Nearly two weeks after the Celtics won their 18th NBA title in the team’s illustrious 78-year history, here are a few additional details about the team’s successful season.
- A lot of people contributed to the Celtics’ championship season, and while the players obviously deserve most of the credit, it’s hard not to look at the ownership, the last two basketball gurus and the decisions they made, and of course the coaching staff.
The Red Sox ownership group should take note of what Celtics owner Wyc Grousebeck has done in terms of spending in recent years. Just four seasons ago, Boston entered the 2019-20 season as the 11th-highest-spending team at around $127.4 million and dropped another spot to 12th the next season at $132.7 million, which was surprisingly even less than the ailing Atlanta Hawks, and it showed, as the pandemic-shortened 2020-21 season ended 36-36 for the C’s. But since then, they’ve been a real hit in terms of regular-season wins (51, 57, and 64, respectively) and team salaries (fourth place, $176.7 million, last season, and fourth again, $184.8 million, last season).
Boston is already projected to have the NBA’s third-highest payroll next season at $186.1 million, with nearly $143 million of that going to just four players: Jaylen Brown ($49.35 million), Jayson Tatum ($34.8 million, and he’s eligible to sign a five-year, $315 million supermax extension in the offseason), Jrue Holiday ($30 million) and Kristaps Porzingis ($29.2 million).
Defensive-minded top guard Derrick White is also likely interested in a contract extension. He is entering the final year of his current contract and is set to earn $18.8 million in the 2024/25 season.
That 36-36 season in 2021 likely cost former basketball ops man Danny Ainge and, by extension, head coach Brad Stevens their jobs, though neither was announced as to the firing. Ainge now works for the Utah Jazz, but it was his smart moves between 2013 and 2018 that paved the way for the Celtics to win the 2024 championship, particularly by providing additional draft capital and selecting Brown and Tatum third in consecutive NBA drafts in 2016 and 2017.
And hey, what about Stevens? When Celtics fans heard he would no longer coach the team and would instead take over Ainge’s former job, it seemed like another example of the team being stingy and not wanting to pay Stevens for not coaching.
Many people, myself included, believed the former college coach was out of his depth as a team builder rather than a coach, but his actions since then have been eye-opening, as Stevens built on the solid Brown-Tatum foundation with a series of smart trades, including reacquiring Al Horford, who Ainge originally signed in 2016, and then signing White in 2022 and Holiday and Porzingis this past offseason. He also successfully negotiated contract extensions for Brown, Holiday and Porzingis and will likely re-sign White and Tatum in the near future as well.
- Tatum and Brown have rightly come under scrutiny for their regular-season successes and subsequent postseason failures in recent years, but both showed big things last season and exorcised their demons with the 2024 NBA title. This deep and talented team assembled by Ainge and Stevens was the dominant team all season, but the Celtics only had their ideal starting lineup (Brown, Tatum, White, Holiday and Porzingis) in four of their 19 playoff games, but still finished the season a remarkable 16-3 record and suffered just one road loss. For the critics who pointed to Boston’s underwhelming playoff contention in the Eastern Conference, the Celtics weren’t at their best for most of the postseason and were still an undeniable powerhouse, including a ridiculous 31-6 record in games Porzingis missed during Boston’s regular and postseason.
- Porzingis will likely be out five to six months after recent leg surgery, and that makes December, if all goes well, the likely return date. As a result, the C’s will have to go several weeks or months of the 2024 title defense without him, and anything longer could cost Boston the top seed in the East before the playoffs. Horford just turned 38 earlier this month and has 17 NBA seasons under his belt. So he won’t be Boston’s savior at the center position for more than a few minutes a night, so the team will likely need to lure another big man but will have a hard time offering prospective free agents more than the veteran minimum (about $2.5 million) this offseason. Xavier Tillman and Luke Kornet return as centers in 2025, but they have rarely been asked to play many minutes in their young careers.
- For fans of a certain age, it still seems odd that the Celtics would win an NBA championship and the Lakers wouldn’t be remotely involved in the Greens’ march to postseason glory. The C’s and Lakers met in the NBA Finals in 1984, 1985 and 1987 (along with six other times in the 1960s), then again in various incarnations in 2008 and 2010. The Celtics’ last two Finals appearances came in 2022 and 2024, against the Warriors and Mavericks, respectively.
Meanwhile, it looks like the longtime rivals from Boston and LA won’t be meeting again in the postseason anytime soon, as the Celtics are obviously a team on the rise, while the Lakers, built around just two dominant but fading superstars, LeBron James and Anthony Davis, have struggled in recent years, aside from their tainted 2020 NBA title in the Orlando bubble. In the last three seasons since that “championship,” the Lakers have had 33-, 43-, and 47-win regular seasons, and second-round draft pick Bronny James won’t do much to hurt this team’s success in the coming seasons.
- Hey, Kyrie Irving! I know you insist on being a different person than the one who turned on the Celtics and their young stars a few years ago, but were you really that affected by the loud trophy at TD Garden that led to the following shooting percentages in the NBA Finals? To wit: Two games in Dallas: 50% field shooting, 41.7% three-point shooting and 28 points per game; in the three games in Boston, your former home, 34% field shooting, 17.6% from beyond the arc and 14.3 points per game – resulting in three losses for the Mavericks and a lost opportunity for Kyrie at his second NBA title.
- The Celtics appear to be well-positioned for their title-defending season again, but fans don’t have to look far back to see how easily even a strong and talented team’s championship efforts can be derailed. One may remember how the magical 2008 Celtics team effortlessly moved into the franchise’s 17th season, but injuries to Kevin Garnett in 2009 and Kendrick Perkins (in the 2010 NBA Finals) ultimately resulted in no championship seasons. So nothing is guaranteed, especially for a team that has won just two NBA championships in the last 37 seasons and will be the hunted rather than the hunter when the 2024-25 team takes the floor this October to open its season with a lavish banner-raising ceremony.
