Hey! A Win! The Boston Celtics took the second night of an Atlantic Division back-to-back on Tuesday night with a narrow 101-99 victory over the New York Knicks, and now the team is back to .500 at 26-26.
Man, what a depressing sentence.
Expectations were sky-high coming into the 2020-21 season, yet here we are with 20 games left to play in the second straight pandemic-shortened season and the Cs are sitting in the #7 seed.
And look, if there were six teams the Houdini thought were better than Boston, then this wouldn’t be such a dramatic narrative. Charlotte and Atlanta, though? That’s not right.
It’s cruel in the case of the Hornets.
Terry Rozier and Gordon Hayward were notably cast aside from the loaded 2018-19 Celtics that probably had the best chance of winning the Eastern Conference. LeBron was gone, and the stars seemed to align with a healthy Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward joining the Jays and Al Horford to make the league’s most lethal starting five…on paper.
Marcus Morris and Marcus Smart battled their way into the starting five in place of Hayward and Jaylen Brown, and Rozier was no longer the folk hero who dominated Eric Bledsoe but a backup whose shooting percentages from the field and scoring output dropped in a pivotal contract year for “Scary Terry”.
Fast forward to 2021, and Rozier and Hayward are now the top stars of a Hornets squad that is achieving more success than any of Kemba Walker’s Queen City teams ever did.
You know what…let’s just fast forward once more.
The 2021 NBA Draft has plenty of clarity now that the NCAA Tournament has concluded, and the Cs have two upcoming draft picks to right the roster wrongs plaguing the current iteration of the Boston Celtics.
Here are the two selections HH believes could best support Jaylen Brown. Jayson Tatum, and whoever else the Boston Celtics retain moving forward: