Depth was not thought to be the strength of this year’s Boston Celtics team heading into the season. Fans had just watched four key players in Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, and Luke Kornet head to new homes, while Jayson Tatum was set to miss most, if not the entire, 2025-26 campaign with a ruptured Achilles tendon.
Now, entering 2026, the feeling has shifted. The Celtics sit third in the Eastern Conference with a record of 21-12, just three and a half games behind the first-place Detroit Pistons. They’ve won seven of their last eight games, and are starting to feel like they’ll have a real shot to compete regardless of whether Tatum returns or not.
Jaylen Brown deserves a ton of credit. He’s played unbelievable basketball and should land on the All-NBA First Team when it’s all said and done.
The reason that the Cs continue to improve, however, actually lies within the supporting cast. Boston’s bench has given them some strong production over the past few weeks. In Thursday’s win over the Sacramento Kings, they combined to score 46 of the Celtics’ 120 points.
Throughout this young season, a different role player seems to step up every two weeks. First, it was Josh Minott, who emerged as a great defensive option early in the season. Then, Jordan Walsh put together some tremendous two-way production. Hugo Gonzalez followed suit in recent weeks, and now Luka Garza is making fans question why he spent a month glued to Boston’s bench.
Luka Garza and Hugo Gonzalez have ignited the Celtics' bench
The recent combination of inspired play from Garza and Gonzalez gives the reserve group some real guff. They bring a certain energy to the game when they check in, and it’s shifted momentum on multiple occasions.
According to the league’s website, the Cs have utilized lineups featuring both men in 78 minutes across their last six games. Those lineups produced an offensive rating of 127.6 and a defensive rating of 90.7, equating to a 36.9 net rating. You have to take advanced metrics like these with a grain of salt, especially when the sample size is limited, but it’s certainly not a bad thing to see positive numbers like these.
Rebounding is likely the biggest factor here. At a glance, the lineups that feature Garza and Gonzalez have a significantly higher rebounding percentage than those that do not. Celtics fans know how important the glass has been for this team, especially when they struggled to close possessions towards the beginning of the campaign.
Controlling it when possible should translate to more wins, always.
Plus, the pairing of Gonzalez and Garza seems to unlock the best of Boston’s bench. Anfernee Simons is making some of his best contributions of the season while playing alongside them.
That trio, in particular, has thrived during this recent stretch. They’ve been the fifth-most common three-man lineup for the Celtics in the last six games, and carry a net rating of 36. That’s still a small sample size, but the coaching staff’s trust is evident in their frequency, if that makes sense.
If these three have a chemistry that unlocks the highest level of Simons’ game, it could bring the Celtics to new heights. There was no question that Simons could score when he came over in the Holiday trade this summer, but his defensive ability raised serious questions.
He’s struggled on both sides of the ball, at times, but, again, is looking more and more comfortable as time goes on. Maybe it’s something about the extreme motors that both Garza and Gonzalez play with. It would be pretty hard to mail it in when you’re playing alongside menaces like them.
It’ll take some more time before we all know for sure that pairing these two together will generate good minutes for Boston, but for now, it’s feeling like they could be rotation staples in the back half of the season.