Technically speaking, the Boston Celtics didn't improve this season. In fact, they won five fewer games than they did last season. That goes to show you how deceptive objective numbers can be when being used to make the wrong point. The reality is, because of the Celtics drastic internal improvements this season, they won almost as many game as they did last year.
At the forefront of that was the improvement of Neemias Queta. There were a lot of questions about him coming into this season. The talent was there, but not the consistency. In fact, because of the uncertainty surrounding Queta, the foundation of the doubt surrounding Boston stemmed from their frontcourt.
Of course, Queta proved that wrong, as his numbers took a massive jump across the board. That alone makes a solid case for him to win Most Improved Player. He went from Boston's fourth big on their deptjh chart to their starter and barely skipped a beat despite everything that went against them.
The Celtics center likely won't win Most Improved Player based on his numbers. However, here's a pivotal question everyone should keep in mind that would make his case even better: Where would Boston be without Queta?
Queta was perhaps Boston's third-most valuable player
First of all, there's a difference between saying a player was a team's (X)-best player and saying he was a team's (X)-most valuable player. Sometimes those terms overlap, and sometimes they don't. In this case, it's the latter.
It's apples and oranges to say who was better between Queta and Payton Pritchard. However, in spite of how very impressive Pritchard was when Boston needed him to be, Queta was a jack-of-all-trades center who covered so much ground in a position where the Celtics were lacking. In short, behind Jaylen Brown and Derrick White, Queta was their third-most indispensable player.
This is not a shot at Luka Garza or Nikola Vucevic, but think of the whole package Queta gave to the Celtics by himself: a lob threat, rim protector, offensive rebounder, screen roller, savvy post-game, perimeter defense, and even the occasional home run pass every now and again.
He wasn't exactly prime Al Horford, but he wasn't too far off from what Horford brought to the team on any given night at the top of his game. In fact, it was because of how skilled Horford was at the little things that made Boston so hard to beat. Queta replicating that as best he can is why the team stayed so bulletproof.
The NBA's Most Improved Player award is tough because there's a wide spectrum of players who deserve it. It's not like Nickeil Alexander-Walker or Jalen Duren aren't deserving candidates in the slightest.
But also consider this: in their franchise history, the Celtics have never had a player win MIP. That trend might continue when it's all said and done, but Queta may have gone on the best campaign for it the team has ever seen.
Add us as a preferred source on Google