All of that stopped, though, as it had to, when Garnett and Pierce were traded to New Jersey in 2013. The team won 25 games in 2013-4 and, while there were some enjoyable players -- Brandon Bass was always a worker and Jared Sullinger, for all the griping about his weight, was surprisingly good -- Jeff Green was the teams best player with an injured Rondo playing thirty games. The hope was the coach, and the massive array of draft picks they acquired from the Nets. Brad Stevens sure looked like he knew what he was doing, and the C's were on their way to potentially getting some intriguing talent -- though we all knew it would take a few, if not several, years for all of it to gel.
Then something unexpected happened. What was supposed to be a multi-year rebuild suddenly was not as Stevens turned out to really know what he was doing -- he beautifully manages rosters and his teams play with a gorgeous blend of both steadiness and pace -- and the C's struck gold in deciding to move on from Rondo, grabbing Brandon Bassx2 in Jae Crowder, hitting the sweet spot with their usage of Evan Turner and getting an even better deal with the mid-season acquisition of Isaiah Thomas. At the time, anyway (that changed last year), there was no superstar on the team. That was clear, and almost every commentator noted it. Something funny, however, began to lock into place. 1-12, almost every Celtic was about as good as everyone else -- and better yet, though no one was great, they were in fact all pretty good. Solid draft picks Kelly Olynyk and Marcus Smart were that -- solid players who contributed. Avery Bradley might have some deficiencies in his offensive game. You loved watching him play defense, though. Tyler Zeller was never going to be Shaq or Dwight in their primes. He played hard, though, and rolled to the hoop at the right moments. And Isaiah was small. But he had one heck of a knack of finding a way of putting the ball in the hoop.
And so it was again the year after. Everyone got just a little bit better, they threw in a couple of extra spare parts, grabbed another solid-if-not-spectacular draft pick in Terry Rozier, and what was roughly a .500 team became rather more than that via the simple fact that, in essence, Boston never went to their bench on a team filled with solid quality NBA players. I.e., there simply was no drop-off when Boston subbed-in, whereas even with the best teams, when the Stephs and LeBrons and Durants and Westbrooks tired out, one usually had to bring in someone along the way one would rather not. That's how the Celtics won games -- and became a kind of unique mystery in the process. It was the idea that you could get to a hundred with ten units of ten as well as adding up a unit of fifty, one of thirty, one of fifteen and then a bunch of threes, twos, fours and ones. And because there was no uber-player, the Celtics seemed to relish in the fact that they could surprise everyone, winning through process and the simple joy of being who they were.
The problem with that approach, though, was the playoffs. You could watch the Celtics compete and grind their way to somewhere between and .500 and .600 record by having more depth and continuity than opponents over 82 games. When your season's contingent upon you being able to blow by an opponent in a short series, though, you'd better have someone -- best yet, two or three someones -- whom you can't stop from putting the ball in the hoop. I.e., it's darn tough to get through a playoff series without a superstar of some kind, which as of 2015-6 -- though Isaiah was coming close -- the Celtics didn't have. And so you had a second straight year of losing in the first round of the playoffs.
The Celts had caproom, though, and so there was a chance -- a chance -- that in the 2016 offseason, they could add that superstar via free agency. They didn't quite. They added an All-Star in Al Horford, who turned out to be a slightly better version of the players they already had: good-if-not-spectacular at everything, workman-like, dedicated (I don't try to undo Horford here; an excellent player -- again, though, just not a superstar). Isaiah, though, went berserk. Making unbelievable drive after unbelievable drive to the hoop, the smallest of Celtics (and one of the smallest NBA players over the last few decades period) scored in a way Boston hadn't seen since Bird. And all of a sudden, though the depth of the team was still there, there were a couple of players with a bit more to offer -- wherein the Celtics weren't just a good, fun team that always competed, but a pretty darn good, fun team that always competed. They got through two playoff series. They enjoyed the ride. In the regular season, they won against Golden State in Golden State (the Warriors feature the most ferocious line-up since the 1990s Bulls). But they hit that wall. There's four teams in the NBA with players you can't stop: Golden State, Cleveland, Oklahoma City and Houston, and only two of those have star level supporting casts. Running into one of those teams in the Conference Finals -- the Cavaliers -- the Celtics got hammered. Yeah, Isaiah Thomas got hurt. However, it was simply clear that when you keyed in on him, you could slow him down (that's virtually impossible with LeBron James or Kevin Durant), and there was definitely no Steph Curry or Kyrie Irving -- nor a Draymond Green or Klay Thompson -- on the side. There was Horford -- good. Beyond that, though, the Celts were hoping that a chest full of solidly built AK 47s might take down a position manned by a couple of heavy-duty Gatling guns. Firepower wins every time.
The Celts thus had a choice. For sure -- there was no reason to make the team worse. The very solid talent that riddled the roster shouldn't be pawned off in a desperate hope that anyone would come their way. To make that leap, though -- to simply acquire more firepower -- the Celtics had to get some weapons with a high caliber, and that was going to cost. That meant a max contract for Brandon Hayward -- one of the couple of best free agents on the market. Paying for heavier weaponry meant getting rid of a couple of the AKs, however, which meant that stalwarts like Bradley and Olynyk had to go. But there was still that question -- really, had Boston gotten to where it might think, in a short battle, there was enough ammo to pick off one of the big dogs; to really ensure they had a legit chance to be there at the end? Again, the thinking was "likely not." In part that had not only to do with the roster, but with Thomas. It wasn't just the injury at the end of the playoffs. It was the improbability of what he seemed to do. He is so small. The margin of error for his shots and drives to the hoops is so thin. Was he really going to absolutely go bananas for a second straight season, or might the only player on the team who put up superstar numbers be really likely to see a 4-5% drop-off, which for the Celtics would definitely mean they'd be on the outside looking in? Moreover, there was certainly no way to expect more from a player who was already milking his physical potential for more than every ounce it was worth.
That leads us to the Kyrie Irving trade. For reasons of which many are unsure, Kyrie didn't want to play second fiddle to LeBron's first violin in Cleveland anymore. Rather than poison the atmosphere, the Cavs looked into trade partners. They found one -- the Celtics; one of the rare times direct conference rivals have swapped stars. Kyrie offered what the Celtics didn't have -- an absolute top echelon player who might get better, and really enter that pantheon of top tier stars. There's nothing Thomas did that Kyrie couldn't do -- and with Kyrie, there was the chance that he could do even more. At the very least, it seemed more likely that he could keep doing what he and Thomas both did in 2016-7 for a longer time: score prodigously and dish the ball. Kyrie is more solidly built, and not all of his drives to the hoop were accompanied by a kind of disbelief that he managed to get there at all.
That's the question around this trade -- the Kyrie for Isaiah deal: did the Celtics get better? Were it a one-to-one swap of Kyrie for Isaiah, the answer would almost certainly be yes. It just seems more reliable that you're going to get that top echelon output from Kyrie for years to come. What he does just looks less fragile. It wasn't just a Kyrie for Isaiah trade, however. The Celts had to give up Jae Crowder and a top draft pick (as well as some precious size in Ante Zizic, a European import). Crowder hurts. The absolute prototypical solid weapon in what up to now had been the Celtics' architecture, in giving him to Cleveland, the Celtics officially shifted from a team relying on consistency and depth -- the idea of simply being really good -- to a team adopting the "grab-as-many-stars-as-you-can" approach (and fill in as much of the roster as possible from there). This could pay off in a few years. If -- if -- they can grab one more star, or if one of two highly promising recent draft picks (either Jaylen Brown or Jayson Tatum) turns into a star in his own right, the Celts have the guns to shoot with anyone in the league. Yeah, sure -- Golden State is in insanity territory by carrying probably 4 of the top 20, if not 15 players, in the league on one roster, including two clearly in the top 5. It might not be that any roster could take them down in the next three or four years. With one more legit star, though, the Celtics would have as good a chance as any. It's an intriguing storyline.
Why then Kyrie now? Why this moment two break up the absolutely unique phenomenon that was the Celtics over the past two years with its essentially star-less "twelve guys who all play both well and hard" approach? It's a logical extension of the Horford and especially Hayward signings -- you don't get two stars without one, you don't get three without two, and you don't get four without three. Want to create a superteam that can wrestle Cleveland to the ground and really give Golden State a run for its money? Create a destination where that last star can say "all the pieces are in place but me; add me, though, and we're there." Then there's also the playoffs in any given year. In today's NBA, if you want to at all think you might be standing at the end of it all, you've at least got to have one guy with Kyrie's potential and talent -- the kind of guy who perhaps really couldn't be shut down, and for which there'd be no answer. We've seen not only that potential in Kyrie's game, but its actually emergence in last year's finals. It's that Kyrie the Celtics are banking on having bought.
The state of the Celtics is thus this. With the departures of Avery Bradley and Jae Crowder -- not to mention Olynyk -- they've given up a lot of defense. The recent C's could be an absolutely dastardly lock-down team when they wanted to, and they won't be that particularly often this year. The effort's likely to be there. On a team still featuring Horford and Marcus Smart, there'll be enough leadership to demand effort, and players like Brown have shown themselves to be willing on the defensive end. The absolute hounding the Celtics could give you, though, is over. Teams will score 100 on them with noticeably more regularity.
There's also a much bigger drop-off between the starters and the bench. That was the magic and mystery of the Celtics over the past three season. Lose a starter? Until Thomas this past year, it really didn't matter. The C's came at you in waves and were pretty sure that, even if your starting unit might outscore theirs by a few points, they'd have those points back once each team had run through ten men. Now you go from Horford, Hayward, Irving, Marcus Morris and Jaylen Brown to Marcus Smart, Jason Tatum, Terry Rozier, Aaron Baynes and -- well, from there, we're not sure precisely who. Shane Larkin? This year's second round draft pick? Guerschon "The Dancing Bear" Yabusele? There's some intriguing talent there. Tatum could be a real monster -- a real 12 point a game guy this year and 20 in the future. Smart is always a tough, tough defender and worth a good deal more than he looks. Rozier actually has a quite high ceiling, and has had moments in his pro career where he's been the most dynamic player on the floor. There's absolutely an A and B team on the Celtics now, though, whereas, in recent years, it was fascinating to watch a team full of B+ guys take down teams with A players.
That's what the Celtics have now, though, that they didn't before. They've got one guy clearly in the A category and a couple of A-'s. They might win the same 60% or so of their games over an 82-game season as they've won in recent years. Come the playoffs, though, they've more clearly got something to fire back with at the stiffest competition, and they're a very inviting destination for one more top-cut acquisition via either free agency or trade. The Celts have the obvious model now; they shed their recent mystery and charm. It's the way to collect playoff wins, though, which, as I see it, is what the calculation here is 100% about.
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