It’s time to have a conversation about the Boston Celtics.
In fact, it’s overdue.
With their win over Chicago Monday night, combined with another blowout loss by the suddenly reeling Knicks, a Celtics group that many — including myself — considered a borderline playoff team heading into the season now finds themselves as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference.
In Jayson Tatum’s absence, Jaylen Brown has completely taken over as the alpha, firmly etching his name amongst a short list of MVP candidates. His sensational play has given head coach Joe Mazzulla a bit more flexibility when it comes to rotations, and that freedom has allowed different reserves to step up on a game-by-game basis, with Mazzulla often riding the hot hand.
Considering the amount of talent that departed in the offseason (Kristaps Porzingis, Jrue Holiday, Luke Kornet, etc.), it’s really quite remarkable how good the Celtics have looked. This was supposed to be a “gap” year, but every advanced metric tells us otherwise.
Boston isn’t just going through the motions until Tatum returns; it’s winning games at a higher clip than all but six teams (five of which hail in the West) and seemingly improving with each passing week.
Net rating? Boston is third in the league, beating opponents by an average of eight points.
Offensive rating? Boston (122.3) is second in the league to only the Denver Nuggets (123.1).
The Celtics are a middle-of-the-pack defensive team in terms of points allowed. But they make up for it by crashing the offensive glass (third in league with 17.5 second chance points per game) and knocking down a whopping 558 threes over their first 35 games (third in league).
Derrick White (18.4 ppg., 5.3 apg., 4.3 rpg.) has gotten back to his old self over the past month-plus and his defensive versatility — he’s swatting a team-high 1.5 shots per game in addition to 1.4 steals — continues to be an anomaly at the guard position. Did you know he had seven blocks in a win over Utah last week?
Payton Pritchard (16.9 ppg., 5.3 apg., 4.5 apg.) is putting up better numbers than he did during his Sixth Man of the Year run a season ago, and Neemias Queta has blossomed into more than just a serviceable starting center, but a big that many teams around the association would be lucky to have.
Anfernee Simons has served as instant offense off the bench while Sam Hauser, Jordan Walsh, Luka Garza, Baylor Scheierman, rookie Hugo Gonzalez and even Josh Minott — who’s been out of the rotation as of late — play hard night in and night out, providing the intangibles all good teams need from their role players.
That brings us back to Brown.
Now 29 years old and in his 10th season in the league, Brown has elevated his game to elite superstar status. Yes, his nightly numbers were bound to go up with Tatum on the shelf, but it’s his efficiency and two-way prowess that’s truly jumped off the page.
The 2024 Finals MVP is sixth in the league in points per game (29.6) while shooting a career-high 55.9 percent in effective field goal percentage. He’s thriving on drives and in the mid-range, the latter of which is somewhat of a lost art in the NBA. But Brown is opting for those kinds of pull-ups more often than not and knocking them down.
On the other end, he’s regularly guarding the opponent’s best player and remains second in the NBA in opponent field goal percentage (39.4) as the closest defender.
This past weekend against the red-hot Clippers, Brown dropped a career-high 50 points while holding one of the league’s hottest players, Kawhi Leonard, to 6-for-17 shooting in a 31-point Celtics’ rout. That’s tough.
The season is still young, and it remains to be seen how Tatum’s inevitable return from injury will impact the chemistry of this surprise bunch.
But let me leave you with this: is there any team in the Eastern Conference that Boston should fear come playoff time?
I think not.
Nick Giannino covers the Boston Celtics for CNHI Boston. Contact him at NGiannino@nobmg.com and follow him on X/Twitter @NickGiannino_GT.