Boston Celtics: Kemba Walker rebuilding more than just Cs postseason hopes

It’s been a trying season for the Boston Celtics. Ditto for Kemba Walker on a personal level.

His season started late, and his re-emergence coincided with a slide down the standings. He has been unable to compete in back-to-backs, and his $34 million salary has seemed tough to justify at times.

That script has been flipped several times over in the last few weeks.

Walker is rewriting the narrative here late in the season, topping 32 points for the third time in his last four appearances and scoring a career-high 33 points in a poor effort from the Cs in a 121-99 loss last night against the Chicago Bulls.

To Walker’s credit, though, Boston is 7-2 in their last nine games with the max contract floor general in the lineup. Flashes have been shown by the Cs in this late-season stretch-run, but even with the general underperformance this season, the Celtics are in luck.

Another Eastern Conference contender from 2019-20 also can’t seem to seize the #6 seed themselves is the Miami Heat. Miami was the one roadblock to the Boston Celtics reaching the NBA Finals for the first time in a decade last year, and Bam Adebayo’s block on Jayson Tatum is starting to have major Roy Hibbert-Carmelo Anthony 2013 Eastern Conference semifinals vibes.

The key difference in the comparison is that the 2013-14 Indiana Pacers ended up right back in the Eastern Conference semifinals the following season, while Miami is struggling just as much as Boston is.

In fact, given the next two games are between the two teams, the Cs could actually leapfrog the Heat in the standings with a series sweep. They won’t be back-to-back, so we could see Walker play in both.

That is music to the ears of Brad Stevens, who is likely looking for some calming yacht rock to get his mind off of how hot his seat could be getting if the team doesn’t make the kind of run Boston Celtics fans have grown accustomed to in recent seasons. A coach could only fail to break the glass ceiling that he seems to be underneath with not reaching the NBA Finals so long without the winds of change sailing through the sinking ship the Cs seem to be this year.

Walker could be the heroic X-Factor that leads the charge in the 2020-21 stretch run. Two big performances against the Heat, which have better than possible odds considering he averaged 19.7 points per game against them in the 2020 ECF, and a grand finale at Madison Square Garden (with two potential rest-games against tankers Minnesota and Cleveland) would give Boston considerable momentum heading into a potential series with the Milwaukee Bucks or Brooklyn Nets.

Remember, this is not the same Cs that fell to Giannis Antetokounmpo and company ran roughshod over in 2019. Boston has had Milwaukee’s number this season, taking two of the three games they’ve played.

Brooklyn is a different story, though their injury situation may things a bit more manageable in what would otherwise be a nightmare matchup.

Having the #6 seed (or, better, the #5, unlikely as it may be) would give fans a lot more hope than having survived the postseason play-in–or worse, not surviving the postseason play-in–and restore hope in Walker’s ability to still live up to his contract on the court.

Off the court, he has already done plenty to rebuild the Boston community. His work with black-owned businesses in Beantown to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic was his birthday gift to himself (happy birthday Kemba!), and it will have a wide-reaching effect on the community.

Per Vistaprint’s press release:

"To celebrate National Small Business Week, Vistaprint and 4-time NBA All-Star Boston Celtics guard Kemba Walker have partnered to create a limited-edition capsule collection, which includes a one-of-one Panini trading card and a one-of-one pair of custom, game-worn sneakers. The collection will be up for auction starting at 9 a.m. ET on Sunday, May 9 until 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday, May 12 through the ‘I Got It’ mobile app. All proceeds from the auction will support the Power Forward Small Business Grant program, which aims to create a lasting impact through the economic empowerment of Black-owned small businesses across New England."

Walker is already seeing big wins off the floor. Adding a big season finish on the hardwood would be the cherry on top of his renaissance.

*Editor’s note: For those interested in taking part in the auction, you can download the ‘I Got It’ mobile app at the Apple App Store here, and on the Google Play Store here.