September is here and a new season of Celtics basketball isn’t far behind.
The NBA champion Celtics being their title defense when training camp opens later this month, and a preseason trip to Abu Dhabi means Boston gets an early jump on most of its rivals.
The Celtics worked quickly to bring back much of their championship roster at the start of the offseason, and aside from the recent addition of Lonnie Walker IV, it’s been very quiet in CelticsLand lately. But it’s time to start thinking about basketball again.
Welcome to our Ramp To Camp 2024 series. We asked members of our NBC Sports Boston staff to ponder 15 topics aimed at setting the table for Boston’s 2024-25 campaign.
In the first installment of our late-summer forecast, we asked our staff to identify the biggest obstacle the Celtics might encounter in their quest to repeat as champions.
When we first pondered the subject last month, we landed on four primary pitfalls: Health, complacency, beefed-up competition, and the general burden of being a champion.
Not surprisingly, health was the most common response from our panel. The Celtics are set to start the 2024-25 season with big man Kristaps Porzingis, who is sidelined after offseason leg surgery. And yet this is a team that steamrolled through the 2024 playoffs even with Porzingis hobbled by his leg ailment.
The Celtics leaned into their depth last season, and even if their biggest strength was the totality of talent in their top six, it was a bench full of net rating darlings that helped Boston stay afloat regardless of who was available.
Which is why our vote for biggest obstacle lands on the general burden of defending champions. Don’t misconstrue. This doesn’t seem like a team that will get content after reaching the mountaintop. But it’s simply difficult to stay up there.
Defending champs have to fight any bit of complacency that might creep in. They have to deal with a perpetual target on their back. They can’t skip steps, even if there’s only one acceptable outcome to the season which can’t truly be achieved until June.
There’s a reason why the NBA hasn’t seen a repeat champion in the past half decade. (The Warriors were the last to go back-to-back in 2017 and 2018). The Celtics have all the potential to end that repeat drought but they have to manufacture the same sort of desperation that fueled their blitz to Banner 18.
The good news is that Boston’s key pieces ought to embrace that challenge. Coach Joe Mazzulla has consistently pushed his team to be mentally tough throughout his two seasons at the helm. The All-Star tandem of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown got a little fuel from Team USA this summer and seem perpetually motivated to show the rest of the NBA that they deserve to be considered among the elite (and they have the trophy to prove it now).
The Celtics faced similar obstacles in their quest to secure Banner 18. They rarely tripped on those hurdles. Now they just need to do it again.
Here are some other obstacles our NBC Sports Boston panel identified:
Center isn’t supposed to matter in today’s positionless NBA, but between Porzingis’s health and Al Horford’s age, the C’s are so thin up front, it’s fair to wonder what toll it will take if the Celtics go small all year. Every possession that Tatum or Jrue Holiday has to lean on Joel Embiid comes with a cost that might come due in June.
It was a short offseason already with the Celtics playing well into June, and an even shorter offseason for Tatum, Holiday and Derrick White, who were part of Team USA. Managing the 82-game regular season while ramping up for another 16 playoff wins will be key.
Mark Hazlett: Bad luck
The NBA is so deep now, even the most talented teams need some breaks. Margins are way thinner than we like to admit. That’s why we’ve had six different champs over the last six years. Thankfully, the Celtics’ mascot is Lucky.
The Celtics shouldn’t have to worry about the championship complacency curse — they have two extra-motivated superstars and a head coach who’s never had a complacent day in his life. The only thing that can derail Banner 19 is a significant injury to Tatum, Brown, White or Holiday, as Boston already proved it can win without Porzingis.
Can the Celtics overcome the loss of Porzingis for an extended period? I’m not scared of anyone in the East, even with the Sixers adding Paul George and the Knicks acquiring Mikal Bridges. Health is the only potential roadblock on the quest for Banner 19.