Well, hello there, New England football fan. Sorry about Saturday night but, fear not, you’ve found the perfect place to drown your gridiron sorrows.
The 2019-20 Celtics are not only an enjoyable bunch to watch but one of the top teams in the NBA nearing the midpoint of the season.
Maybe you tuned out the boys in green last May after their playoff fizzle. Maybe you saw Kyrie Irving and Al Horford depart and figured the Celtics were headed for a transition year. Maybe you’ve kept a passing interest in this year’s squad but you need a new athletic diversion.
You’ve come to the right spot.
LIVE stream the Celtics all season and get the latest news and analysis on all of your teams from NBC Sports Boston by downloading the My Teams App.
Normally in this space we pick a weekly theme and assign grades for recent performance. Our midseason report card will come along soon enough but, in case you need help catching up on what you’ve missed and figuring out the big storylines ahead, we’re using this week’s report card as more of a progress report about this year’s Celtics squad. (Fear not, Celtics diehard, there’s plenty in here for you, too.)
Here’s a bit of a FAQ on the 2019-20 Celtics:
JUST HOW GOOD IS THIS TEAM?
At 25-8, the Celtics own the second best record in the Eastern Conference and the third best mark in the NBA behind only the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. More importantly, the Celtics own the second best net rating in the NBA (plus-7.7 points) and currently project at north of 57 wins, according to ESPN’s Basketball Power Index.
Boston owns the third best defensive rating in the league (104) and the sixth best offensive rating (111.7). Boston is the only team in the league with three players averaging north of 20 points per game in Kemba Walker (22.5), Jayson Tatum (21.3) and Jaylen Brown (20.6). All three might be All-Stars (depending on how fan voting plays out), while Gordon Hayward missed a month with a broken hand or he might be in the All-Star mix as well.
The Celtics have essentially outkicked even the most optimistic preseason prognostications, in part because just about everything they needed to tip their way to be a true contender has actually happened.
Walker has been exactly as advertised, spearheading the offense but also happy to defer to the young talent around him. Tatum hasn’t shot the ball efficiently and yet his shot profile is so much better than a year ago and he’s playing excellent defense. Jaylen Brown took his perceived ceiling, launched it skyward and recently was named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week. Hayward has been excellent when the injury bug leaves him alone and Marcus Smart is doing all the typical Marcus Smart things.
Add in solid contributions from Daniel Theis and Enes Kanter at the big man positions and the Celtics have been rolling.
SO WHAT’S THE CATCH WITH THIS TEAM?
The Celtics have feasted on inferior competition, including what only seems like 23 games against the Cleveland Cavaliers and Charlotte Hornets (a combined 25 wins between them).
The Celtics have played the easiest schedule in the NBA, according to BPI, in part because the bottom of the East is a dilapidated mess. Alas, the Bucks have played the third easiest schedule and that’s helped them build a five-game cushion over Boston atop the East.
Entering Monday’s game against the Wizards, the Celtics were 18-2 against teams with a sub-.500 record and 7-6 against teams with winning records. On the one hand, they’re taking care of business against bad teams — something they struggled with in the past, often playing down to the level of their competition.
Still, the jury is out on where they stand among elite competition. Boston rallied to beat Milwaukee early in the year but has two losses against Philadelphia.
Trips to play both the Bucks and Sixers — albeit on the second night of back-to-backs — over the next two weeks will tell us a bit more about where this team stands among the East elite.
HAS THIS TEAM BEEN HEALTHY?
In a word: No.
Kanter bruised his knee on opening night and the Celtics have almost never had their top seven players available together ever since. Hayward missed 13 games with a hand fracture, Smart missed eight games with a freak double eye infection, Walker suffered a scary neck injury in Denver but missed only one game but will miss his third straight due to the flu on Monday. Brown has missed three games because of illness, too. Robert Williams and Vincent Poirier have both been shelved for most of December.
Boston’s “best-5” lineup of Walker, Smart, Brown, Tatum, and Hayward has played a mere 12 minutes together over three games. They own an absurd plus-37.9 net rating in that span and, yet, it’s unfair to make any firm conclusions on the sustainability of the lineup in such a small sample.
Still, it’s an intriguing super-smallball lineup with unlimited offensive potential. The question is whether it can hold up, defensively and on the glass, particularly against big lineups like anything Philly might roll out.
Even Boston’s preferred starting five — sub Theis in place of Smart — has played only 100 minutes together in 10 games. That group has been likewise dominant, with a plus-19.4 net rating. Among all lineups with at least 100 minutes of floor time, that five-man unit ranks fourth in the NBA behind only groups from Utah, Houston, and Detroit (and one spot ahead of Milwaukee’s top five-man unit).
That the Celtics have been this good despite all their injury woes is remarkable. And yet it feels like we haven’t truly seen what this team is truly capable of with nearly half the season in the rearview.
Injuries and illness have allowed Boston’s rookies to log some playing time, but it’s unclear if first-rounders like Grant Williams and Romeo Langford will show enough before the end of the season to be consistent parts of Boston’s playoff rotation (Williams, probably, has the best chance given his defensive abilities though Langford has shown encouraging glimpses after overcoming his own injury woes).
WHAT’S UP WITH TACKO?
Probably should have made this the first question answered. Tacko Fall has gotten a standing ovation inside Madison Square Garden and he was sixth in the first returns of fan voting among frontcourt players in the East.
The undrafted 7-foot-5 big man has also played a whopping 11 minutes in three NBA appearances this season.
TackoMania is alive and well, though. A couple of lopsided December games meant the first Tacko appearances inside TD Garden, which rumbled with playoff-like intensity when he ran to the scorer’s table.
Fall has made 75 percent of his shots (6 of 8) and it’s been undeniably electric in the building when he’s on the court. Fans cheer whenever his face appears on the JumboTron, even on nights he’s up with the Maine Red Claws.
The Celtics can keep him on the parent roster for up to 45 days during the G-League season and he’s expected to be back with the team for depth later this week. He’s still a long-term project but he’s played well with the Maine Red Claws and it’s a fun subplot to the 2019-20 season.
ARE THE CELTICS GOING TO MAKE ANY TRADES?
The Celtics have some draft capital, including a future Memphis Grizzlies first-round pick that conveys this season if it’s outside the top six (becoming an unprotected pick next year if it doesn’t). Boston also has its own pick and the Bucks’ first-rounder this year, projected at the moment at Nos. 28 and 30.
The tough part in making moves is that Boston doesn’t have tradable salaries. Any big deal would require having to move either Gordon Hayward’s $32.7 million contract or giving up Marcus Smart ($12.6 million) to get a more mid-tier salary back. It’s unlikely that Boston could find an upgrade moving either.
There’s been a lot of clamoring for Boston to upgrade its big-man spots, especially with the prospects that league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid will provide playoff road blocks, but Theis and Kanter have embraced their roles and given the team excellent minutes. Boston might examine the buyout scrap heap for more big depth but it seems unlikely the trade market will turn up the sort of beefy Aron Baynes-like defender that some Celtics fans yearn for.
Boston could move picks and some of its smaller salaries looking for a bench upgrade. Again, that decision might hinge on how the team looks if they ever get a glimpse of this thing at full strength.
SO IS IT SAFE TO JUMP ON THE CELTICS’ BANDWAGON? OR COULD THE WHEELS FALL OFF LIKE LAST YEAR?
If last year’s group was hard to wrap your arms around, this year’s bunch is the complete opposite. Walker never stops smiling, invites teammates to his house for Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve parties, and seems downright giddy just to be winning games after all the losing he endured in Charlotte.
Tatum and Brown could both soon be All-Stars and should comprise the core of this team deep into the future. Hayward’s future is somewhat uncertain with a player option looming but he could be the X-Factor in all of Boston’s success given his all-around talents.
These players genuinely seem to enjoy each other, with Kanter bringing some levity to the locker room. The rookies are an enjoyable bunch and their development will be key for this team further down the road because of the bloated salaries at the top of the cap sheet.
If the Celtics can get — and stay — healthy, they might just be a legitimate contender. If nothing else, they’re going to play their tails off and won’t turtle whenever things start to go sideways. They are the anti-2018-19 Celtics.
We know, we know. You just watched a football season that started with such optimism and ended with monster disappointment. There’s a very uncertain future ahead. That sounds an awful lot like how things felt for this hoops team after the 2018-19 Celtics season ended.
But this year’s squad has been the perfect palate cleanser. And maybe they can be the same for New England football fans right now, too.
Don't miss NBC Sports Boston's coverage of Celtics-Wizards, which tips off Monday at 6:30 p.m. with Celtics Pregame Live, and then Mike and Scal have the call at 7 p.m. You can also stream the game on the MyTeams App.
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