“Dynasties appear to be remnants of the past.”
This could be the “great era of parity.”
Our recent series on the new NBA landscape outlined why the league has shifted away from the old norm. Once built on dynasties, the NBA now seemingly decides champions on shuffle. Beginning with the Raptors knocking off the Warriors in the 2019 NBA Finals, six different teams have won titles over the last six seasons. Forget repeat championships. None of the six winners during this stretch have even returned to the finals since. The NBA has accomplished its goal of spreading around the Larry O’Brien wealth. The Celtics, whose roster will eventually be threatened by the league’s new financial realities, could one day become exhibit A of just how hard it is to keep together a great team these days.
For now, the Celtics are hoping to become the first team to win back-to-back rings since the Warriors did so in 2017 and 2018.
“A lot of people can do it once,” Payton Pritchard said on the eve of Boston’s season opener against the New York Knicks. “I know a championship’s hard, but there’s a lot of people who have won one. But winning it multiple times and creating almost a dynasty, that’s hard to do. That’s greatness. That’s something we’re trying to achieve.”
Every champion tries to achieve that, but Boston, after returning nearly the entire roster, is positioned with the best chance to repeat since Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant called themselves teammates.
For various reasons, most recent champions have not benefited from the opportunity to try again with the same key pieces. In a quest to three-peat, the 2019 Warriors lost Durant and Klay Thompson to major injuries during the playoffs. Kawhi Leonard left as a free agent before the Raptors could even receive their 2019 rings. The Lakers followed their 2020 title by rearranging key parts of their supporting cast; it likely didn’t take them long to realize Dennis Schröder and Montrezl Harrell would not fit perfectly. The Bucks, winners in 2021, lost Khris Middleton to injury before the 2022 playoffs. The Nuggets, who toppled the Heat in the 2022 NBA Finals, returned their potent starting lineup the following season but couldn’t overcome a significant talent drain on their bench.
The Celtics brought back their entire regular rotation. They could need to make significant changes as early as next season because of how much money it would cost to keep the roster together long-term, but the front office seems to have decided to address the future problems, you know, in the future. President of basketball operations Brad Stevens liked his locker room so much that he seemingly sought to tweak as little as possible over the offseason. Boston’s most significant departure, Oshae Brissett, received nine DNP-CDs during the playoffs and would have landed more if the Celtics had played closer games throughout the postseason. In a sign of how Brissett’s value is perceived around the NBA, he has not signed with another team yet. It’s unusual for a championship team to lose almost nothing.
Based on their statistical profile, the Celtics weren’t an average championship team to begin with. They had a better regular-season net rating than any team since Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. Even the Curry-Durant Warriors failed to outscore opponents by 11.7 points per 100 possessions, as Boston did. The Celtics were so thoroughly dominant, top to bottom, that they had a higher net rating than the 2016-17 Warriors when Jayson Tatum was on the bench. Boston then capped off its championship run by going 16-3 during the playoffs without more than one loss in any series. Doubt the strength of the numbers if you wish, but the most telling statistical indicators suggest last season’s Celtics belong in the conversation with some all-time great teams.
Though they will be hard-pressed to duplicate that sort of superiority, some potential avenues to improvement are easy to spot. All-Stars Tatum and Jaylen Brown should just be beginning their primes. They combined to shoot 30.2 percent on 3-point attempts during the playoffs, leaving plenty of room for growth. The bench, which often contributed to the Celtics’ best stretches of basketball, heavily features a pair of 26-year-olds, Pritchard and Sam Hauser, who should still be ascending. Joe Mazzulla’s intensity, rare even among those in professional sports, should be an asset in pushing the Celtics to hold onto their pre-championship motivation. The team already has a big question mark in the health of Kristaps Porziņģis, who will miss significant time to open the regular season, but went 31-6 in games the 7-foot-2 threat missed last season, including the playoffs. Though there’s still no specific target date for Porziņģis’ return, the organization has sounded optimistic about his progress. If he can stay on the court during the playoffs, a stated goal for the coming season, his consistent presence would elevate the Celtics.
Of course, Porziņģis’ health remains one of the team’s many possible pitfalls. The depth behind him, though it looks strong on the eve of the regular season, could emerge as a serious issue if Al Horford sees any significant falloff at age 38. Like Horford, Jrue Holiday, 34, could realistically decline after giving the Celtics everything as an overqualified utility guy during his first season with the team. Nobody in the organization should mind, but the Celtics took advantage of iffy, injury-depleted competition throughout the playoffs. The path through the Eastern Conference should come with more challenges, especially if the 76ers, Knicks and/or Bucks fulfill their substantial potential. A lot went right for the Celtics last season. Though they deserve credit for the steady brilliance that allowed them to steer away from adversity, they will likely need to show they can navigate a rockier journey as well. Mazzulla wants them to continue evolving even if that means going away from the formula that carried them to last season’s title.
“I think that for us, it’s understanding — and I feel like we all understand — that this is a new year,” said Al Horford. “And it was great what happened obviously last year, but we have to prove ourselves again. We have to start building this thing back up. We have to figure things out again. The league continues to change. There’s different things so I feel like our mindset, even though we have a lot of the same guys, we’re ready to get after it and ready to figure it out and get this together as a team.”
With a second consecutive championship, the Celtics would stamp themselves among NBA royalty. There are no duds on the list of back-to-back champs. Over the last 40 years, the milestone has only been achieved by the Magic Johnson Lakers, the Bad Boys Pistons, the Michael Jordan Bulls (twice), the Hakeem Olajuwon Rockets, the Kobe-Shaq Lakers, the Kobe-Gasol Lakers, the LeBron-Wade-Bosh Heat and the Curry-Durant Warriors. Those are forever teams.
How exclusive is the club of repeat champions? No Celtics team has joined it since Bill Russell won his final two championships in 1968 and 1969. History is against Boston’s chances this season, but not many teams land an opportunity like this. The Celtics have young stars, a loaded supporting cast, a sharp coach and the power of rare continuity. The gravitational forces of parity will come for them eventually, but first, they will aim to shatter the recent one-and-done trend.
“No pressure,” said Mazzulla. “We’re all going to be dead soon, and it really doesn’t matter anymore. So there’s zero pressure. You’re either going to win or you’re not. And when you win you try to forget about it a week later. And when you lose you try to forget about it a week later. So it’s not pressure. It’s an opportunity. We have an opportunity here over the next few years, however long we’re together, we have an opportunity to carry the organization forward, to double down on the tradition and the history of what this organization has.”
In Boston, that sounds like pressure to me.
(Top photo of Jayson Tatum: Francois Nel/Getty Images)
