The NBA season is right around the corner and the Boston Celtics 2013 NBA Championship Odds are currently at 12-1 ($100 bet pays $1200). They are 6-1 to win the Eastern Conference and their over/under season win total projection is 50.0. Below is the overall season preview by Pregame Pro André Gomes. 

After another missed attempt to reach the NBA Finals, the Celtics were expected to finally enter a rebuilding process and so, we came to an end on the “Big Three” that gave the team a title in five seasons… This was the most expected scenario, as we are talking about an aging team, however GM Danny Ainge suddenly changed his mind and the Celtics promise to be very competitive this season, while being an outsider in the East to dethrone the Heat. 

Their Atlantic Division Reign:

If we exclude the first half of last season, the Celtics dominated the Atlantic Division throughout the “Big 3” era in the last five years. Boston won almost 70% of their games during this span, but that was also helped by the fact that their division rivals were playing poor basketball, with a combined record of just 40% wins! However, Boston’s record of 63-15 (81%!) in divisional games shows very well how the Celtics humiliated their opponents. The problem is that this season will be very different: Philadelphia has Andrew Bynum; the Knicks have an improved roster under the wing of Mike Woodson; the Nets left New Jersey and brought to Brooklyn a backcourt with Deron Williams and Joe Johnson; even Toronto made some interesting signings for this upcoming season. So, suddenly a division that was regularly having just one team with a winning record will probably have four teams fighting for a postseason spot, so Boston won’t have an easy task this season.

Last season’s review 2011-12:

When Boston became champions in 2007-08, the team had in their bench the following players: Tony Allen, P.J. Brown, Sam Cassell, Glen Davis, James Posey, Leon Powe and superstar Brian Scalabrine (just kidding). Not only they had a very strong lineup, as they also had a good bench with great depth.

That didn’t happen last season and to make things even worse for them, Boston was very unlucky with injuries: Jeff Green was supposed to be the team’s 6^th player, but he didn’t play a single minute; Jermaine O’Neal was supposed to be the starting center, but he only played 25 games with his last game being on February 20^th. Jermaine’s backup, Chris Wilcox, also suffered a season ending injury and played just 28 games; Ray Allen missed 20 games of the regular season and when he returned, he was never back at 100%; and even his backup Marquis Daniels never looked healthy during the season.

This combination of veteran players with lack of depth on a shortened season with a brutal schedule turned the Celtics into a very inconsistent team. Whenever Boston was on a back-to-back spot on the road, they just couldn’t be competitive:

@ IND: 83-97
@ CHI: 80-89
@ DAL: 73-89
@ PHI: 71-103
@ LAC: 94-85
@ DEN: 91-98
@ PHI: 86-99
@ CHI: 86-93

An 1-7 record in those games, while scoring an average of 83 points per game exposed one of Boston’s main weaknesses last season: their offense! They were actually efficient on their shooting by being #10 in eFG% with 49.8%, the problem is that the Celtics were mediocre in the remaining areas, especially in terms of offensive rebounding and turnovers (#24 with 14.73% TO/rate).

However, Boston continued to be one of the best defensive teams in the league, with only Chicago having better defensive numbers than them! The Celtics stopped being a top 10 defense in points in the paint allowed, mostly due to the decision of starting Kevin Garnett in the center position for most of the season, but Garnett’s influence was notorious by helping Boston being #2 in the league in eFG% allowed.

In the playoffs, Boston eliminated Atlanta and then had a tremendous fight against Philadelphia, where they won the series just in the decisive Game 7. In the conference final against Miami, Boston was in a position where they only had to win a home game to reach the NBA Finals, but Lebron James showed up big time in the Game 6 of the series.  In the decisive Game 7, already with Chris Bosh back as a starter for the Heat, Boston never had a shot of winning that game.

Offseason moves 2012-13:

In my opinion, the way Boston lost against Miami was the main motive why GM Danny Ainge decided to reunite the troops again this season instead of finishing once and for all an era in Boston. The decline of the “Big 3” has been evident and Ainge had to come up with solutions to give the team a better bench that can give the team quality minutes when the starters are resting.

With Ray Allen leaving for their rivals Heat, Ainge had to replace him and therefore, he signed Jason Terry and complemented him with the hiring of Courtney Lee to the SG position.

But the main problem of the team last season was their lack of options in the frontcourt. Of course Ainge wasn’t expecting so many injuries, but the truth is that in the playoffs, the Celtics had just the starters Kevin Garnett and Brandon Bass plus the rookie Greg Stiemsma, who has a very pleasant surprise due to his defensive ability, but who gives nothing to the team offensively.

For this season, Ainge counts with the versatility of Jeff Green to play on multiple positions. In the draft, Ainge had two first round picks (#21 and #22) and he spent them in the frontcourt with Jared Sullinger and Fab Melo. More recently, he also signed center Darko Milicic to the frontcourt. If Avery Bradley returns from injury in good conditions, this new version of the Celtics will surely have a lot more depth than they had last season. 

Team Analysis:

Doc Rivers won’t change a lot on the Celtics’ style for the upcoming season. Their system is well known and has been very well assimilated by them, so the formula will be the same for this season. Kevin Garnett has already stated that he has no problems in playing in the center position, so the big structural change on the team will be in the SG position. 

Most reports say that if Ray Allen wanted to continue in Boston, he would have been Avery Bradley’s backup this season. In that sense, Jason Terry’s singing makes a lot of sense to this new version of the Celtics.

Ray Allen had a very difficult season due to an injury that was never really healed. However, he was still very efficient (according to mysenergy numbers):

Ranked #14 spot up plays with 1.23 PPP (Points per possession)
Ranked #13 Off Screen up plays with 1.05 PPP (Points per possession)
Ranked #9 cuts plays with 1.48 PPP (Points per possession)

Jason Terry is a better ball handler than Ray Allen and he can also play in the Point Guard position in Rajon Rondo’s absence. This versatility will be well received by Doc Rivers, but Terry wasn’t more efficient than Ray Allen in the three categories previously showed! On the other hand, Courtney Lee’s signing will be excellent for Boston. Lee will bring more agility and explosiveness to the team’s backcourt, while he is also a better defender than Jason Terry.

With the normal decline of Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett plus Ray Allen leaving the team, the Celtics now “belong” to Rajon Rondo. He finished last season as the #1 player in assists per game with 11.7 and #4 in assist rate and assist-to-turnover ratio. He had a season high of 3.6 turnovers per game, but these aren’t worrying numbers, as for example Steve Nash and Deron Williams had more turnovers than him. His creativity also brings bigger risks and Doc Rivers has no issues in letting Rondo use his creative plays.

When Avery Bradley returns from injury and even Jason Terry will be Rondo’s backups in the PG position and so, we can also see in here the big importance Rondo has in the team.

Paul Pierce is the team’s captain and he is coming from a very tough season. We have to wonder if his age wasn’t the main factor for his struggles, as Pierce wasn’t in good form at the start of the season. The brutal schedule didn’t help at all and to make things worse, the fact that he had to play a lot of minutes due to his teammates’ injuries also didn’t allow him to be fresh in the decisive part of the season – he played almost 40 minutes per game in the playoffs!

The result of that was his lowest FG% and 3pts% since the start of the “Big 3” era with 44.3% FG and 36.6% 3pts! If Boston was to win the title again or at least to go toe-to-toe with Miami for the Eastern conference, Paul Pierce will need to have a bounce back season!

At least he won’t surely have a lot of pressure to play major minutes this season, as Jeff Green is back for this upcoming season. However, Green is still fighting to justify the talent that Oklahoma City saw in him. He has the necessary athleticism and versatility to be a good player, but he has been lacking consistency. Let’s hope he doesn’t just turn into an improved version of Marvin Williams.

For the frontcourt, Kevin Garnett will continue leading the unit and his consistency last season was impressive! His importance in being the team’s “defensive coordinator” is unmatchable, but Garnett was also the team’s most consistent player on the offense by shooting 50.3% FG! The fact that he played in the center position helped him in the matchup on the offense, but this might become a problem for Doc Rivers on defense, as Garnett will have to spend a lot of energy while guarding for example Andrew Bynum in a playoff series.

For that, Boston hired a good number of players to give depth to the frontcourt: Darko Milicic and Jason Collins are veterans known for their defensive skills. Fab Melo is coming from a defensive system in Syracuse where he basically only played zone defense and Jared Sullinger is carrying a lot of doubts about his physical shape.

Brandon Bass assumed as a solid option to the team’s frontcourt last season even though he is undersized and it will be up to Doc Rivers to have a correct management of these players, in order to give some rest to Garnett, while helping his two rookies in improving their basketball.

Final Thoughts:

This team of Boston would have had a good shot of being champions… last season due to their much improved depth. However, for this season, Boston will have to face much stronger rivals on their own division – something that will be a first on their legacy and so, the task will be bigger than ever for Doc Rivers. 

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