What constitutes a successful season for the Celtics?
The Celtics earned the No. 1 seed. Now what?
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By any definition of the word, the 2016-17 Boston Celtics are successful.
Boston finished the regular season as the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference by virtue of a 112-94 win over the Milwaukee Bucks Wednesday night. There’s already something tangible to be proud of there. The Brooklyn Nets would try to pelt you with lottery balls they don’t have if you tried to argue differently.
And yet everyone knows the Celtics will be judged by how they perform in the playoffs. There’s a longtime joke circulating among the Celtics faithful that the starting five of Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Kendrick Perkins has never lost a playoff series (thanks Doc Rivers), but Brad Stevens has never won one. At what point does he start being judged for that?
A writer for the FanSided blog Hardwood Houdini makes the point that you need to include the Celtics’ stockpile of draft picks and young assets to give a true assement of the 2016-17 team, and that’s totally fair. The Celtics’ playoff run won’t tell the whole story on the health of the franchise. Things are good — maybe really good — even with a first-round loss.
But losing to the Bulls, Wizards, or Hawks would certainly stink, no? What about losing to the Cavs?
Success is a moving target for any sports team, and that’s true for the Celtics, but we can also start to define what success might look like for the C’s in April, May, and maybe June.
Here’s what we know:
The Celtics themselves feel strongly about their chances
Al Horford has been a part of some good teams — the Atlanta Hawks won 60 games a couple of years ago — but the first-year Celtics forward told reporters this week he’s more excited about this group of Celtics than he’s been about anyone else.
“These are the playoffs that I’ve looked forward to the most probably since I’ve been in this league,” Horford said. “I feel very strong about this group. I think we have a special group. I can’t wait for us to get started [in the playoffs].”
When it was suggested to Avery Bradley that Cleveland would be thought of as the No. 1 seed even if Boston claimed it, Bradley smiled for a bit before answering.
“I mean, we are, so it doesn’t matter what people think,” Bradley said.
The basketball critics writ large don’t give them much of a shot
According to one statistical model
, the Celtics are the most-likely favorite to be upset in the first round — the Bulls have a 29-percent chance of an upset.
Human pundits don’t give the Celtics a much better shot. Dan Shaughnessy wrote in the Globe this week that it would be a miracle if the Celtics made the conference finals.
If you’ve seen anyone from a major publication predicting the Celtics to come out of the East, please send it my way.
They have a pretty ideal first-round matchup
Before the series started, the Boston Herald ranked the potential playoff matchups by the danger they posed to the Celtics, and the Bulls finished second-to-last, just ahead of the Pacers. Milwaukee or Miami would have been worse.
The Celtics won’t face the Raptors unless they make the Conference Finals
This may be the biggest story to emerge during the final two weeks of the season. The Raptors clinched the No. 3 seed in the East Sunday with a win over the Knicks. Kyle Lowry is back — he logged a double-double during Sunday’s win, and as the NBA’s second-leading player in minutes per game, he’s crucial to everything Toronto does. The Raptors acquired Serge Ibaka and PJ Tucker late in the season, improving their frontcourt while the Celtics stood pat.
Toronto is very, very dangerous, and the Celtics are fortunate they won’t have to face both Toronto and Cleveland to get out of the East.
The Cavs are playing terribly against anyone but the Celtics
If you’re a Celtics fans who watched Cleveland’s 114-91 dismantling of the Celtics at TD Garden last week, you’re terrified of the Cavaliers. The Celtics couldn’t score. LeBron James looked unguardable. Poor Tommy Heinsohn sat with his arms crossed and conceded the Cavs were better.
Against anyone else, however, the Cavs have been terrible. They finished the season going 10-14 in their last 24 games, the worst of which being a 26-point fourth-quarter collapse against Atlanta, after which they blamed the refs.
The Cavaliers have been sitting players, so not all of these results are on the up and up. But if there was ever a time to question whether a team can flip a switch, it might be now.
Avery Bradley is at full strength
This is a big deal. Bradley missed 22 games earlier this season with an Achilles injury, then missed time recently due to illness.
“He’s a big, important part of what we do,” Brad Stevens said this week.
The Celtics didn’t have Bradley for much of the last postseason after he injured his hamstring in Game 1 against the Hawks. When he’s healthy, he’s Boston’s best spot-up shooter and on-ball defender.
The Celtics aren’t shooting 3-pointers especially well, and they rely on them
The Celtics aren’t trend-setters, but they’ve fully embraced the strategy made famous by the Golden State Warriors in making 3-point shots the focal point of their offense. The Celtics ranked third in the NBA this season in terms of the percentage of their shots that are threes, behind Cleveland and Houston, who also chuck up a ton of them.
The problem? The C’s haven’t shot well from deep lately, or really since the All-Star break. Before that point, Boston ranked 16th in the league when it came to 3-point shooting. They’ve slipped to 28th, meaning the shots they’re relying on the most are going in less and less.
Three-point makes and misses are about as fickle a thing there can be in a short series, but the Celtics have to hope those recent numbers reverse themselves in the games that matter.
The Celtics have come a long way
Three seasons ago, Brad Stevens led Boston to a 25-57 record in his first season on the job. The C’s won 40 games the following season and got swept out of the playoffs by the Cavaliers. They won 48 games last season, losing to the Atlanta Hawks in the postseason in six games.
This year’s 53 wins and first-place Atlantic Division finish represent more real improvement, and carry with them increased expecations. But putting the expectations aside, it’s impossible to say the Celtics aren’t better off than they were last year, or the year before.
