It’s still hard to process just how good the Celtics were last season given their injuries and offseason departures. Jaylen Brown got most of the media attention for the team winning 56 games without another All-Star, but the stats told a different story, basically showing that the team was just as good or better when JB wasn’t even on the court.
When you look at the names and faces who were making it happen, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it becomes clear when you dig a bit deeper. Boston thrived playing in a very specific system under Joe Mazzulla, where he gave players clearly defined roles and empowered them to lean into their strengths and help create advantages for his team.
It worked like a charm, and the results on the court were magical, having Celtics fans wondering if their role players were, perhaps, closer to stars than anyone realized. Part of the Brown trade was leaning into that and betting on those numbers holding over a larger sample size with JB no longer even on the team.
In recent years, we’ve seen that the key to success in the NBA isn’t so much accumulating superstars as it is having players return far more value than their contracts. The Celtics had that in spades last season, and it’s a trend they are hoping to continue, backed by all of the data they are using.
Celtics have multiple players providing star-impact in specific roles
SportsRadar, with stats from Synergy, put together a breakdown of offensive roles into 11 categories and defined which players ‘starred’ in those hyper-specific roles. In the modern NBA, positions have become almost meaningless, and it makes it very difficult to compare the role of someone like Neemias Queta to Nikola Jokic, despite them both obviously playing center.
Todd Whitehead of Synergy and SportsRadar created the chart, and of the 55 players starring in specific roles, the Celtics had four of them. Payton Pritchard had the highest impact of anyone classified as a secondary ball handler, Sam Hauser was the fifth-highest-impact dynamic shooting wing, Hugo Gonzalez was the fifth-highest-impact spot-up shooting wing, and Queta was the fifth-highest-impact rim-finishing big.
Five players who are making a positive impact in each of 11 offensive roles. pic.twitter.com/QHnmOVAyk4
— Todd Whitehead (@CrumpledJumper) August 8, 2026
The exact way the roles are defined and impact is measured can be found here, but the point is pretty clear: the Celtics aren’t asking anyone to do too much or anything that’s outside of their comfort zone. They’ve identified good players who are great in specific roles, and those are the roles that they’re being asked to play.
Are Hauser and Hugo top 15 wings in the NBA? Of course not, but neither one is ever going to be utilized like a Jayson Tatum, Anthony Edwards, or Luka Doncic. Boston has great depth and a lot of guys who can impact the game in different ways. The recipe is there. Now it’s up to the master chef, Joe Mazzulla, to add just the right amount of each ingredient, and if he gets things right, this team has the chance to exceed everyone’s expectations for a second straight season.
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