The Celtics made some mighty big changes this summer, obviously shipping out Jaylen Brown and bringing in Paul George and Mitchell Robinson. The top-end talent may not be what it was, but the Celtics are as deep as can be and boast at least 14 players who could all be worthy of NBA minutes this season.
But the problem is that a 14-man rotation simply isn’t feasible. Some of this will work itself out one way or another. There will be injuries to deal with, veterans will get plenty of rest and nights off, and some of the young guys may struggle and play their way out of the rotation.
Boston won't have enough minutes to go around
However, even with everyone's minutes being carefully managed, there are only so many minutes to go around, and this is going to be a tough situation for Joe Mazzulla and his staff to manage.
Even with an easygoing approach in the regular season, Jayson Tatum is going to be playing more than 30 minutes a game. The same goes for Derrick White and Payton Pritchard as well. Those guys can be comfortably penciled in for 95 minutes a night. Then, you’ve got your bigs: Neemias Queta, Mitchell Robinson, and Luka Garza will chew up at least 48 minutes a game.
PG should definitely be kept as fresh as possible this season, but still, he’s going to play at least 25 minutes a game, even in a toned-down role. That’s, very conservatively, 168 minutes per game between Tatum, George, White, Pritchard, and a center out of a total of 240 minutes to work with.
Celtics must find minutes for Walsh, Hugo, Baylor, Harper, and Hauser
That leaves just 72 minutes a game to split between Jordan Walsh, Hugo Gonzalez, Baylor Scheierman, Sam Hauser, Ron Harper Jr., Mike Conley, Chris Cenac, and anyone else who may be active on a given night. The rookie Cenac may not be ready for rotation minutes for a while, and the veteran Conley may be past his days of nightly minutes. But Walsh, Hugo, Baylor, Sam, and Ron are all due for a bigger role and more opportunity, which is going to be very hard to come by.
Splitting those minutes five ways would be 14.4 apiece, which would be fewer than each of them except for Harper got last season, which was the first taste of real minutes for any of them but Hauser. That's not nearly enough. These kids were a huge part of the team’s success last year, and also a big part of Brad Stevens’ vision for the future.
The JB trade was in part to get minutes for these guys and figure out just how much they can handle. And yet, it’s hard to see a real way to do that without some kind of major change to the top of the roster. I’m sure Joe and company have a plan, and of course it’s better to have too many guys competing for minutes than not enough.
But with what feels like a second straight gap year coming for Boston, it’s absolutely vital that they figure out what they have with all of these young wings on the roster, and that’s inevitably going to mean some very interesting, and perhaps difficult, decisions about who’s going to play and how often.
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