Expectations surrounding the Boston Celtics were as low as they’ve been in a decade, heading into the 2025-26 season. They’d lost Jayson Tatum to a torn Achilles, while Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Luke Kornet, and Al Horford all headed to new homes in the offseason.
Any time you remove five key pieces from a roster, it’s reasonable to expect a dip in production. After watching the team’s first 20 games, however, it feels like the expectations are shifting. Locally, at least.
Many Celtics fans have enjoyed watching this team go out and compete every night. Plus, they’re actually winning games and currently sit eighth in the Eastern Conference with a record of 11-9.
On a national scale, it doesn’t seem they’ve earned much respect, to this point. Bleacher Report recently put out an article sharing updated record predictions for all 30 NBA teams. You don’t have to be a detective to figure out what they said about the Celtics if I’m writing this article.
Somehow, BR’s Grant Hughes feels worse about Boston than he did heading into the year. He lowered the site’s predicted win total for the Cs by one in the recent update, citing the team’s “smoke and mirrors” success as the reason why.
“On some level, the Celtics seem to be succeeding with smoke and mirrors,” Hughes wrote. “They get to the rim and the foul line less frequently than any team in the league, and you have to wonder what'll happen when the jumpers quit falling. An extreme shot diet heavy on threes helps Boston win the math game often, but that high-variance style will lead to some scoring slumps eventually.
"If the jumpers quit falling, terrible defensive rebounding and enormous nightly free-throw disparities could tank the operation.”
The Celtics haven't shot the ball well until recently
Having watched every single game this season, I feel confident in what we’ve seen from the Celtics thus far. Their offensive process looks mostly good, with small hiccups when Jaylen Brown hits the bench for some rest.
Wondering what will happen when jumpers stop falling is pretty hilarious, considering we already saw the answer through the first 10 games of the year. Like, shots have been falling recently, but three weeks ago, we were all sitting here scratching our heads and wondering why Payton Pritchard and Derrick White couldn’t shoot anymore.
Yet, the Celtics have hovered right around .500 to this point, now two games above. Even when shots weren’t falling, they still managed to avoid piling up losses. This is largely because of how careful they are with the ball, and the emphasis Joe Mazzulla puts on winning the shot margin.
It hasn’t been perfect, though. There have been some bad losses mixed in there, like the one to Utah on Nov. 3 or against Brooklyn on Nov. 21.
At the same time, the Cs have proven that they can compete with playoff teams, with wins over the Detroit Pistons, Cleveland Cavaliers (twice), and Orlando Magic (twice).
Hughes also pointed to Jaylen Brown’s hyper-efficient start to the season as a reason for his doubts. He questioned how sustainable his mid-range game is, while pointing out how much it’d hurt the team if Brown had to miss time with an injury.
There have been times when Brown’s mid-range game has looked otherworldly, sure. But it’s also something we’ve seen from him in the past. During the 2022-23 season, JB shot a similar efficiency from the mid-range en route to an All-NBA selection.
Hughes is right with his final point, though. If Brown misses time with an injury, the Celtics are going to lose games. There’s no getting around it. He’s been the only player on the team consistent enough to rely on on a nightly basis.
Aside from that, there’s been nothing that I’ve seen from the Cs so far that’s made me feel worse about them. I was fairly sceptical of how good they could be this year, but so far, they’ve shown far more promise than I could’ve expected.