Payton Pritchard is the reigning Sixth Man of the Year, but he might be better suited to start for the Celtics this season.
Payton Pritchard is the reigning Sixth Man of the Year, but he might be better suited to start for the Celtics this season.Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
Shaking my notebook up and down and seeing what falls out while finding it hard to believe that the start of Celtics training camp is just over one month away . . .
▪ The Celtics’ hierarchy entering last season was quite clear. They had just won an NBA championship and were returning all of their top rotation players. There was no need to disturb anything.
But this summer’s overhaul has created significant uncertainty. Kristaps Porzingis, Jrue Holiday, and Luke Kornet are gone, with Al Horford certain to follow. And, of course, superstar forward Jayson Tatum is expected to miss the entire season after rupturing his Achilles’ tendon in the conference semifinals in May.
So, what will be the team’s starting lineup?
The top is simple. Returning starters Jaylen Brown and Derrick White will be there, tasked with anchoring Boston’s attack at both ends of the court. Returning center Neemias Queta should be the starting center by default following the departures of the team’s top three big men, but he is a more traditional center so his presence will require adjustments after the Celtics leaned on the floor-spacing shooting of Horford and Porzingis.
Fifth-year forward Sam Hauser, who started 19 games a year ago as a fill-in option, should get the first crack at the opening on the wing created by Tatum’s absence. Hauser has made at least 41 percent of his 3-pointers in each of his first four seasons and the Celtics will need that extra firepower with Tatum out and Queta starting.
The biggest question mark will come at the second guard spot, with Payton Pritchard and Anfernee Simons likely to receive consideration.
Pritchard is the reigning Sixth Man of the Year, and coach Joe Mazzulla might prefer to keep him in that role as someone who can shift a game’s tenor off the bench with his shooting and ball pressure. But his familiarity with Boston’s system might be helpful, too, particularly early in the season.
Last season, a lineup consisting of Pritchard, Brown, White, Queta, and Hauser was Boston’s ninth most-common five-man grouping, but it registered a minus-3.5 net rating, the only negative mark among the 10 most frequently used lineups.
The Celtics acquired Simons from the Trail Blazers in the trade that sent Holiday to Boston, and Boston has explored trades involving the 26-year-old guard. For now, though, it appears Simons will be part of Boston’s opening-night roster.
He is a fearless and high-level scorer, but he is also a subpar defender. Last season Simons had a minus-1.3 defensive box plus/minus, an estimate of a player’s total impact on a team’s defense while on the floor, according to Dunksandthrees.com. That would have ranked last on the Celtics a year ago.
Of course, the Celtics will lean heavily on both Pritchard and Simons regardless.
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When the Grousbeck family agreed to sell the Celtics to an investment group led by Bill Chisholm at a $6.1 billion valuation last month, both sides said that a succession plan was in place that would keep Wyc Grousbeck as lead governor until 2028.
But that plan was scuttled this past week, league sources said, with Chisholm now positioned to take the reins as lead governor once the transaction officially closes.
NBA rules require lead governors to hold at least a 15-percent ownership stake, and league sources said that Grousbeck’s share dipped below that mark when the transaction was fully funded.
So, what changed? The deal called for Chisholm to purchase 51 percent of the team at first close, with the balance closing in 2028. Current minority shareholders were required to sell 51 percent of their stake now, with the option of selling the rest now or waiting until 2028. A league source said that more shareholders decided to wait than originally expected.
In 2028, the NBA’s new $76 billion media rights deal will have helped inflate the values of all franchises, with the Celtics’ valuation by that time expected to be more than $7 billion.
That shift, a league source said, required extra fund-raising to complete the transaction. The source said the addition of extra shareholders reduced Grousbeck’s percentage of ownership from 15 to 12.5, below the mark required to be lead governor.
Regardless, league sources said, Grousbeck is expected to remain with the team as alternate governor and CEO through 2028.
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There are no glaring rough spots in the Celtics’ regular-season schedule. The team has just 13 back-to-back sets, tied for the fewest in the NBA, but will face just 11 opponents on back-to-backs, also tied for a league low.
There’s one five-game road trip and a pair of four-game jaunts. One small oddity is that the Clippers and Lakers games will take place on separate trips.
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For what it’s worth, oddsmakers are projecting the Celtics will win about 42 games this season. That would have put them in seventh place in the Eastern Conference a year ago.
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EuroBasket is here to save fans seeking a hoops fix before the NBA season. Twenty-four teams from European countries will be divided into groups of six. After five round-robin games, the top four from each of the four groups will advance to the knockout round.
Queta is expected to be Portugal’s starting center, and guard Yam Madar, a Celtics second-round pick in 2020 whose draft rights are still owned by the team, will play for Israel.
Former Celtics such as Porzingis (Latvia), Guerschon Yabusele (France), Juancho Hernangomez (Spain), Danilo Gallinari (Italy), Daniel Theis (Germany), Dennis Schröder (Germany), and Shane Larkin (Turkey) are expected to take part.
The tournament begins Aug. 27.
Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at adam.himmelsbach@globe.com. Follow him @adamhimmelsbach.