Boston Celtics: BetSided badly misses boat with Cs win/loss prediction

Boston Celtics fans, don’t put your money on the Cs winning less than 46 games this upcoming season.

If fully healthy, this Cs team should be right where they were two seasons ago: sitting on the doorstep of an Eastern Conference title.

BetSided’s Donnavan Smoot had one of the colder takes (in due time) in his over/under win total prediction for the Cs, and it’s not just because he has a different idea of how this season is going to turn out in Beantown.

Instead, it’s the reasoning for this bearish projection that drives us up a wall.

Let’s first just put this lede in a hot air balloon and hope it floats away and never comes back:

"The Celtics have been a mess since Kyrie Irving left for Brooklyn. Honestly, they were a mess before that."

Calling the Cs a mess from a chemistry standpoint would be fair considering the amount of backstage drama reported in the last few seasons with Brad Stevens at the head coaching helm.

But in talking from a purely wins and losses standpoint, Boston has won at least 48 games every year since 2015-16 besides last year’s pandemic-stricken season. And that includes a 72-game 2019-20 season.

Next, let’s pick apart the knocks against the new players that simply don’t hold any weight:

"If Boston was getting the Al Horford of two years ago, maybe I would be excited. However, the Celtics are getting him worse than when he left. The best pick up the Celtics made this offseason was Dennis Schroeder. Even then, they have to hope he has a bounce back year."

A. Al Horford just had his best season with the OKC Thunder since his first season with the Cs back in 2015-16. His overall shooting was slightly down due to an increased number of 3-point attempts and the lack of options around him able to draw defensive attention away, but saying he can’t be the guy he was when he was last in Boston is foolish.

If anything, playing with Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum again could bring him back to the efficiency he sported two years ago.

B. Dennis Schroder doesn’t need to bounce back from 15 points, six assists, and 3.5 rebounds on 44/34/85 shooting splits to be an upgrade over Jeff Teague and Payton Pritchard.

Oh, and about this…

"Even if the Boston Celtics end up working out, the growing pains are going to hurt. Don’t expect them to get out of the gate on a crazy win streak, rather prepare for people to start wondering if Brad Stevens needs to go back to the bench to fix the team."

Having this opinion of Udoka’s first season, after his stints with every team he’s been a coach for ended in a postseason berth every season, is grounded in nothing but biased skepticism.

Fade this prediction hard, Boston Celtics fans.