Jaylen Brown and Derrick White are stars in the NBA. Payton Pritchard and Anfernee Simons can pop off on occasion. There is no lack of talent at the top, but the fall off from the stars to the rest of the roster is not gradual; it's steep. And that inability to rely on over half the roster each night may hurt the Celtics more than anything else this season.
That's not to imply that the role players on this team can't contribute. Neemias Queta has shown some great strides in an expanded role and Sam Hauser remains a dead-eye shooter. But there will be lots of guys playing considerable minutes every night, who can't be expected to contribute positively on a nightly basis.
Lack of experience is perhaps the biggest reason for that; so many of these guys haven't played much (or at all) in the roles they'll be forced into this season. Some of them, like rookie Hugo Gonzalez, haven't played, period.
Celtics won't have enough reliable players on a nightly basis
The Celtics' 2023-24 title happened, in large part, because Joe Mazzulla had nine players in his rotation whom he could count on every night. From Jayson Tatum to Luke Kornet, there weren't any surprises on a nightly basis. Each player knew what they were on the team to do, and they all did it so well. Some guys were out there to score, others to playmake, others to muck things up, and pretty much all of them to shoot.
This Celtics team doesn't have that luxury. There won't be much continuity from one night to the next, and that will be frustrating for fans who have gotten used to knowing what to expect.
The one possible saving grace here, though, is that Mazzulla Ball has been known to turn players into basketball machines. That sounds like a dig at Mazzulla, but it's not — he does as good a job as anyone to integrate players into his vision of a team, no matter who that player was thought to be beforehand.
But this roster, in a year which the front office not-so-subtly admitted that winning is not the top priority, will be the hardest yet for Mazzulla to squeeze success out of. It's his first time without reliable talent all the way down the roster, and it'll show us how he coaches when things change night to night.