It’s hard to believe that just over a year ago, the Boston Celtics put together one of the most dominant championship runs in NBA history, concluding their quest by steamrolling the Dallas Mavericks in the finals.
Many actually picked the Mavericks to beat the Celtics last June, but in reality, they never stood much of a chance against an absolutely loaded Boston squad that didn’t really have any weaknesses.
Fast forward to the summer of 2025, and the Celtics have jettisoned the two pieces that put them over the top in 2024 in Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday. Al Horford is probably gone, too. Jayson Tatum will likely be out for all of next season. Jaylen Brown and Derrick White were both subject to trade speculation.
Suddenly, Boston has gone from an NBA superpower to a mid-tier playoff contender, one that completely lacks any semblance of a frontcourt rotation and has seen its depth sapped considerably.
The Celtics still have championship DNA, but there is no question that they won’t be winning a title next year. Heck, there is a chance they might not even make the playoffs depending on how everything shakes out, and to be perfectly honest, that just might be by design.
Are the Celtics embracing the tank?
Think about it: in this new second apron era, keeping superteams together is a trying exercise. Really, it’s a futile one. Boston just found that out the hard way when it was forced to move two star players for scraps. You might as well just build from the bottom up again.
Well, maybe we shouldn’t go that far. Brown and White are still on board in Beantown, and key role players like Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser are still around. At least for now. But man. To say that this is a stripped-down version of the C’s would be putting it lightly.
Remember: back in 2013, the Celtics decided to blow everything up by moving Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, thus ending the Big Three era. Boston tanked the following year, landed the No. 6 overall pick and bagged Marcus Smart, who proved to be a vital member of the Celtics for nearly a decade. They then used the picks acquired via the Pierce-Garnett deal (thanks, Brooklyn) to land Brown and Tatum.
Can Boston get that fortunate again? Maybe not, and it’s important to note that it was Danny Ainge — not Brad Stevens — who was running the Celtics at that time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Boston won’t at least try to employ a similar strategy.
The future can still be bright in Beantown
The 2026 NBA Draft class is already viewed as a really, really good one. Possibly even historically great. Imagine if the C’s are able to land one of the top bigs next June. Then the Celtics would suddenly have a core that includes the incoming rookie plus a Brown, White and a returning Tatum. You have to imagine Boston would make some other moves, as well.
At the risk of sounding like a Sam Hinkie apologist, we have to trust the Celtics’ process at this point. They’ve done this before. They’ve been one of the best franchises in basketball for quite some time now. They draft well. They trade well. They develop well. They do everything a great organization is supposed to do, and that includes sacrificing the present for the betterment of the future.
Boston is not going to be a title contender next season. Even if Tatum were healthy, winning a championship with this roster would be difficult. Perhaps Horford would have returned on a veteran’s minimum deal, but Porzingis and Holiday still would have been shipped out.
Taking that into consideration, flirting with a little disaster (a.k.a. bottoming out, or at least attempting to) may actually prove to be the most positive step the C’s can take during the 2025-26 campaign.
While that might be difficult with Brown and White still present, the fact that the Celtics really haven’t made much of an effort to address their shoddy frontline is evidence that they may be trying their best not to win games next year.
Boston fans will definitely need to be a bit patient here, and for now, they can rest knowing that all of the effort to rebuild over the last decade-plus wasn’t all for naught. It resulted in a championship, and if the Celtics do this right yet again, it could conclude in Banner 19 sooner than you may think.
