Steve Kerr thinks it’d be a mistake for Celtics to chase wins record, 70 victories
"I think it’s the coach’s job to manage the season, no matter what you’re doing, and that’s all part of it. You have to navigate your own set of circumstances."
After a dominant title season, some might have had the natural inclination to think the Celtics could win 70 or even reach the 73-win record the Warriors set in 2015-16 this season.
Boston won 64 games last year and posted the fifth-best point differential ever in a single season before going 16-3 in the playoffs. It brought back virtually everyone who helped it win the title last season, too.
However, the one person who’s been a part of the only two 70-win seasons in NBA history doesn’t think it’d be a good idea for the Celtics to chase the record or the 70-win threshold. Steve Kerr, who coached the Warriors to 73 wins in 2016 and played for the Bulls when they won 72 games in 1995-96, explained to Heavy.com’s Steve Bulpett that those teams didn’t seek to win 70-plus games, saying it just naturally happened.
“I don’t think you go into the season trying to do that,” Kerr told Bulpett. “We didn’t with the Bulls; we didn’t with the Warriors. Now, as you go and you get closer, you kind of go, ‘Oh, that would be cool.’
“But I think it’s the coach’s job to manage the season, no matter what you’re doing, and that’s all part of it. You have to navigate your own set of circumstances, the age of your players, the health. I can’t imagine Joe (Mazzulla) would chase that. I don’t know that any coach would.”
Mazzulla has already had to deal with some injury setbacks early in the season. Jaylen Brown has missed Boston’s last four games due to a hip injury. Sam Hauser missed some time as well, sitting three games due to a back injury. Boston’s also notably managed Al Horford’s workload, sitting him for a game for rest already.
Of course, the Celtics have also been without Kristpas Porzingis, who scored 20.1 points per game in his first season with Boston. The star big is expected to remain sidelined into December after undergoing offseason surgery.
Despite those ailments, the Celtics haven’t missed a beat from where they left off last season. They improved to 8-2 on Friday after losing to Kerr’s Warriors on Wednesday and have an 11.1 net rating, which is just 0.6 worse than their net rating last season.
But if the Celtics continue to win just 80 percent of their games, they’ll still fall short of the 70-win mark. They’re currently on pace to win roughly 66 games, a two-win improvement from last season.
If Boston is seeking to reach 70 wins, it’ll have to go at least 62-10 the rest of the way. That means it’d have to win at least 86.1 percent of its remaining games. If the Celtics are looking to match the Warriors’ 73-win record, they’d have to go 65-7 for the remainder of the season. That means the Celtics would have to win at least 90.3 percent of their remaining regular-season games.
On top of the difficulties of winning 70-plus games in the regular season, the effort to reach that mark over six months can be draining and could tire players out for the postseason run, hurting the Celtics’ chances to repeat. Kerr learned that lesson in 2016, needing to comeback from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Thunder in the Western Conference finals before losing to the Cavaliers in seven games in the NBA Finals.
“That’s right,” Kerr said when Bulpett asked about the prevailing thought that not winning a title took away some of the shine from the Warriors’ 73-win season. “That’s right. It’s still pretty cool to have won 73 games, but we didn’t finish it off, and that hurts.”
Even if the Celtics don’t reach the Warriors’ record or 70 wins, they can still make history this season. The franchise record for most wins in a season is 68 (1972-73), which seems feasible as the Celtics are on pace for 66 wins. Obviously, Boston is also seeking to repeat. If it does win a title this season, it’d be the first team a team has won back-to-back titles since Golden State did so in 2017-18. The Celtics also haven’t won back-to-back titles since the 1960s.
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