Sports Illustrated rank Celtics 3rd worst team in East. Nets won't make playoffs

[DarkAzcura]

I think the Celts will be better but the only thing you can really complain about is putting them behind Orlando.

Orlando was worse than us last season and there's no reason to think their offseason additions are going to be better than ours.

Mike

Yeah, I agree with this. I think Cleveland, Chicago, Toronto, Washington, Miami, and Charlotte are the only sure things to make the playoffs if there are no significant injuries to those teams. Then I have Atlanta on a tier right below those teams where they could be with those 6 or they could be in a battle with New York, Brooklyn, Detroit, and Indiana for the final two spots. I think Boston is in the mix with those teams, personally (probably on the low end unless preseason is looking good), while Orlando, Milwaukee, and Philly fall in their own segment at the bottom.

Really not too much disagree with, though.

[gpap]

I think near the end of last year the losing was getting to Brad Stevens. Another year like last year he may chose to go elsewhere....say something like UNC.

Well, I sure wouldn't blame him.

Coaching a losing team sucks.

[slamtheking]

I honestly see Milwaukee finishing better than the C's with the addition of Parker and bounce-back years from Mayo and Sanders.  more talent in Milwaukee than Boston.  Milwaukee should not have been that bad last year.

depending on how Gordon and Payton work out in Orlando, I could see them doing better than the C's too.  only team in the league I think is a sure bet to be worse than the C's is Philly,  I think probably Utah as well but who knows how Exum will develop.

also don't see the Lakers finishing that poorly with Kobe back on the floor.

[fairweatherfan]

I think near the end of last year the losing was getting to Brad Stevens. Another year like last year he may chose to go elsewhere....say something like UNC.

Don't know if Roy Williams is going anywhere til he finally keels over on the sidelines, but I can see Brad getting frustrated.  The team went from overachieving a bit early on to being about as bad as you'd expect to a long stretch of underachieving late in the year.  Didn't help that Danny tended to move out players when they performed well for a while (like Jordan Crawford).

[gpap]

Yeah as for this year, sadly enough I do see the Celts being one of the worse 3 teams in the league after Philly and maybe Utah.

Not sure I see any reason to believe otherwise.

But again, my hope is we'll be in a desirable place next summer with a very favorable pick and cap space.

[fairweatherfan]

Yeah as for this year, sadly enough I do see the Celts being one of the worse 3 teams in the league after Philly and maybe Utah.

Not sure I see any reason to believe otherwise.

What keeps tripping me up is, why would we be expected to do worse than last year?  We've lost no key players, and our rotation guys are either likely to improve on last year (Rondo, Sully, Olynyk, etc) or at least not significantly drop off (Green, Bradley, etc).  And we've added some rotation caliber guys (Smart, Zeller, Turner, in theory Thornton).

Unless Wallace is considered a significant part of the team, all of our main guys should be as good or better than last year.  And they've had more time to adjust to Stevens, and Stevens to the league.  That's still not enough to be a playoff team or anything, but barring injury I'd expect the team to improve as a whole.

[gpap]

Yeah as for this year, sadly enough I do see the Celts being one of the worse 3 teams in the league after Philly and maybe Utah.

Not sure I see any reason to believe otherwise.

What keeps tripping me up is, why would we be expected to do worse than last year?  We've lost no key players, and our rotation guys are either likely to improve on last year (Rondo, Sully, Olynyk, etc) or at least not drop off (Green, Bradley, etc).  And we've added some rotation caliber guys (Smart, Zeller, Turner, in theory Thornton).

Unless Wallace is considered a significant part of the team, all of our main guys should be as good or better than last year.  And they've had more time to adjust to Stevens, and Stevens to the league.  That's still not enough to be a playoff team or anything, but barring injury I'd expect the team to improve as a whole.

But the roster is horribly unbalanced.

There's like 7 shooting guards, a questionable trio of small forwards (including Green's inconsistencies, Wallace's decline and we don't even know if Turner is going to be on the team), 2 young, unproven power forwards and a journey man in Brandon Bass.

Maybe Zeller brings some stability to the 5 spot, but other than him, we really have no center as Faverani and Anthony are junk.

All we really have going for us heading into the season is Rondo's first full season back, another year of Avery Bradley (and even there I still didn't agree with DA resigning him) and two young draft picks in Smart and Young which may or may not pan out.

Trust me, this is coming from someone that wanted to see the Celts do well this year but I am starting to resign myself to the fact that we are not going anywhere, unless not yet.

Hopefully Sullinger, Olynyk and whoever else play better this year so they can increase their trade value for next year.

That way, bad season aside, at least next June we can be sitting pretty with a really good draft pick, cap space, assets to offer in a deal like Sully/Olynyk along with having Rondo's bird rights.

[mmmmm]

I think near the end of last year the losing was getting to Brad Stevens. Another year like last year he may chose to go elsewhere....say something like UNC.

That's always a legit concern, of course.

After reading the various bios of Stevens though, I think the situation would have to get pretty messy.  My take on his personality is that while he does, indeed, hate losing, he also leans very much towards the 'stubborn bulldog who won't let go until you open his teeth with the jaws of life' sorta guy.   I think he may be too stubborn to give up on the challenge of rebuilding this team.

I don't think he'd bale out unless the situation looked truly hopeless -- that there was no chance of turning it around for years.

Just my opinion, of course.   I won't say there isn't risk there.

Losing games is just plain not a good thing.

Oh, and the fact that at $3.66M per season for the next 5 years, he already makes more than all but one NCAA head coaches (Calipari makes $4M) implies he'd probably need a pretty hefty paycheck by NCAA standards to be lured away financially.

[gpap]

I think near the end of last year the losing was getting to Brad Stevens. Another year like last year he may chose to go elsewhere....say something like UNC.

That's always a legit concern, of course.

After reading the various bios of Stevens though, I think the situation would have to get pretty messy.  My take on his personality is that while he does, indeed, hate losing, he also leans very much towards the 'stubborn bulldog who won't let go until you open his teeth with the jaws of life' sorta guy.   I think he may be too stubborn to give up on the challenge of rebuilding this team.

I don't think he'd bale out unless the situation looked truly hopeless -- that there was no chance of turning it around for years.

Just my opinion, of course.   I won't say there isn't risk there.

Losing games is just plain not a good thing.

Oh, and the fact that at $3.66M per season for the next 5 years, he already makes more than all but one NCAA head coaches (Calipari makes $4M) implies he'd probably need a pretty hefty paycheck by NCAA standards to be lured away financially.

I think the rope for Brad, Danny AND Wyc (at least in my eyes) will extend through this upcoming season and THAT'S IT.

If this time next year, we are still talking about rebuilding and not talking about a competitive basketball team, then I think there's going to be some people on the hot seat over at Causeway Street and I can promise I will not wait around yet another year.

The rebuild stuff might be fun for some people, but in this city, taking a 5-10 year rebuild approach just isn't going to fly.

[fairweatherfan]

Yeah as for this year, sadly enough I do see the Celts being one of the worse 3 teams in the league after Philly and maybe Utah.

Not sure I see any reason to believe otherwise.

What keeps tripping me up is, why would we be expected to do worse than last year?  We've lost no key players, and our rotation guys are either likely to improve on last year (Rondo, Sully, Olynyk, etc) or at least not drop off (Green, Bradley, etc).  And we've added some rotation caliber guys (Smart, Zeller, Turner, in theory Thornton).

Unless Wallace is considered a significant part of the team, all of our main guys should be as good or better than last year.  And they've had more time to adjust to Stevens, and Stevens to the league.  That's still not enough to be a playoff team or anything, but barring injury I'd expect the team to improve as a whole.

But the roster is horribly unbalanced.

There's like 7 shooting guards, a questionable trio of small forwards (including Green's inconsistencies, Wallace's decline and we don't even know if Turner is going to be on the team), 2 young, unproven power forwards and a journey man in Brandon Bass.

Maybe Zeller brings some stability to the 5 spot, but other than him, we really have no center as Faverani and Anthony are junk.

All we really have going for us heading into the season is Rondo's first full season back, another year of Avery Bradley (and even there I still didn't agree with DA resigning him) and two young draft picks in Smart and Young which may or may not pan out.

Sure, but most of those were equally or more true last season.  I'd expect some trades or Bogans-style banishment to even out the roster (which is why I say Thornton's "theoretically" rotation caliber - I don't expect him to play much in green).  Plus some of those wings like Babb will be cut before the season starts.

I'm not real optimistic about this year but I have a hard time seeing where we're clearly worse than last season, when we were tied for 4th worst.  I think a lot of it is the usual offseason expectation that teams that made significant changes are almost always improving in the process.  When the season starts, inevitably a lot of those moves don't pan out.  I think this roster wins 32-35 games and finishes somewhere in the 7-11 pick range.

[gpap]

Yeah as for this year, sadly enough I do see the Celts being one of the worse 3 teams in the league after Philly and maybe Utah.

Not sure I see any reason to believe otherwise.

What keeps tripping me up is, why would we be expected to do worse than last year?  We've lost no key players, and our rotation guys are either likely to improve on last year (Rondo, Sully, Olynyk, etc) or at least not drop off (Green, Bradley, etc).  And we've added some rotation caliber guys (Smart, Zeller, Turner, in theory Thornton).

Unless Wallace is considered a significant part of the team, all of our main guys should be as good or better than last year.  And they've had more time to adjust to Stevens, and Stevens to the league.  That's still not enough to be a playoff team or anything, but barring injury I'd expect the team to improve as a whole.

But the roster is horribly unbalanced.

There's like 7 shooting guards, a questionable trio of small forwards (including Green's inconsistencies, Wallace's decline and we don't even know if Turner is going to be on the team), 2 young, unproven power forwards and a journey man in Brandon Bass.

Maybe Zeller brings some stability to the 5 spot, but other than him, we really have no center as Faverani and Anthony are junk.

All we really have going for us heading into the season is Rondo's first full season back, another year of Avery Bradley (and even there I still didn't agree with DA resigning him) and two young draft picks in Smart and Young which may or may not pan out.

Sure, but most of those were equally or more true last season.  I'd expect some trades or Bogans-style banishment to even out the roster (which is why I say Thornton's "theoretically" rotation caliber - I don't expect him to play much in green).  Plus some of those wings like Babb will be cut before the season starts.

I'm not real optimistic about this year but I have a hard time seeing where we're clearly worse than last season, when we were tied for 4th worst.  I think a lot of it is the usual offseason expectation that teams that made significant changes are almost always improving in the process.  When the season starts, inevitably a lot of those moves don't pan out. I think this roster wins 32-35 games and finishes somewhere in the 7-11 pick range.

Lol, and that would NOT be a good thing.

If that happens, we are sorta right back in the same spot we were in this summer, minus at least next year we'll have more cap space.

But, if Rondo sees there's no hope in sight, he's going to bail for another team in free agency.

[chambers]

I think I'd put Boston ahead of Detroit (too much dysfunction) and Orlando (still way too young, growing pains).

agree! i was going to post the very same thought and you beat me to it

I think if this were last years Detroit situation that would be almost true/debateable. This year they have Van Gundy as coach, and he'll be getting their 3 point shooting going whilst trying to mold Drummond into Dwight Howard ala Orlando.
I think they'll be another 10 wins on top of this years record just with the changes.
Maurice Cheeks was a terrible coach.

Not sure how Monroe fits in but we'll see.

[mmmmm]

Yeah as for this year, sadly enough I do see the Celts being one of the worse 3 teams in the league after Philly and maybe Utah.

Not sure I see any reason to believe otherwise.

What keeps tripping me up is, why would we be expected to do worse than last year?  We've lost no key players, and our rotation guys are either likely to improve on last year (Rondo, Sully, Olynyk, etc) or at least not drop off (Green, Bradley, etc).  And we've added some rotation caliber guys (Smart, Zeller, Turner, in theory Thornton).

Unless Wallace is considered a significant part of the team, all of our main guys should be as good or better than last year.  And they've had more time to adjust to Stevens, and Stevens to the league.  That's still not enough to be a playoff team or anything, but barring injury I'd expect the team to improve as a whole.

But the roster is horribly unbalanced.

It is unbalanced -- definitely far too many SG-types -- but compared to last year?

I agree with foulweatherfan that, relative to last year, I don't really buy the argument that the team is worse than last year.

Last year, we started the season we exactly zero true centers on the team and exactly zero true, veteran, starter-caliber point-guards.   So, whatever you think of Zeller or Rondo -- both are immediately huge upgrades over what we started the season with at those two positions.

The only real 'downgrade' from last year is that, well, Humphries did play pretty solid defensively at PF and offensively at both PF & C.  But I fully expect that the natural progression of Sully and/or Humphries should surpass what we got out of him in his minutes at PF.   And defensively, he was not very effective against opposing centers.  Zeller is young and not at defensive 'stopper', but his defensive numbers against opposing centers was far better than any of our bigs last season.

At wing, I don't expect downgrade from Green (especially given it is a contract year) and and while Bradley struggled with efficiency during his tryout at PG and with taking too many mid-range 2s early in the season, by the end of the season he was a legitimate 3PT threat who should be able to really provide much better spacing of the offense this coming year.

So, yes, we are still unbalanced overall when you look at the total roster -- but most of that problem is with depth.

As far as our starters and top rotation bigs go:

Zeller/Olynyk/Sully
Sully/Olynyk
Green
Bradley
Rondo

is, on paper (and if healthy), far superior to what we put on the floor last year.

Our top 5-man units last year were seriously awful by comparison.   Seriously, here are the two 5-man units that we played the MOST last year:

Bradley-Crawford-Green-Bass-Sullinger (372.5 minutes)
Rondo-Bayless-Green-Bass-Humphries (124.2 minutes)

Yick!   In the first lineup, Green is literally the ONLY player with a physical matchup advantage over his typical opponent at his position.  In the second, just Green and Rondo.  And the second features the ultimate defensive sieve that is Bayless at SG.

The other problem aspect to last year is indicated in the minutes for each of those units.  For the 'top 2' units, those are very small minutes for any team.  Only one other 5-man combination last year got over 100 minutes.  All the rest were below 90.   And there were a LOT of different combinations.  That is indicative of the constant, churning roster and rotation chaos that we endured last year.  That is NOT a recipe for good basketball.

If the above 6 players (Rondo, Bradley, Green, Sully, Olynyk & Zeller) get the major chunks of minutes -- and in regular rotations with each other -- that will be significant upgrade over what we put on the floor the majority of the time last year.

I'm not going to claim that's a title-contending top-6.   We probably still will struggle to get out of the lottery.   But it should be a lot more competitive than last year's team.

Barring injury and assuming Danny and Brad prioritize 'winning', of course.

[hwangjini_1]

I think near the end of last year the losing was getting to Brad Stevens. Another year like last year he may chose to go elsewhere....say something like UNC.

That's always a legit concern, of course.

After reading the various bios of Stevens though, I think the situation would have to get pretty messy.  My take on his personality is that while he does, indeed, hate losing, he also leans very much towards the 'stubborn bulldog who won't let go until you open his teeth with the jaws of life' sorta guy.   I think he may be too stubborn to give up on the challenge of rebuilding this team.

I don't think he'd bale out unless the situation looked truly hopeless -- that there was no chance of turning it around for years.

Just my opinion, of course.   I won't say there isn't risk there.

Losing games is just plain not a good thing.

Oh, and the fact that at $3.66M per season for the next 5 years, he already makes more than all but one NCAA head coaches (Calipari makes $4M) implies he'd probably need a pretty hefty paycheck by NCAA standards to be lured away financially.

I think the rope for Brad, Danny AND Wyc (at least in my eyes) will extend through this upcoming season and THAT'S IT.

If this time next year, we are still talking about rebuilding and not talking about a competitive basketball team, then I think there's going to be some people on the hot seat over at Causeway Street and I can promise I will not wait around yet another year.

The rebuild stuff might be fun for some people, but in this city, taking a 5-10 year rebuild approach just isn't going to fly.

have you seen quotes or sources that say this? have the owners indicated this? my impression in the signing of CBS is that 6 years was given since they wanted him to over see a rebuild that would take time. the only reports on the length of the rebuild i have seen have been blogs, sports talk, etc.

the consensus seems to be that a rebuild is a 3-5 year process. the only way ainge is on the hot seat after 2 years of the rebuild is if there seems to be no plan in place, or, the plan in place is not moving ahead.

ainge has a plan. the plan seems to be, so far, accumulate assets then make moves that combine/use young talent to get better talent. Love is one example, though it did not work out danny tried to make an early move. sooner than most people thought he would in the rebuild.

two years for a rebuild is pushing things really hard. if, however, after 4 years we see no positive movement in a coherent direction, then that signals trouble for me.

[gpap]

I think near the end of last year the losing was getting to Brad Stevens. Another year like last year he may chose to go elsewhere....say something like UNC.

That's always a legit concern, of course.

After reading the various bios of Stevens though, I think the situation would have to get pretty messy.  My take on his personality is that while he does, indeed, hate losing, he also leans very much towards the 'stubborn bulldog who won't let go until you open his teeth with the jaws of life' sorta guy.   I think he may be too stubborn to give up on the challenge of rebuilding this team.

I don't think he'd bale out unless the situation looked truly hopeless -- that there was no chance of turning it around for years.

Just my opinion, of course.   I won't say there isn't risk there.

Losing games is just plain not a good thing.

Oh, and the fact that at $3.66M per season for the next 5 years, he already makes more than all but one NCAA head coaches (Calipari makes $4M) implies he'd probably need a pretty hefty paycheck by NCAA standards to be lured away financially.

I think the rope for Brad, Danny AND Wyc (at least in my eyes) will extend through this upcoming season and THAT'S IT.

If this time next year, we are still talking about rebuilding and not talking about a competitive basketball team, then I think there's going to be some people on the hot seat over at Causeway Street and I can promise I will not wait around yet another year.

The rebuild stuff might be fun for some people, but in this city, taking a 5-10 year rebuild approach just isn't going to fly.

have you seen quotes or sources that say this? have the owners indicated this? my impression in the signing of CBS is that 6 years was given since they wanted him to over see a rebuild that would take time. the only reports on the length of the rebuild i have seen have been blogs, sports talk, etc.

the consensus seems to be that a rebuild is a 3-5 year process. the only way ainge is on the hot seat after 2 years of the rebuild is if there seems to be no plan in place, or, the plan in place is not moving ahead.

ainge has a plan. the plan seems to be, so far, accumulate assets then make moves that combine/use young talent to get better talent. Love is one example, though it did not work out danny tried to make an early move. sooner than most people thought he would in the rebuild.

two years for a rebuild is pushing things really hard. if, however, after 4 years we see no positive movement in a coherent direction, then that signals trouble for me.

Nope, I don't. I mentioned in my reply that is my own personal assessment/gut feeling.

You're probably closer to the acceptable time estimation that it should take to get the team back on track, than I am.

However, you'll have to admit. If things don't look brighter a year from now, I then I've got to think the outlook is going to be even more grim than it is now.

At least now we have a star player with some continuity on the team like Rondo.

If we lose him next year because he feels the team isn't improving, than what do we hang our hat on?