playoffs last year so they may get the benefit of the doubt to some degree. Whether they deserve it against these far better opponents than last year is a fair question but they’ve done more in the postseason than anyone that matters on either of these teams.
The home record is concerning but the bet here for now is that this group can take it up a notch this postseason. Whether that’s enough to beat these teams is the question but I’m not going to downgrade this team for failing to be on a record-breaking pace. They’ve played well for the last six weeks to push aside concerns about their midseason malaise.
What do you expect to happen to the Celtics final roster spot?
Given the luxury tax penalty that is involved for any signing at this point, would expect Boston’s front office to continue to wait things out at this point. Keeping the extra roster spot open is good for additional flexibility anyway since if a rash of injuries hit, it’s ideal to be able to improve depth if there is a sudden area of need.
Ultimately, if no injuries hit, the expectation here would be the Celtics to simply promote one of their two-way guys (Drew Peterson?) or bring in a player they want to get a good look at over the summer/have signed for a non-guaranteed deal for next year. In the latter scenario, they may end up waiting until the last week of the year to ink the deal.
Hey Brian
I haven’t seen anywhere which Celtic duos came closest to scoring 40 points in the same game as DWhite and Peyton did this week. Many long time Celts fans were stunned it had never been done before. Could you please research that and make it a Q n A in the next mail bag? Or if you’ve done it already please point me to a link --Thanks Malcolm
Amazingly, those guys topped Jayson Tatum (46 points) and Jaylen Brown (37 points) record of 83 combined points set in a loss to the Cavs set on February 28. Pritchard and White topped that just three days later. Pretty wild considering how much Celtics history we’ve seen that we got to see both of those performances within the same week. Still also can’t believe the Celtics lost that game to the Cavs with Tatum and Brown playing like that.
