Me

Davis Cole

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Finally, the Boston Celtics are NBA champions once again. Please allow me a couple moments, both as a Boston sports fan from birth and an avid Celtics fan since 2017-2018, as well as an enjoyer of team basketball.

Talking my shit now that we’ve won

The core of this team receives so much undue criticism. Something I find quite unique about this iteration of the team is their collective maturity and lack of ego, despite each player’s individual level of talent.

Once the award presentation started, my dad found two things to be striking: just about every player on stagse had one of their children in their arms, and each of the team’s largest voices gave thanks to their most high.

I couldn’t help but think that this is truly a group of good men; a dedicated group that has the right priorities and understands what success truly is.

Of course, much of the flame war tactics were introduced by those tired of Boston’s success across all major sports throughout the 21st century, but putting that bias aside, it is hard to believe anyone dislikes these guys.

Jayson is and has been a present and responsible father since he was 19. He says the right thing every time to the media and stays out of trouble. I’ve seen people say that people would like Tatum more if he committed a crime. People say he’s corny, but I honestly don’t get it. If Jayson Tatum is corny, then being a good person is corny. We need more Jayson Tatums in the world.

Jaylen Brown has been the subject of constant doubt. Upon being drafted he was too raw and unpolished. After his first extension he was overpaid. Again after his supermax extension (largest in history at the time for the uninformed).

“He can’t dribble. He can’t go left”.

Meanwhile he’s scored 20+ a game since 19-20 while playing elite on-ball defense. I swear this guy gets noticeably better every year. He goes by FCHWPO:

This is a guy who’s backing up what he believes, and it’s honestly very inspiring to witness.

He’s had his moments of controversy with the “he’s too smart” thing, the Kyrie / Black Israelite thing, the James Naismith shoes thing, and maybe the left hand thing. But none of this is something to hate on for. Most ridiculous was when Stephen A quoted an “anonymous source” saying that Jaylen Brown was unmarketable. That’s just way too personal.

He’s also been involved in trade rumors ever since getting good; AD, Kawhi, PG, and KD (twice). The media has pushed the narrative that the Jays should be split and JB traded at least twice. Even Jason Kidd was trying to add fuel to a fire that didn’t exist, saying that Jaylen is our best player.

The point of this team was to be better than the other 1-5, not with our top-end talent.

See [[NBA media coverage is just terrible]].

I don’t think the media is after anyone else; Jrue and Al are obviously respected by everyone, D White has been recognized, people don’t hate Kristaps, Hauser or Pritchard.

I think it’s as simple as the Celtics are always good and our best players get hate for it.

Anyways. It seems I’ve gotten off-track, but I provide all this context for my next thought; this felt too easy.

Expectations

This team has been so good since 17-18, and a championship always felt so close. We were always in the mix when fully healthy. And now that they finally win, in the seventh year of the Jays, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed.

Despite their consistency in excellence, and clear improvements being made nearly every year, winning the chip required Brad Stevens to construct a super team that bulldozed its way there.

When we got both Kristaps and Jrue, I only imagined the chaos if we didn’t at least make it to the NBA finals. This team was way too good to lose, and were co-betting favorites with Denver.

Despite these reasonably high expectations, knowing how good this roster is, doubt was cast on this group throughout the season; “they shoot too many threes!!!”, “they’ll just force Jaylen to his left”, ”Tatum isn’t a top 5 player, he’s closer to Booker and Mitchell than he is to SGA”, “their bench is going to get exposed”, etc., etc., etc.

While evidence does support that this team has had issues putting away close games against top competition, I’d argue that every team does! Winning at the highest level is hard!

Then, 80-21 overall record. Highest offensive rating in history. Highest net rating since 2000.

Now it just feels like, that was it?

Even during the 16-3 postseason, almost all the discourse was centered on discrediting the team’s accomplishments; “Butler, Mitchell, and Haliburton got hurt smh easiest run to the Finals in NBA history”, “even Luka was hurt, Mickey Mouse ring”.

Keep on hating

Sure. Yes, players got hurt. Fine. Let’s contextualize this though.

First. I’ll be annoying and preface with this; Kristaps got hurt. Arguably the 2nd-4th most talented, gifted player on the team when healthy.

Jimmy Buckets

Jimmy Butler played 60 games this regular season and has averaged 58 regular season games played since getting to Miami 5 years ago. He is turning 35 this offseason, and his availability for both the regular season and postseason is questionable at best at this point in his career. He has developed a reputation for not caring about the regular season, which cannot be a net positive. Sure he’s got that dawg in him, but even Pat Riley had to publicly put Jimmy in his place. Even going back to last year’s ECF, everyone know the Heat were on a historic run, having gotten out of the play-in, upsetting the top-seeded Bucks (with limited Giannis time), and taking down a gritty Knicks team. They clearly were on a heater and (in my opinion) beat the Celtics due to outlier shooting.

Spida

Okay, Donovan Mitchell. Did anyone expect the Cavs to win? While no one expected the Heat to beat the Celtics without Jimmy, there would’ve been some doubters if Jimmy was somewhat close to healthy as he was last year. The single game the Cavs won required a +15 point differential on +22% efficiency from the 3-point line, with all starters scoring double-digits on 50% shooting or better. In summary, for the Cavs to win, they required their best guy to be available, and for the rest of the team to shoot lights out. I do like Mitchell, but I have doubts about his ability to be the number 1 guy given his size and defensive limitations.

Tyrese

The Tyrese part of this makes me mad. This is the guy who was most vocal about the 65-game cutoff for end-of-season award selection due to his injuries:

“I think it’s a stupid rule, like plenty of the guys in the league”

This is most likely due to contract incentives being tied to these awards, and that his supermax contract would go from $205M to $245M just with an All-NBA selection. While I support everyone to act in their financial best interest, these numbers are unfathomable to the average person, and I’d imagine that almost every player would trade $40M for a ring. If I was a star player, who’s going to get an absolute boat-load of money basically no matter what I do, I’d keep my eyes on the true goal of a competitor, a championship. While I’m not implying that Tyrese would’ve given the Pacers a puncher’s chance against the C’s, he re-injured the same hamstring that was bothering him during the regular season, which is a bit concerning going forward. I have faith that he will recover properly over the offseason, but perhaps taking more time off to let the hamstring recover and finishing the postseason on the court, rather than on the bench would’ve been more fulfilling and less disappointing.

So, yes, it is a fact that the Celtics faced teams without their best player. But what happened with the other teams?

Seems like plenty of teams benefitted from injury luck, just like every year. This is the NBA. They play 82 48-minute games, with several back-to-backs and long road trips. I hate this argument so much.

The Winning Fallacy

Recent history has made it abundantly clear that winning an NBA championship is hard.

Really hard.

I believe the NBA fandom’s expectations have been clouded by the dynasties we’ve experienced recently:

In the cases of the Bulls, Lakers, and LeBron, I think they were successful just because their top-end talent was so damn good. Stars set the stagse and the role players support them when they can.

The Spurs and Warriors are different in my eyes. I believe the Spurs embody exactly what I am preaching. They’re referred to as the “Beautiful Game Spurs” for goodness sake. Those groups truly played as a team, with exceptional ball movement on offense, and great team execution on defense.

Meanwhile, I believe the Warriors caught lightning in a bottle. Someone finally figured out that 3 is more than 2, in fact 1.5 times more than 2, and Steph Curry and Klay Thompson were the immediate beneficiaries of this paradigm shift. They were the early adopters of modern NBA offense, and results speak for themselves.

The exercise above displays that we tend to view the NBA in discrete eras:

Notice that these eras are spearheaded by individual names. Time periods were defined almost solely by a single player.

See [[Basketball is the most narcissistic team sport]].

Nowadays, with the improvement of 3-7 guys throughout the league, I I hold the belief that the floor of talent is so high today that these star-centric eras and dynasties may be on the way out. In addition, the amount of variance introduced by high-volume three-point shooting can lead a heavy underdog to advance over a seven-game series.

People thought that NIkola Jokic could be the figurehead of a Denver Nuggets era, myself included, which was a very good team by the way, however this year they ran into a team that was purpose-built to beat them in the Timberwolves, just because Victor Wembanyama decided to go off in the second-to-last game of the season, placing Denver in the same side of the playoff bracket against an ascending Ant Edwards, KAT, and Gobert.

I provide this context, this understanding that winning it all is hard, to argue that the Celtics are by far the best positioned team in the NBA for sustained success:

The Celtics have been the winningest team in the NBA during the Brad Stevens era, and there is little to suggest that they’ll slow down in the near future.

So, in summary, I think I felt underwhelmed because I know this team is good enough on paper to win another, two more even, and those are just ridiculous expectations when it comes to the NBA postseason.

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