Normally it’s the league’s quietest month. Everybody is on vacation until Labor Day, and then they start ambling back into the gym in the days and weeks that follow. Transactions? Sure, for two-ways and Exhibit 10 guys, but nothing that will meaningfully change the team’s trajectory.
And then there are the 2022-23 Boston Celtics. They left August as a favorite to win the NBA championship, with a still-young team that lost in six games in the NBA Finals, a hot coach entering his second season and a reloaded roster that added knockdown shooters Malcolm Brogdon and Danilo Gallinari.
Then September happened, when the Celtics:
Lost Gallinari to a season-ending knee injury at EuroBasket. Lost Robert Williams III for the start of this season (at least) to a second knee surgery. Lost coach Ime Udoka after he was suspended for the 2022-23 season for “violations of team policies.” I can’t recall a team having three losses of this magnitude in September like this; it felt like a retaliatory karmic curse for the Pierce-Garnett trade, or maybe for continually playing Neil Diamond in the arena.
Additionally, these three losses compounded upon one another. Frontcourt depth was already looming as a bit of a problem for the Celtics heading into the season, but the addition of Gallinari with their taxpayer midlevel exception should have solved that issue. Gallo can occasionally masquerade as a five but more importantly could have soaked up enough time as a stretch four to let Al Horford man the middle for extended minutes. Meanwhile, losing Williams for at least the first several weeks of the season — plus the expectation that it might be a long road back after two knee operations in six months — further weakens the Celtics up front.
Finally, Williams and Udoka were the two keys to the biggest change Boston made last season. Udoka shifted the Celtics to a much more switch-based approach on defense that suffocated opponents throughout the second half of the season, while Williams was the mainstay of said defense. When healthy, he was a more valuable piece even than Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart. Even when Golden State seemingly solved Boston’s defense in the finals, that mostly happened in the non-Williams minutes; he was just too injured to play longer.
The Celtics shouldn’t panic: Even without Williams, their seven best players are better than yours. They still have two All-Star-caliber wings in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown and shored up the backcourt rotation with an elite shooter in Brogdon. In addition to Smart, they have top-tier role players such as Horford, Grant Williams and Derrick White. The trade for White at midseason was a master stroke that solidified the rotation, with Boston zipping to a 28-7 finish to the season.
Brogdon seemed to be another massive acquisition after Boston’s backcourt proved a bit too tepid offensively in the playoffs. Last time he was able to be a role player on an elite team (the 2019 Bucks), he shot 42.6 percent from 3; he’s also one of the game’s best foul shooters. (His 88.1 percent career mark is topped only by Steph Curry, Damian Lillard, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving among qualifying active players.) Trading a late first and a slew of fungible players for him was an absolute no-brainer.
Deeper on the bench are two other decent options in Grant Williams and Payton Pritchard; Williams becomes very important now, as he’ll need to soak up frontcourt minutes with Gallinari out and Robert Williams uncertain. However, the backcourt is now crowded enough that one wonders if Boston should trade Pritchard for more size.
The problem is that you can’t get through a season with seven players, which is why we can add one more bullet to the slew of late-summer negatives above:
Why didn’t they sign any more basketball players? In the 20-20 hindsight view of Boston’s 2022 offseason, this is going to be the biggest question. Fresh off its NBA Finals disappointment, the Celtics got to business right away by acquiring Brogdon and signing Gallinari with its taxpayer midlevel exception … and then they just kind of stopped. Even though they had five open roster spots.
From July 15 to late September, the Celtics didn’t make any moves on their main roster. In early July, they did re-sign Luke Kornet to a partially guaranteed deal and Sam Hauser to a minimum. While these aren’t really the minimum-contract veterans whom contenders look to add, that took their roster to 12 players … and then they called it good. (As a reminder, league rules require 14 roster spots filled, and teams can carry up to 15.)
What looked like a minor quibble for an otherwise surefire champion favorite turned into a major problem once the September woes hit. Heading into training camp, Boston’s only players taller than 6-foot-8 were the 35-year-old Horford and Kornet, who played 103 total minutes for three teams last season. Boston backfilled with the late addition of Blake Griffin — the same guy they tortured in the first round of the playoffs last season — but the Celtics likely could have done significantly better had they expended much effort in this direction earlier.
It’s the most dumbfounding offseason move that nobody is talking about. Even as other teams filled out their rosters with veteran players signing for the minimum or intriguing “second draft” players, Boston stood pat. It’s not clear to me if the Celtics were trying to finesse the luxury tax (they’re already in deeper than this franchise has historically gone) or something else happened, but now it’s a problem. Suddenly, Hauser is their ninth-best healthy player. My fellow Wahoo shoots well enough that he has a chance to be something, but this isn’t a flier anymore. He’s somebody they’re counting on. This would feel iffy even for Houston or San Antonio, let alone for a team that went to the finals last season.
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#Has a team ever had a worse September than this?
Normally it’s the league’s quietest month. Everybody is on vacation until Labor Day, and then they start ambling back into the gym in the days and weeks that follow. Transactions? Sure, for two-ways and Exhibit 10 guys, but nothing that will meaningfully change the team’s trajectory.
And then there are the 2022-23 Boston Celtics. They left August as a favorite to win the NBA championship, with a still-young team that lost in six games in the NBA Finals, a hot coach entering his second season and a reloaded roster that added knockdown shooters Malcolm Brogdon and Danilo Gallinari.
Then September happened, when the Celtics:
Lost Gallinari to a season-ending knee injury at EuroBasket.
Lost Robert Williams III for the start of this season (at least) to a second knee surgery.
Lost coach Ime Udoka after he was suspended for the 2022-23 season for “violations of team policies.”
I can’t recall a team having three losses of this magnitude in September like this; it felt like a retaliatory karmic curse for the Pierce-Garnett trade, or maybe for continually playing Neil Diamond in the arena.
Additionally, these three losses compounded upon one another. Frontcourt depth was already looming as a bit of a problem for the Celtics heading into the season, but the addition of Gallinari with their taxpayer midlevel exception should have solved that issue. Gallo can occasionally masquerade as a five but more importantly could have soaked up enough time as a stretch four to let Al Horford man the middle for extended minutes. Meanwhile, losing Williams for at least the first several weeks of the season — plus the expectation that it might be a long road back after two knee operations in six months — further weakens the Celtics up front.
Finally, Williams and Udoka were the two keys to the biggest change Boston made last season. Udoka shifted the Celtics to a much more switch-based approach on defense that suffocated opponents throughout the second half of the season, while Williams was the mainstay of said defense. When healthy, he was a more valuable piece even than Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart. Even when Golden State seemingly solved Boston’s defense in the finals, that mostly happened in the non-Williams minutes; he was just too injured to play longer.
The Celtics shouldn’t panic: Even without Williams, their seven best players are better than yours. They still have two All-Star-caliber wings in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown and shored up the backcourt rotation with an elite shooter in Brogdon. In addition to Smart, they have top-tier role players such as Horford, Grant Williams and Derrick White. The trade for White at midseason was a master stroke that solidified the rotation, with Boston zipping to a 28-7 finish to the season.
Brogdon seemed to be another massive acquisition after Boston’s backcourt proved a bit too tepid offensively in the playoffs. Last time he was able to be a role player on an elite team (the 2019 Bucks), he shot 42.6 percent from 3; he’s also one of the game’s best foul shooters. (His 88.1 percent career mark is topped only by Steph Curry, Damian Lillard, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving among qualifying active players.) Trading a late first and a slew of fungible players for him was an absolute no-brainer.
Deeper on the bench are two other decent options in Grant Williams and Payton Pritchard; Williams becomes very important now, as he’ll need to soak up frontcourt minutes with Gallinari out and Robert Williams uncertain. However, the backcourt is now crowded enough that one wonders if Boston should trade Pritchard for more size.
The problem is that you can’t get through a season with seven players, which is why we can add one more bullet to the slew of late-summer negatives above:
Why didn’t they sign any more basketball players?
In the 20-20 hindsight view of Boston’s 2022 offseason, this is going to be the biggest question. Fresh off its NBA Finals disappointment, the Celtics got to business right away by acquiring Brogdon and signing Gallinari with its taxpayer midlevel exception … and then they just kind of stopped. Even though they had five open roster spots.
From July 15 to late September, the Celtics didn’t make any moves on their main roster. In early July, they did re-sign Luke Kornet to a partially guaranteed deal and Sam Hauser to a minimum. While these aren’t really the minimum-contract veterans whom contenders look to add, that took their roster to 12 players … and then they called it good. (As a reminder, league rules require 14 roster spots filled, and teams can carry up to 15.)
What looked like a minor quibble for an otherwise surefire champion favorite turned into a major problem once the September woes hit. Heading into training camp, Boston’s only players taller than 6-foot-8 were the 35-year-old Horford and Kornet, who played 103 total minutes for three teams last season. Boston backfilled with the late addition of Blake Griffin — the same guy they tortured in the first round of the playoffs last season — but the Celtics likely could have done significantly better had they expended much effort in this direction earlier.
It’s the most dumbfounding offseason move that nobody is talking about. Even as other teams filled out their rosters with veteran players signing for the minimum or intriguing “second draft” players, Boston stood pat. It’s not clear to me if the Celtics were trying to finesse the luxury tax (they’re already in deeper than this franchise has historically gone) or something else happened, but now it’s a problem. Suddenly, Hauser is their ninth-best healthy player. My fellow Wahoo shoots well enough that he has a chance to be something, but this isn’t a flier anymore. He’s somebody they’re counting on. This would feel iffy even for Houston or San Antonio, let alone for a team that went to the finals last season.