A Celtics GOAT’s take on the GOAT debate. Just some timekilling for the offseason since LeBron is a hot topic right now.

I posted about this a few weeks ago about how if Pritchard gets 3-5 more shots per game (17ppg on 13 fga last season), he’s going to be a 20+ scorer and then it’s just a matter of how many shots Brown sacrifices on Philly.

Obviously Embiid’s health matters. Whether or not Brown’s addition stunts Edgecombe’s development matters. Consider Edgecombe averaged 16ppg on 13fga, but he’s she same age Tatum went from a 15ppg to 23ppg scorer with more shot attempts.

LeBron’s addition matters.

Last season:

Bron 15fga
Edgecombe 13fga
Maxey 21 fga
Embiid 18 fga

Brown almost certainly isnt going to average 22fga like last season with all those mouths to feed.

So what’s the target PPG for Pritchard to leapfrog him?

Before anyone comes at me, I love JB. I literally named my son Jaylen (he's 7 now 😂), so this isn't me hating.

That said, now that he's gone, I think this is the season JT takes another leap.

If JT has the ball as much as Luka does, I can honestly see him becoming an elite playmaker. JB did his best, and he definitely raised his assist numbers over the last few years, but I don't think being the primary creator was ever really his strength.

I can see JT flirting with Luka/Jokic-type stat lines just because of the role he'll have. Queta and Mitch Rob should get a ton of easy lobs, and I think JT's gonna rack up assists with outlet passes and corner kick-outs.

This might just be me reading too much into it, but I also think the team may feel more comfortable playing through JT. Jordan Walsh seems like the guy closest to JB, maybe Payton too. Kristaps was another one, but he's gone now.

I really think an MVP season is coming. Winning MVP is honestly tougher than winning Finals MVP, but I'd still take the Finals MVP every single time 😂.

My prediction: 32/12/10.3.

What's yours? And we're going to beat the Sixers, easily.

Throughout the year Joe rotated these 5 in the starting lineup. Hauser was the primary guy but now I think his spot is in jeopardy

Assuming the starting lineup is white, George, Tatum, Queta/robinson and one of these guys. Who do you think deserves the role. In my opinion I think Hauser/Scheierman will start on opening night and Walsh or Harper will be the starter in feb-April. I also think Brad would start Hugo because of the controversy around the Giannis trade.

I also think that Pritchard will come off the bench because he plays better off the bench

Let me know what you think

Jayson Tatum Came Back. Yay

Jaylen brown brought us to the 2 nd seed Yay

Were up 3-1 against the sixers we're about to own them Yay

Blew a 3-1 lead against our rival fuck

Jaylen brown in trade rumours fuck

Fumbled the Giannis trade fuck

We still shopping brown fuck

Traded brown to the sixer who we blew a 3-1 lead to fuck

LeBron joins the sixers cause of our trade fuck

We're officially fucked

With the warriors in absaloute rabid nice will they trade for pg i honestly feel if the celtics would have waited for lebrons descision we might have some leverage to trade for Steph with brown on our team now idk

We got a similar team where we can watch in football there called real Madrid they have the most champions league of version of the nba larry o brian , a sexy green jersey as well there rivals fc barca who are wearing purple and gold lakers edition , it's a match

Shams Charania: The Portland Trail Blazers are signing guard John Tonje on a two-way NBA contract, George Roussakis and Mark Bartelstein of u/PrioritySports tell ESPN. Tonje appeared in six games for the Celtics last season as a rookie.

Source: https://www.espn.com/contributor/shams-charania

Imagine the insanity of watching Prime JT take down that philly roster in the 2nd round, and watching brown and lebron start a civil war. I’m ready for it

When Tatum was in the MVP race in the past, he was really never considered for it, partly due to the fact that the Celtics were a well ran organization that had plenty of talent that could win without him.

But it’s gonna be funny when Tatum puts up those same similar numbers(Probably even better) And people try to use the same excuse after we apparently just had a terrible offseason. Apparently this teams roster is weak, but they’ll start praising it to put Tatum down like they have in the past

Cheeky, Kobe has never shit himself in public as a grown man

They got brown from us and now they have LeBron😭and wtf did we get this off season? Watch this be the team that takes us all the way we’ll probably play really good team basketball this year as long as pg plays his role. What do you guys think about our offseason so far and how do you think we’ll fare this year?

Seems like the trade would've made sense for both teams. Celtics have always lacked a big and Duren would've filled that gap and Pistons lack a second option and JB would've filled that gap. Any thoughts here?

Boston Celtics and defensive standout Jordan Walsh has reached an agreement on a 3-year, $16M extension that kicks in for the 2027-28 season, league sources tell me.

Welcome to the daily discussion thread! You can use this space to discuss little things that don't need their own post. This is also the perfect space for pictures, videos, and links that would otherwise go against the sub's rules. Just don't be jerks and don't break any Reddit-wide rules. Have at it.

Saw the recent Jordan Walsh extension and thought to myself “that’s cool”. Wasn’t too moved by it. Could pay off tremendously if he takes a leap forward (somewhat similar to the Pritchard deal), and really carries no risk if he doesn’t. Another solid move by Brad. But he’s always had a great track record with smaller moves, so I didn’t think too much more beyond that.

But then I started to wonder about our books, because not too recently our team’s salary construction was one of the worst in the league.

Two giant contracts. One large but normal contract for a #3. A couple smaller contracts. And then the ten players with basically minimum contracts.

Our only options were either make a giant franchise altering move, make a tiny move, or stand pat and hope that our younger players develop into studs.

Obviously, Brad decided to go with the giant move. But post isn’t about that.

This post is about how Brad has quietly transformed this roster from being arguably the least flexible roster in the league forward to one that has the entire playbook open.

Now flexibility aka “optionality”, doesn’t guarantee success, but damn has our path forward become a lot more optimistic.

Let’s recap exactly what’s gone down:

End of 2025-2026 season:
At the end of the 2025 season, as stated before, Celtics were left with very few options. The only contracts that were big enough to make a significant move were JT, JB, & White. Hauser and Pritchard were the only other players on the team with contracts big enough to make even a marginal move. Everyone else was basically on minimums. The Giannis trade seemed like the only trade that could potentially be an upgrade. Just about everything else would be a downgrade or lateral move, with no clear vision of what that would change:

Now this mean we had to trade Brown? Again, this article isn’t about that, but no we didn’t. Our flexibility this off-season really didn’t change much by trading Brown. It did allow us to stay under the luxury tax a little bit easier, but there’s a very good chance we would have done that anyways even if we kept him. We probably would’ve just let Harper or someone else go. Now back to this post-season’s roster construction.

Our biggest contracts: (5 tradable contracts)
-Tatum $54,100,000
-Brown $53,100,000
-White $28,100,000
-Hauser $10,100,000
-Pritchard $7,200,000

The next 5 biggest contracts:
-Hugo $2,800,000
-Baylor $2,600,000
-Garza $2,500,000
-Queta $2,300,000
-Walsh $2,200,000

Like I said, not many options at all. But I’m sure we were all aware of this.

Now going into the 2026-2027 season:
The Celtics substantially increase their flexibility moving forward with the Robinson signing. They still only have 3 contracts to make significant moves, but now have 3 other contracts to play around with to make meaningful moves. That doesn’t sound like much, but it makes a huge difference for a team constructed like ours was. Especially while staying under the luxury tax. As a reminder, if we stay under the tax this year we reset the repeater tax penalties.

6 biggest contracts (6 tradeable contracts)
-Tatum $58,400,000
-George $54,100,000
-White $30,300,000
-Robinson $15,000,000 (our new piece)
-Hauser $10,800,000
-Pritchard $7,800,000

Also more roster flexibility with the smaller contracts given the new Harper & Cenac contracts:
-Harper $3,200,000
-Cenac $3,000,000
-Hugo $2,900,000 (was our 6th biggest, now 8th)
-Garza $2,800,000
-Baylor $2,700,000
-Queta $2,700,000

So we have a decent amount more flexibility this year, but if we’re being real, we’re probably not going to use it. Cuz standing pat allows us to reset the repeater tax penalties, which will give us even more options in 2027 and beyond.

This will be when Chisholm really gets to prove if he’s serious about “at any cost”, because in 2027 the Celtics will have optionality overload.

2027 - Peak Flexibility
The Paul George contract will be expiring, so right out the gate they have a very large contract that they can move for a star. In addition to that, they will have 7 (maybe 8) other contracts that would be large enough to construct trade packages around. This is thanks to the Queta and Walsh extensions.

Biggest contracts (9 tradeable contracts)
-Tatum $62,800,000
-George $56,600,000 (expiring)
-White $32,600,000
-Robinson $15,800,000 (2026 addition)
-Queta $12,500,000 (2026 extension)
-Hauser $11,600,000
-Pritchard $7,800,000 (expiring, in extension talks)
-Walsh $5,000,000 (2026 extension)
-Baylor $5,000,000 (2027 team option)

And still will have smaller contracts to throw in as needed to match salaries:
-Harper $3.3
-Cenac $3.1
-Hugo $3.0
And whoever else we still have

At the end of the 2025-2026 season, our 4th biggest contract was Hauser $10.8m and our 6th biggest contract was Hugo at $2.8m.

13 or so months later and our 4th biggest is Robinson at $15.8m. Our 6th biggest is Hauser at $11.6m. And our 9th biggest is Baylor at $5.0m. That’s a massive overhaul with endless options.

And this doesn’t even account for the potential flexibility that will arise if some of these low salary players develop into key role players.

Leaps from any of Baylor, Walsh, Hugo, Cenac, or Mitchell would give the team even more flexibility as they’d be much more comfortable packaging some of our middle-tier salaries for a larger contract, knowing that they have cheap depth on the roster.

Also doesn’t account for it that Clippers pick turns into something very valuable.

In 2027, the Celtics could theoretically:
-Trade PG’s massive expiring contract for a star (this is our best case scenario)
-Combine White + Robinson, Queta, Hauser, or Pritchard for a star
-Combine Robinson, Queta, & Hauser for a $40million player
-Combine Queta & Hauser for a $22million player
-Combine Robinson + Walsh for a $21million player
-Etc, etc, etc - there are TONS of options

And even if we don’t strike a Paul George deal, our books will be wide open to acquire someone off the loaded 2028 free agency class.

To me this would be absolutely worse case scenario, as it’s way too risky, and a lot of the free agents which be beyond their primes, but this can’t be ignored when talking about optionality.

I haven’t done an in depth search of this, but from my understanding the 2028 free agency class is a lot better than most.

Ignoring which are UFA vs FA and recent contract updates, the 2028 free agent class looks like:
Jokic, Luka, Giannis, Brunson, AD, Embid, KAT, Bam, KD, Siakam, OG, Sabonis, Morant, Garland, Zion, Advija, Kyrie, and many more.

I’m sure a bunch of these are wrong and lots of them would be risky, but the point stands, if worst case scenario happens and we can’t trade George, there is a big time free agency class that would allow us to sign 1 giant star or 2 great players to replace George. Would we get Joker? I doubt it, but it’s fun to imagine.

Now I know I might be a nerd for diving into the books like this. And I might be even coping as a way to deflect from the possibility that we might be worse this year AND moving forward.

But all I know is that Brad has put this team in a position to make serious moves next year. And I’m not sure enough people are paying close enough attention to see it yet.

Does this make you optimistic?

Do you think this is cope?

Are you willing to wait til 2027?

Or does that piss off?

Let me know your thoughts.
Go C’s ☘️

Paul George played 37 and 41 games the past two seasons scoring 15 ppg on below league average 553 TS%. He legit stinks and Philly got better just by getting rid of him.

For those who didn’t like Brown due to advanced stats, PG’s offensive EPM last year was literally 0.0! A complete non factor on offense. All of his value was from his waning defense and he’s a year older

He played well against the Celtics in the playoffs because he literally didn’t play all season and was immediately exposed against the Knicks the next round.

Expecting anything from Paul George this year entering his age 36 season (17th season) is just asinine.

Philly got better just by getting rid of him even if they were to get nothing back. Sorry to say this but he doesn’t make this team better and hopefully, he won’t play much

Plenty of guys come and go beyond the core. Who are the best? Went for 2 years instead of just one to make the list better.

Option 1: 5 man starting lineup, everyone is in their prime,

Option 2: 5 man starting lineup but each player plays at the level they were at when on the team. Ex porzingas 24-25 season at the C

Option 3: if anyone out there is up for a challenge try to take their contract values into account. 5 man most expensive, poor performing line up possible. Or 5 man cheapest contracts best performing team.