The Celtics’ loss to the Kings on Friday night has led them to an inflection point. They have slipped back below .500, at 20-21, and they entered Saturday night alone in eighth place in the Eastern Conference.
The coming week could determine Boston’s fate for this season, and perhaps even beyond. In addition to two challenging road tests against the Bucks, the NBA trade deadline is Thursday, likely marking Boston’s last real chance for a roster shakeup before this offseason. So, what are the options, both from personnel and performance standpoints, over the next few months?
A lineup adjustment — This one is tricky, because the lineups have been shaken up all season, mostly because of injuries and COVID-19 protocols. On Friday night, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, and Kemba Walker started together for just the third time this season.
Smart came off the bench initially when his minutes were limited following his six-week absence because of a calf strain, but coach Brad Stevens insisted that he would prefer to have the defensive-minded guard in the starting group. One option would be inserting Robert Williams into the starting lineup alongside those four players.
Williams is one of the few Celtics who has continued to play well during this latest funk, and his emergence has been the most promising development of this season. The Celtics are being cautious with his playing time because he missed most of last season with a hip injury, and he is averaging just 16.9 minutes per game. But his per-36-minute statistics are startling: 16.2 points, 13.7 rebounds, 3.7 blocks, 2.6 assists, and 1.9 steals.
The Walker, Brown, Tatum, Smart, Williams unit has been on the floor for just 14 minutes this season and it was outscored by 36.5 points per 100 possessions, but that is a miniscule sample size. Williams’s conditioning and knowledge of Boston’s system have improved, and maybe he deserves a chance to give this team a jolt. After Friday’s loss, though, Stevens did not sound like someone who believed a personnel shift would remedy his team’s issues.
“You have to be so engaged to win an NBA game that when you’re not, you don’t,” he said. “And so we’re not, and that’s what we have to fix. The changes, the lineup changes, the starting lineup, whatever, it’s got to be 17 guys dying to play well together, and I think the fun follows that.”
Get some help — The obvious move would be to, well, make a move. But for the Celtics, it’s somewhat complicated. Yes, they have three trade exceptions, including the massive $28.5 million exception that was created in the Gordon Hayward sign-and-trade with Charlotte in the offseason.
But that exception continues to appear earmarked for this summer, when Boston would have more possibilities. Currently, it cannot use the full exception because it is hard-capped this season, but that restriction would be lifted at season’s end. Also, the Celtics are not over the luxury tax. While ownership has stated many times that it is comfortable being a tax team — and it will become one next season once Tatum’s extension kicks in — if it can stay out of the tax this season it can avoid being hit with the costlier repeater tax, which is activated when a team is over the tax in three out of four seasons.
The Celtics do not need to use one of their exceptions to make a deal this coming week, of course. But the options within the roster are limited. Their younger players simply have not done enough to become intriguing assets for another team, and there aren’t many useful contracts for trades among their veterans, with Tristan Thompson’s two-year, $19 million deal being the most likely possibility.
Also, this season up to 10 teams in each conference could make the playoffs. Executives for squads that have toiled in this no-man’s land for years have become more reluctant sellers. But if the Celtics still have hope for this season, it does feel like they have to do something, even if it is just going after a mid-tier player.
Wait it out and look toward the future — Frustrated Celtics fans probably feel as if this is what the team has been doing for years. But it might be the most plausible option. If Romeo Langford can provide a lift off the bench when he makes his season debut, Walker can become more consistent, and All-Stars Tatum and Brown rediscover their early-season form, the Celtics could be fine.
After all, they did enter Saturday night just a game and a half behind the fourth-place Heat. But Boston has done nothing to show that it is a true title contender, so maybe if it continues to sputter it will pull back and just chalk this up as a lost season. The Celtics could use these final few months to get more experience for players such as Langford, Payton Pritchard, Aaron Nesmith, and Grant Williams, both to help their development and to evaluate where they might fit moving forward. They could give Walker extra rest and be careful not to wear down Tatum and Brown, all while securing a higher draft pick that could become a more valuable trade chip.
Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at adam.himmelsbach@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @adamhimmelsbach.
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March 21, 2021 at 01:34AM
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Where do the Celtics go from here? Here are three potential paths - The Boston Globe
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