Coming off an NBA-best 64 wins last season, coupled with an almost fully intact championship-defending roster back for a re-run, the Boston Celtics were once again projected to chase new heights this season as the team to beat.
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, however, thinks it’s time to pump the brakes on the Celtics hype train just a bit. Kerr coached the Warriors to their record-setting 73-win season (with no title) in 2016, two decades after Kerr played for the 72-win Chicago Bulls alongside Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman. The record setter and breaker himself Kerr is skeptical about Boston entering that conversation.
Instead, Kerr suggests the Celtics sweep those thoughts under the carpet entirely.
“I don’t think you go into the season trying to do that,” Kerr told Steve Bulpett of Heavy Sports. “We didn’t with the Bulls; we didn’t with the Warriors. Now, as you go and you get closer, you kind of go, ‘Oh, that would be cool.’”
Kerr added: “I don’t think it’ll ever be done again.”
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Unlike the Warriors, who eight years ago were innovators in their style of basketball, unleashing a history-chasing playbook that hadn’t been executed by anyone else, the Celtics are emulators. Boston isn’t just hucking up 3-pointers, the team is sinking them, attempting a league-leading 51.2 attempts and making, an also a league-high, 19 per game. Previously, the three-chasing Celtics were ripped for poorly imitating Kerr’s Warriors, but now validated as champions, the discussion has shifted.
Considering last season was the first for which Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown were tasked with helping newcomers Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday acclimate, raising the bar shouldn’t be out of the question. Boston proved it was the best of the best, maintained a strong level of consistency from start to finish, and ensured TD Garden’s crowd wouldn’t end the season with a head-hanging trot to the exits.
The Celtics are projected, well-positioned and poised to be the Celtics of last season until someone else dethrones them. Might that come with the added bonus of force-feeding Kerr his skepticism on a silver platter? Perhaps. Porzingis is speculated to remain sidelined until December and with Boston’s 7-2 performance suggesting the team is just as hungry, if not more, to raise Banner 19, there’s no reason to rule them out yet.
We’ve already seen the fuse that Kerr’s Olympic disrespect lit under Tatum, so who’s to say the Celtics aren’t in search of more Kerr fuel?
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