After enduring such a grueling and disappointing 2020-21 campaign, the Boston Celtics come into 2021-22 with the hope that better days are ahead.
With the myriad of moves that rookie President of Basketball Operations, Brad Stevens, made throughout the offseason the Cs look to be heading in the right direction, as they now seemingly have a more well-rounded team as well as the flexibility to make some more shakeups as the year goes on.
However, while on paper Boston appears to be in a better position than they were last season, there are still plenty of questions pertaining to this team as we approach October’s tip-off.
Today, we at the Houdini discuss 4 burning questions we have about the shamrocks heading into the year:
Boston Celtics question No. 1) Who will start at point guard?
The Boston Celtics kicked off their roster makeover this offseason with the major move that saw Kemba Walker being shipped off to Oklahoma City in a salary dumping deal.
While the good news was that the trade managed to get his lucrative contract off of Boston’s books, the bad news was that they put themselves in a position where they seriously needed to pursue players to better bolster the now even more depleted point guard rotation.
While many Celtics fans had their fair share of ideas on how to go about filling out the depth at the one, ultimately Stevens and co. made the decision to sign veteran Dennis Schroder to a one-year “prove it” deal worth $5.9 million.
A starter for a large chunk of his career, the 27-year-old finds himself coming to a franchise with the drive to get his reputation back in order — failed to live up to lofty expectations that followed him when traded to the Lakers last season to serve as their starting point guard.
As things currently stand, many are under the belief that long-tenured Celtic, Marcus Smart, will wind up being the choice this team will go with to have roll out at the point come the start of the season and, based on his play in this role last year (averaged 13.1 points and 6.1 assists through first 18 games of last season while serving as main floor general), this logic makes quite a bit of sense.
However, despite his somewhat disappointing campaign last season (15.4 points and 5.8 assists), over the years Schroder has proven himself to be a quality starting one guard in this league, seeing averages as high as 19.4 points and 6.2 assists during the last season he was also a full-time starter back in 2017-18.
With Kemba now gone, the starting point guard position is technically open for grabs and, though many expect Smart to wind up getting the nod, one shouldn’t sleep on Schroder’s abilities to stand out amongst the crowd.