Opinion: What’s Wrong With The Celtics?

Iweka Iweka '21, Contributing Writer

23-24….. bad record right? The Boston Celtics have been an absolute mess this season and it seems to be getting worse. The way the Celtics started this season and how they played last season, many were expecting them to have a strong year. Going into this summer the Celtics decided to finally part ways with Gordon Hayward and were expecting to finally take off, to increase their chances at a title.

The C’s this season has been an up-and-down roller coaster. Starting the season beating the Bucks was a huge win, with many stories after that about how they looked legit and were a team everyone needs to look out for. They exceeded to push their record to 8-3 picking up quality wins against the Raptors, Heat, Pistons, etc. It looked like the team was finally hitting their stride with Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum playing at elite levels on both ends of the court. This was all happening while their third star Kemba Walker was out injured.

 

When Kemba Walker finally came back from an injury many wondered how we would be able to find his role again with the way the team was playing this season. His first game back was against the Knicks and it wasn’t the prettiest. The Celtics ended up losing 105-75 and Kemba Walker had a total of 9 points. Another problem was obviously the fact that Tatum wasn’t playing due to covid reasons. With Tatum being out most people believed the Celtics, led by Kemba and Jaylen would be able to hold it down until Tatum came back, but that just wasn’t the case.

 

The Celtics ended up going 1-3 but many people around the league weren’t worried since Jayson Tatum was finally coming back. He started off scoring 24 points and the Celtics had a very comfortable win in his first game back. Then the up and down roller coaster really started. The Celtics at that time were 10-6 and ended up with a 19-16 record heading into the All-star break which is surprising given the talent they have.

 

So far the Celtics have ended up making trades like giving away Daniel Theis and also acquiring players like Evan Fournier. The Celtics are currently 23-24 and are in 10th place in the Eastern Conference barely surviving the play-in tournament. With the Celtics having two all-star players on this team they need to figure out ways to play more consistently and win games or we might see a team that had many high hopes fall short to even making the playoffs, to begin with.