Forget tanking. Disregard the “gap year” talk.
Even without Jayson Tatum and with a roster far less talented than previous iterations, the Celtics look like genuine contenders in the wide-open Eastern Conference.
Sunday’s 121-113 win over the Toronto Raptors — Boston’s fifth straight and 10th in its last 12 games — pushed the 15-9 Celtics up to third place in the East. They’ve beaten both of the teams ahead of them (the Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks) within the last two weeks and also took down two other projected conference front-runners in the Cleveland Cavaliers and Orlando Magic.
As of Monday, the Celtics ranked second in the NBA in offensive rating, fifth in net rating and fifth in point differential. Since dropping their first three games to open the season, they own the NBA’s sixth-best winning percentage, outpacing every team in the East outside of Detroit.
It’s far too early to call them a legitimate championship threat — they’d need to prove they can hang with the likes of Oklahoma City, Denver and Houston — but the Celtics have reset expectations in what most expected to be a forgettable season. Could they vault into that tier if and when Tatum returns from his Achilles injury? It’s not out of the question.
How did they get to this point? Here are five reasons why the Celtics are overachieving:
1. Jaylen Brown is meeting the moment
This is the first time in his 10 NBA seasons that Brown is Boston’s clear-cut No. 1 option. How is he handling that added pressure? Pretty darn well thus far.
Tatum’s longtime co-star is the league’s sixth-leading scorer through 24 games, his 29.1 points per game trailing only Luka Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Tyrese Maxey, Donovan Mitchell and Nikola Jokic. He’s made 36.3% of his 3-pointers, which would be his best mark since 2020-21, and has been a menace from the midrange, attempting a league-high 6.0 shots per game from that distance and making just under half of them (49.6%).
The NBA leader in usage rate, Brown also is on pace for a career high in assists (4.9 per game) and has shown restraint in key moments, trusting his teammates rather than trying to win games by himself. Three of Boston’s recent victories were secured by late makes from Payton Pritchard (Cavaliers), Jordan Walsh (Knicks) and Derrick White (Raptors).
Officiating has been a point of contention for Brown, who believes he hasn’t gotten a fair whistle this season. But he’s trending upward there, as well, attempting at least nine foul shots in each of his last four games.
Brown has topped 30 points in 13 games this season, including six of his last seven. The only outlier during that stretch was a 19-point, 12-rebound, 11-assist triple-double against Cleveland, his first of the season and the fourth of his career. He’s playing at an All-NBA level — and giving the Celtics exactly what they need to succeed in Tatum’s absence.
2. White and Pritchard have settled in
Twelve games in, White and Pritchard owned two of the worst 3-point shooting percentages in the NBA. The former was shooting 28.0% from deep. The latter was at 25.6%. Both were playing well in other areas but failing to provide the consistent supplementary scoring the Celtics needed behind Brown.
That’s no longer a problem.
Over Boston’s last 12 games, White is shooting 39.8% from three on 9.4 attempts per game, and Pritchard is shooting 41.0% on 8.8 attempts. Their returns to form have turned the Celtics into one of the best-shooting teams in the league during their recent hot streak. Since Nov. 12, the C’s rank third in field-goal percentage, fourth in 3-point shooting percentage and first in both made field goals and made threes per game.
The role players have helped that cause, too. Scoring isn’t the primary responsibility for Boston’s squadron of young wings — head coach Joe Mazzulla want them to crash the glass and be high-energy chaos agents on defense — but Walsh, Josh Minott, Hugo Gonzalez and Baylor Scheierman all are shooting better than 44% from beyond the arc this season.
The Celtics also are tops in the league in clutch shooting, both overall (52.5%) and from 3-point range (52.2%). No other club is shooting better than 46% from deep in clutch situations.
Boston Celtics center Neemias Queta (88) and New York Knicks guard Miles McBride (2) battle for the loose ball as the Celtics take on the Knicks at the Garden. (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald) .
Boston Celtics center Neemias Queta (88) and New York Knicks guard Miles McBride (2) battle for the loose ball as the Celtics take on the Knicks at the Garden. (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald) .
3. Neemias Queta can play
Queta’s viability as an NBA starting center was a major question entering the season — one to which even those within the Celtics organization didn’t seem to know the answer.
The former fourth-stringer has put those concerns to rest with a superb start, averaging close to a double-double (10.1 points, 8.2 rebounds) while boasting some of the best advanced metrics in the NBA. As of Monday, he ranked eighth in individual defensive rating and seventh in net rating, trailing only six players from the Thunder. His plus/minus is 29 points better than any Celtics player, and Boston’s efficiency drops by 19.7 points per 100 possessions when he is off the court, per Cleaning the Glass, which ranks in the 98th percentile of all NBA players.
That last stat speaks both to Queta’s impact and the shakiness of the depth chart behind him, which Mazzulla recently has combatted by increasing his reliance on small-ball lineups when Queta is on the bench. Backup big men Luka Garza, Xavier Tillman and Chris Boucher have hardly played over the last four games.
The smaller groupings, many of which feature 6-foot-8 Minott at the five, have yielded positive results so far, but acquiring another quality big should be at the top of Brad Stevens’ to-do list if the Celtics choose to be buyers ahead of February’s NBA trade deadline.
4. Jordan Walsh has broken out
If Queta is the biggest riser of this Celtics season, then Walsh is a close second. Over the last month, the 21-year-old has gone from an end-of-the-bench player who was a DNP-CD in four of the first eight games, to a locked-in starter with a chance to be “one of the best defenders in the league for many years to come,” according to one opponent.
That praise came from Lakers guard Austin Reaves, one of the many gifted scorers Walsh has guarded this season. He’s also matched up against All-Stars Maxey, Mitchell, Jaren Jackson Jr., James Harden, Paolo Banchero, Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards, Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, and successfully limited most of them.
Walsh becoming a standout defensive specialist would be a major win for Boston, which experimented with Sam Hauser, Gonzalez and Minott as starters before settling on the third-year pro. But he’s coupled that with a vastly improved offensive game, averaging 14.0 points per game over his last five outings on hyper-efficient 76.5% shooting.
His advanced stats at both ends of the floor are off the charts: As of Monday, Walsh ranked in the 89th percentile or better among all NBA wings in steal rate (90th), block rate (97th), defensive rebounding percentage off missed field goals (89th), offensive rebounding percentage off missed field goals (98th), effective field-goal percentage (95th) and points per shot attempt (96th). His offensive rating was fourth-best in the league.
Those eye-popping numbers aren’t sustainable, but Walsh’s newfound status as a real contributor on a winning team might be. Since his promotion to the starting lineup, the Celtics are 10-2.
5. Health helps
The Celtics showed their resilience by defeating the Pistons without Queta, taking care of the Cavs without Queta and White, and hanging 146 points on the lowly Washington Wizards without Brown, but they’ve benefited from being one of the NBA’s healthiest teams this season. Their entire roster has missed a total of five games due to injury, with no starter sitting out more than two (Tatum’s ongoing rehab notwithstanding).
It’s still hard to see Boston surviving if they lose a core player like Brown, White or Queta for an extended stretch, so this injury luck will need to continue.