THE GOOD NEWS for those who don’t know how to contextualize these Boston Celtics after a dominant-by-any-measure championship season: They’ll be back, more or less intact, to make another run at it next season, with a chance to cement their place as one of the greatest teams of the modern era.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are 26 and 27, respectively. Tatum has been named first-team All-NBA in three consecutive seasons. Brown made the second team last season and narrowly missed this season. His tenacious postseason, which culminated in Finals MVP, suggests he may have another level to reach.
Boston may not have a typical MVP centerpiece (Tatum placed sixth in the voting this season and has never finished higher fourth), but if Brown’s rise continues, they may claim two of the top ten or twelve players in the coming seasons.
Tatum might not have reached his ceiling either. The essential players around them, the links that connect the Danny Ainge and Brad Stevens administrations, are all under contract for next season, and in some instances beyond.
Only Al Horford, the stalwart whose reacquisition signaled the start of the Stevens era, is ancient in NBA terms. Tatum and Derrick White are expected to have straightforward deal talks, while Sam Hauser and Kristaps Porzingis may face more difficult negotiations.
The team will become extremely pricey. The second apron keeps you in. But you live to have a team like this. You pay for it and find out the rest later. The NBA has not had a repeat champion since the Warriors in 2018.
Even the Denver Nuggets, who had the world’s finest player, appeared to dismiss the importance of repeating, instead focusing on winning numerous titles over the next decade in a San Antonio Spurs-like approach.
Boston should take the opposite strategy. Follow the repeat. Declare it as its goal. Break the no-repeat streak, and its historical significance is unquestionable. If the Celtics remain healthy, they will have everything they require. They should start next season as favorites.
THERE HAVE BEEN strong regular-season teams that were slightly less dominant in postseason championship drives. There have been dominant postseason teams who cruised through the regular season.
The 2000-2001 Lakers of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant is the perfect example. They were 15-1 in the playoffs, outscoring opponents by 12.8 points per game, after finishing 56-26 with a plus-3.7 differential in the regular season.
Those Lakers gained historical traction because they three-peated, and the first of those three teams, the 1999-2000 version, had nearly the opposite campaign as its successor: historically amazing regular season, terrible playoff route.
It finished 67-15 with a plus-8.5 margin and fought through a 15-8 postseason record with a plus-2.3. These Celtics meet every statistical standard. They finished 64-18, then 16-3 in the playoffs.
They accumulated massive scoring margins in both categories: plus-11.3 in the regular season and plus-8.0 in the playoffs. The latter figure was higher than 10 before their 38-point thrashing in Game 4. Nonetheless, Boston’s record and point differential place it in a unique position.
The only flaws are their postseason opponents, perhaps the overall state of the East, and the vague impression that they were or appeared more vulnerable than the NBA’s historic titans: that their offense was prone to aimlessness at inconvenient times, in part because they may not (yet) have any single superstar at the level of the immortals who usually lead title teams.
