I didn't say we should tank....they should go hard and see what happens at first....I just think we won't win enough games to matter to a hill of beans......
If they play hard and still can't win ....don't do like last year and screw up the draft pick position by playing for that 26 th win or 30 th win .......a meaning less win .....when a loss is a asset for draft position.
Drop back .....get a good lottery pick .
You're missing the point.
If our team is just as bad, or worse, than last year, we might as well pack it up and ship everybody out for draft picks. It would mean our young players are trash and are not improving. It would be a complete and utter disaster.
We've lost Humphries, Lee and Ainge is trying to trade Bass and Green. Turner sucks, Thornton is a chucker too, Zeller is a big body but again he's young. Smart and Young are babies.
I don't think people realize that this is potentially a more serious 'development' year than last season. The East has gotten stronger, the West is still just as strong.
There's nothing unrealistic about saying this team could go 1 win and 14 losses quite easily given their make up- and if you read the rest of the quote, I said it's likely we get 3 or 4 wins but 1 win is feasible too.
Hopefully the young guys step up but this team is very young and the rest of the league has gotten stronger while our interior situation hasn't gotten any better than last year.
This years Lee and Crawford are Thornton and Turner.
Looking at how tough those first 9 games are (and after the 10th game vs Philly), then 11th to 15th games are going to be very tough too.
There's negativity and then there's realism. Don't confuse the two.
Interesting debate of pessimism versus realism. You have chosen to mention the loss of two average veterans, one of whom we only had for the first 30 games of the season. You are then speculating on the loss of another two veterans (of which we haven't really heard a serious rumor) while choosing not to mention the fact that we have young players like KO, Sullinger, Bradley that should all improve. How about Smart being our highest drafted rookie in a decade?
Also how has the East gotten so strong? The players just switched teams within the East. Charlotte is better with Stephenson, but Indiana is worse. Cleveland is better, but the Heat are worse. The east also lost one of its five best players for the year in Paul George.
Aging veteran who was our best big man last year- being our best big man defender and arguably best overall big, yet and still a bench/role player on any other NBA team. Yes, he's gone.
There have been MULTIPLE rumors about Ainge trying to move Green and Bass, Danny tried to trade Bass to the Warriors for a trade exception and Green has been 'shopped HARD' more than once in the last 6 months. This is reasonably common knowledge, just because you don't know about it doesn't make it my mere personal speculation.
All those teams in the East you mention are STILL BETTER than our team. The Heat are better, the Pacers are still better, the Cavs are better. You seem to be have this false premise that our team has moved up the ranks in the East...or that if Lebron leaves a team with 2 All Stars, that somehow that makes the conference easier for the Celtics? That's false logic. We haven't moved anywhere because even though Lebron left the Heat, they are still a way better team. The Pacers are still a better team without Paul George- all of those things have nothing to do with our team and the fact that we have a terrible defensive line up of big men and our best big man defender is on the trade block.
Sullinger is a 3rd year player, Olynyk is a second year player- they're not putting up 20 points 10 rebounds yet. Hopefully Sully becomes a 16 point 10 rebound guy but he's still got loads of work to do on defense and post moves. Olynyk's meaningful play all occurred against 2nd units towards the end of the season and while promising, doesn't mean we're suddenly going to beat the Heat or the Pacers.
There are 3 teams worse than us this year in the East.
Magic
Bucks
Philly.
After that it's between us and the Knicks. The Pistons got a good coach and kept the same team whilst improving the roster. They are a better team than the Celtics. So are the Wizards, Atlanta, Charlotte too.
It's great that Smart is our highest drafted rookie in 10 years, it doesn't change the fact that he's a rookie and he'll probably see 15 minutes a night and have a relatively small impact on the court this season, the same goes for his co-rookie Mr Young.
Think about who guards Tim Duncan, who guards Serge Ibaka, Brook Lopez, Kevin Garnett, nene, Gortat, Bosh, Verajao, Gasol sr, Gasol Jr, Randolph, Nowitzki, Howard, Bosh, Love...just off the top of my head.
Just like last year, we have been designed to have a glaring weakness inside, and just like last year, we've signed runner/gunner wings with incredibly high usage rates, taking away good shots from guys like Olynyk and Green-who might get hot once every 5 games and look better than they really are if we give them some minutes- maybe we'll get a 2nd rounder for these chuckers again like last year. The added bonus is that this season these chuckers have to share time with our two promising rookies in their first season.
We're a poor three point shooting team AGAIN. Green and Bradley are our only 2 decent shooters and even they are patchy. I'm not sure how we are going to score in the paint, just like last year. We lost Humphries, we may lose Bass. Zeller is a great prospect but he's not as good as Humphries was for us last season. Brandon Bass is our best big man defender at 6 ' 8" tall. That sums our roster up perfectly.
So no, it's not pessimism, it's called being realistic. I'll repeat, this team may win 3 or 4 of the first 15 games, but it's very feasible that they only win 1 game of the first 15 games given the difficulty of the schedule and the youth, lack of depth on our roster at key positions in the NBA.
The only significant addition to our team is Rondo's Health, and the fact that Sully can now play power forward full time. Rondo still doesn't have any decent players to pass to, and given our lack of big men with post game, we'll be a jumpshooting team that is poor at making jumpshots- just like last year.
Chambers what is the opposite of drinking the kool aid? Drinking the p---? Whatever it is, you got to back away from it.
I fail to see how you don't understanding Indiana being very significantly worse can impact our wins, even though we are still a worse team. I will spell it out for you though, instead of being a 50 win team that we are expected to go 0-4 against, we have a very reasonable chance of going 2-2 against them now.
As another poster has mentioned, without George and Stevenson and a 35 year old power forward and a center that had a mind blowing regression last year, they could be really pretty bad.
Similarly, Miami being worse means we have a better chance of stealing a game against them. To be fair, we now are clearly much less likely to get a win or two against the Cavs.
As for our team, Rondo has been rumored to be on the block for what 5 years now? He is still here. Unless Green or Bass is actually traded you have to count them trying to figure out when projecting our record in the East Next year.
Finally when thinking about losing players, what is to say we don't trade for a player? Say Atlanta really struggles to start the year or Horford gets injured again. Maybe they look to trade Milsap and rebuild? Maybe Smith is actually an even worse fit in Van Gundy's system than last year and they decide they have to move him.
Overall, all of your "realistic" prognostications are really worse case scenarios that fail to acknowledge any positive things breaking the celtics way. That is actually being pessimistic. Sorry.
Re-read what you've said, and re-read what I've said. Your logic is flawed.
Because the Pacers have gotten worse (whilst still being better than us), and the Heat have gotten worse (while still being WAY better than us), and the rest of the East has gotten stronger, the Celtics are now in a position to get more wins?
What about the teams that we had a shot at going 2-2 with last year like the Pistons? They're going to be significantly better, but our odds stay the same vs them and the Heat and Pacers have just regressed? Or the Bulls who have added Gasol and Mirotic and Rose- yeah we may have claimed 1 or 2 games off them last year. How bout this season?
The NBA's improvement and the East's level of improvement overall are equal to a larger amount than the Celtics improvement.
We still have gaping holes in the paint. We still can't shoot.
I've suggested that Sully and Olynyk will be looking to have great seasons, particularly Sully. I'm hoping Rondo has an amazing year and I'm hoping that Smart and Young both get some decent minutes.
Unfortunately, the reality is that our team is still one of the bottom 5 teams in the East and unlikely to get better, unless we make some kind of trade for an All Star caliber player.
If we lose Bass (expiring) and Green (restricted free agent who likely opts out), we will be utterly terrible- but at least Young and Olynyk will get a large amount of minutes.
There's definitely hope for this team, but there's nothing wrong with calling it how it is this season. We'll likely lose Green at the end of the year, we'll lose Bass, and we don't know what will happen with Rondo- I'm hoping he stays.
The bright side is that we have some young talent in Smart, Young, Sully, Zeller, Olynyk and Bradley and hopefully they can all improve their games and one or two of them can have breakout seasons. But if our starting line up is Rondo, Bradley, Green, Sully, Zeller. with Bass, Olynyk, Smart, Turner, Thornton, Wallace and Young as our bench-
we will be stinking, hot, fumigating garbage.I'll still watch every game and root for their improvement, particularly on the defensive end- but the reality is that this team sucks. Doesn't mean I don't love them to death though.
