The Celtics are the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, which I suppose means they are a contender to win said Eastern Conference, which in turn theoretically means they could win the NBA Finals in June, capturing the franchise’s record 18th title. This is ostensibly possible. We all know this. And yet it’s hard to really comprehend that these Celtics, with their baby-faced coach and ragtag rotation and 5-foot-9 leading scorer, are actually championship material.
Maybe this difficulty isn’t because of the on-court product itself. Maybe it’s because for the last four years, the talk surrounding this Celtics franchise has always been half about the actual team and half about the stockpile of assets that Danny Ainge has been carefully crafting since 2013, when he traded away Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. The Celtics’ unique combination of present talent and future assets makes it impossible to put together a cohesive narrative about them. The C’s are the No. 1 seed in the East right now — they should be chasing a championship. But when are they really trying to win? Are their sights set on 2017, or are they looking farther down the road?
These are tough questions to get straight answers to. Obviously, the Celtics themselves are saying the right things. You’ll never get anyone in that locker room to say the focus isn’t on this spring — not Brad Stevens, the fourth-year coach who has admirably led his team to marked improvement every year he’s been there, and not Isaiah Thomas, who’s gone in two years from being a fringe starter in Phoenix to now having a compelling case for No. 5 on the MVP ballot. The pieces around I.T. are fitting beautifully as well. Al Horford is a versatile, fundamentally sound big man whose team-first mentality has melded well this season with the Celtic ethos. Avery Bradley, Jae Crowder, Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown are a four-headed monster defensively, making life miserable for opposing wings. Amir Johnson and Kelly Olynyk are making contributions. It all works. All of these factors put together have made the 2016-17 Celtics into a good — perhaps even bordering on great — team.
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Yet for much of the season, the conversation wasn’t about this team. It was about what the future Celtics could look like. What would happen if Ainge flipped the Nets’ pick in this summer’s draft, quite possibly a top-three selection, for DeMarcus Cousins? Once Cousins ended up in New Orleans, the focus shifted. What about Paul George or Jimmy Butler? For a stretch, this conversation became more compelling to some fans in Boston than the game itself. It was understandable in a way, since the city has come to expect championships, and this current team still feels one piece short. Then again, try saying it to Thomas’ face that you’re too busy counting ping-pong balls to watch the season he’s having.
I think we owe it to these current Celtics to table any talk of future transactions, at least until draft day comes around. For the moment, they are atop the East, and they’re going to take a good honest shot at an NBA title. This feels both natural, since they’re the No. 1 seed after all, and not, since this Celtics group has still never won a playoff series. The last time Stevens earned any kind of postseason success, it was 2011 and he was at Butler. Having said that, this Celtics team is different from the one that was knocked out of the playoffs early the last two years. It’s got Horford in the mix, Thomas playing at another level altogether and a horde of role players that fits together and plays together unselfishly. They’re the top dogs in the East for a reason.
The road ahead will be interesting for the Celtics. The No. 8-seeded Bulls look dead on arrival in the East playoffs, but they still shouldn’t be overlooked — Jimmy Butler looks like a top-10 NBA player, Rajon Rondo has played well the last six weeks and will be raring to go against his former team and Dwyane Wade is back, healthy and always a threat to dominate a playoff game. Assuming the Celtics survive Chicago, they’ve got a likely second-round date with the Wizards, which will bring a star-studded matchup between Thomas and his more battle-tested rival, John Wall. Then, if the Celtics are lucky, they’ll get a shot to dethrone the Cavaliers.
The odds are against the Celtics actually going all the way to the Finals. No. 1 seed notwithstanding, this team is still young and lacking playoff experience. You’d be wise to bet the field, especially when that field includes LeBron James, who hasn’t missed a Finals since 2010. If and when the Celtics are eliminated, be it by the Cavs or anyone else, we can reopen that conversation about draft picks and trade assets and whatnot. The Celtics are fun like that. The moment the title window closes in the spring, another equally exciting window opens.
Long-term, it’s hard to say when that window will be most wide open. Maybe it’s now. Maybe it’s in four years when Brown and whoever Ainge drafts this summer start to enter their primes. Maybe it doesn’t even matter how good the Celtics get, and their championship opportunity is simply dictated by whenever James starts showing his age. Who knows, really? All we know definitively is that right now, in 2017, the Celtics are at one of the most interesting inflection points in franchise history.
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They’ve been here before. In 1980, they won 61 games and also had the No. 1 pick; they used the pick on Joe Barry Carroll, then flipped him for Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. In 1986, they won the title and also picked in the lottery; they took Len Bias. This 2017 Celtics team could be at a point in its history that’s equally historic. What happens this spring will be exciting, no doubt, but it’s also just the start of something much bigger.