For the first time in four years, the Boston Celtics will not enter the season as title contenders when opening night rolls around in the fall. Their roster looks considerably different after offloading Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis in a pair of cost-cutting trades, losing Luke Kornet, and presumably Al Horford in free agency, and having to play without Jayson Tatum as he rehabs his ruptured right Achilles tendon.
Despite all of that, Payton Pritchard’s mentality hasn’t changed as he and his teammates gear up for their newest challenge.
“We’re definitely trying to be a playoff team,” Pritchard told NBC Sports Boston’s Chris Forsberg during an appearance on the “Celtics Talk” podcast. “We’re trying to win the championship. It’s not even about the playoffs. We have one standard in Boston and it’s to win the championship.”
Pritchard is one of the last guys anyone would expect to lower his expectations. If he’d believed what oddsmakers had to say, he probably would’ve never made it to the NBA.
Okay, but, where do the Celtics stack up in the Eastern Conference?
As for the Celtics community, they’ve been a bit more torn in terms of what they’d like to see from the 2025-26 edition of the squad. Some still want the team to compete in the same way Pritchard does, but others wouldn’t mind seeing them be amongst the league’s worst and give themselves strong odds of landing a top draft pick.
Unfortunately for that party, reality feels closer to the reigning Sixth Man of the Year’s expectations. There are just too many awful teams in the Eastern Conference for Boston to feel they’ve got a shot at being the worst. Even with all of the losses this summer, Pritchard, Derrick White, and Jaylen Brown will all return to compete.
When looking at the East and how Boston stacks up, it can be tough to rank them. First and foremost, there’s a lot of unknown surrounding the aforementioned trio. How will new players like Anfernee Simons and Georges Niang fit? Will Neemias Queta be ready for a larger role? How many of the younger players, if any, will take a leap?
Let’s imagine that all of the above questions result in answers that are in the middle of the floor and ceilings.
The Celtics still wouldn’t be at the level of other East powers like the Cleveland Cavaliers, Orlando Magic, New York Knicks, and Atlanta Hawks. The Detroit Pistons will probably have a stronger squad that Boston too, but they need to rely on a lot of internal development after losing Malik Beasley and Tim Hardaway Jr. in the offseason.
Aside from those five teams, the Celtics have a real argument to be better than the rest of the East. The reigning Conference Champion Indiana Pacers will be without Tyrese Haliburton, the Milwaukee Bucks still have Giannis Antetokounmpo but not much else, the Miami Heat didn’t do anything overly impressive this summer, and the Philadelphia 76ers could be contenders, but it all balances on the uncertain health of Joel Embiid.
All of the unknowns in Boston, as well as in the remainder of the conference, should make for an exciting season for the fans. It sounds funny, but the Celtic faithful will have the luxury of enjoying expectation-free basketball for the first time in a while. Now, they’ll face the possibility of an overachieving team, rather than just championship-or-bust standards, although Pritchard sounds like he hasn’t moved off of that mindset just yet.