Analyst’s ‘sky is falling’ message on Boston Celtics’ major offseason addition
Kristaps Porzingis has not always been the healthiest of players, but Yardbarker’s Ethan Scott was a tad “the sky is falling” with his fears about the marquee Boston Celtics offseason addition’s future with the team.
“Based on Porzingis’ extensive injury history, Boston would be negligent and careless if it didn’t have concerns over his availability,” Scott prefaced before saying, “During his 10-year career, Porzingis has played in 66 or more regular-season games only twice — the first seasons of his career (2015-17) with the New York Knicks.
“Porzingis’ 10-game playoff résumé is dreadful. In the 2020-21 playoffs with the Dallas Mavericks, he averaged 13.1 points and 5.4 rebounds in 33.3 minutes per game and shot 47.2 percent from the field and 29.6 percent from beyond the arc. The Celtics and their fans have high expectations for Porzingis, but this Boston era could be a disaster.”
The Kristaps Porzingis trade will never be fairly judged because it was the Boston Celtics who made the deal
Of course, a Los Angeles resident attending NYU believes the next era of Boston Celtics basketball will be a disaster. While the history of the franchise has not always been squeaky clean, with Bill Russell’s treatment in the city a major black mark on the C’s resume, there is a disconnect between the team’s villain status to the rest of the league and reality.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have been two of the least polarizing stars in basketball these past few years, and the Celtics have, unfortunately, not been able to win the big one in over a decade and a half. Perhaps the villainry has upped a tad when the team swapped out fan-favorite Marcus Smart for a star who both never lived up to the hype and has less than desirable Google search results when you look into his scandals.
But that still doesn’t account for the league’s obsession with seeing the Boston Celtics fail. Landing Porzingis undoubtedly raises the ceiling for this team, but the potential for calamity exists as well. There’s no need for this level of hyperbole quite yet, though, considering the Cs are still the odds-on favorite to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy in 2024.