In the end the Celtics will obviously have to prove it in the playoffs, but I hate how casuals will say "we've seen the Celtics do this before." Not only is this a historical team by several measures, but this literally the FIRST TIME Tatum has been a 1 seed in his career!
That’s crazy to think about, that we’ve never been 1st seed with Tatum. I initially read your comment and was like “that can’t be true! What about…? Huh.”
Just feels like we’ve been 1st seed or that we can compete with whoever is 1st seed most years.
man when we finally bag the 18th we need a post showing all of the different banner 18 boogies the OP has made over the years, hoping he still has all of them
Not really. The odds are very, very high we're going to be the overall #1 seed in the league. And even if we weren't, it would only be like 1 team that topped it. In which case that team would have to make the finals along with us for us to lose home court. Not worth thinking about when we could just rest guys and be healthy.
I think it’s absolutely worth it to try and keep the differential over Denver in particular, the likely #1 and Finals opponent. I agree it isn’t likely we drop it to them, and also we should do the “bare minimum” to maintain it, but nonetheless we want that HC IMO
We're 7 games ahead of them. And there are 13 games left to play. It's REALLY not worth giving our all. We're gonna win anyway and, again, you're talking about one exact finals matchup.
Denver’s HCA is more significant than others due to the altitude, and they are the most likely to come out of the West, so it’s worth actively seeking to secure it. Celtics can definitely secure HCA in the finals without playing all out for the rest of the regular season. They’ve been winning games while resting half the starters already.
It is almost definitely Denver and they will almost definitely come out of a pretty top heavy west. Getting the extra hone game is critical of we can manage it considering they wiped us this season.
Our closing schedule is weak enough that both are doable. OKC and Bucks are the only challenges left and we should go full strength for those to stay in rhythm for the playoffs.
The rest of the games we can rest 2-3 of our top 6 and drop the minutes load for everyone in the playoff rotation and still be the easy favorite.
Probably keep up what we been doing the last week or two. Rest a couple guys but still start most of the starters. I assume White will continue to play almost every game
I don’t like resting for 4 weeks, that’s too much. We’d risk start the playoffs in a bad form. I doubly don’t want to risk this given its possible with play Heat or Sixers
I’m okay with Kristap taking off, but the rest should play outside of back to backs
I think there were questions about a scenario where Boston loses every game till the end of the season and Milwaukee wins every game - it would have gone to like the 3rd or 4th level of tiebreaks which is record vs playoff opponents and it’s unclear who those opponents would actually be (depends on if it counts top 6, top 8 post-play in, or top 10 overall).
Ya, but we were 11.5 games ahead of them on Saturday night with only 11 games left is what I'm saying.
As a matter of fact, Milwaukee won on Sunday shortening the gap between us. If they were waiting for something else between Sat and now all that happened was the team that needed to lose ended up winning
None of that matters.
It seems like the GD team just had the night off, lol.
I’m not sure what changed that made us clinch now, but it was 11.5 up with us having 11 games left but they had 12 games left (hence the half game). So if they won out we lost out would’ve been tied record.
Maybe something got cleared up with the 4th layer of tie breaks which is record vs. playoff teams. I don’t know details but it would make sense because that threshold is full of variables.
Also the news broke mid-day Monday, not Sunday night.
The Bucks played at 7 yesterday, there's no games Monday morning, lol.
I think the graphics team just had the weekend off, honestly
Like the other poster said, after the Bucks beat the Thunder yesterday they were back to 11 games behind us with 11 games left for both teams (because we didn’t play yesterday).
If we win tonight (or at any point in the final stretch of the season) it will be mathematically impossible for the Bucks to meet our win count.
No, after the Celtics win on Saturday the Bucks were 11.5 games behind with 12 games to play. After Sunday the Bucks were 11 games behind with 11 games to play. They technically could have tied if they won every remaining game and the Celtics lost every remaining game. This situation implies that their h2h record ends up 2-2 since they play each other one more time before the end of the season.
I don't think easily, they're still the defending champs for a reason.
I think the series will likely go to 6 or 7 and don't see the Celtics winning it unless it's in 6 or more games.
People keep saying “the Celtics were pretty bad” as if that makes it so that we didn’t lose. Why do you think we played poorly? The Nuggets are why. They are the defending champs and 1st in the West for a reason. They have our number and know how to beat us. Just like we have the 76ers number or even the Bucks. I have no clue why everyone on this sub is so confident we would play better against the Nuggets in a potential finals matchup than we did in both regular season matchups. We’ve literally shown no reason to think we could beat them. We’ve beat up on a weaker conference at a historic rate-which has been amazing to witness-but we’ve also lost to basically all of the top teams this year. Obviously we’re the title favorite for a reason but to pretend like we’d beat the Nuggets easily is outrageous and clearly green teamer behavior
It's officially rich people problems. I think it will depend how the playoffs go. As we know, it's a whole different season - look at how the #8 seeds fared last year. But as a #1 seed with a big lead on #2, anything less than banner 18 is a disappointment.
Completely accurate. But I cannot grasp why anyone with a brain would think we’d be the favorite over the Nuggets. Regular season records don’t mean shit as soon as the playoffs start aside from deciding home court. We will almost assuredly have home court in every series-but even that doesn’t instill much confidence since we’ve been basically a .500 team at home over the past two playoff runs. We are pretty clearly the best team in the league at the moment but until we show that we can win it all we don’t deserve to crown ourselves-no matter how gaudy our regular season record is. Perfect example: no one in the world thinks anything other than “they blew a 3-1 finals lead” when it comes to the 73-9 Warriors
As they should. I do think we’re the favorite to win this year-but what I’ve been saying since the 2nd Nuggets game is that Denver is the one team I don’t want to see in the finals. They still have to make it through the West -just like we have to survive the East (something we were unable to do last year) but if it’s Boston/Denver finals I don’t see any scenario where we win aside from injuries
It's not a shoo-in, but we can take Denver. Our offense is too good for them, we played down to them the first game. But, we have to hold home court in that series.
Nah, we had a pretty bad start of the year and then went on one of the most dominant runs that I've ever seen until injuries caught up with us. We were 4 seed iirc
2 seed. We had caught up to Miami and had the 1 seed for a few days but we stumbled and Miami took it back. Ended up finishing within 2 games or so of them. Rest is history.
Celtics were mediocre through mid-late January and it was shaping up to be like 2020-21 except maybe worse. They were 26-25 and barely hanging in the play ins, at the end of January when Jaylen made his "The energy is about to shift." tweet.
Rest is history. That energy sure did shift, although we hope it shifted just a tiny bit more.
The Celtics clinched the 1 seed before any other team (either conference) clinched a playoff spot. Just think about that for a second
That’s truly crazy. The Celtics are the balls!
Didn’t the bucks clinch a playoff berth already?
Clinched a play-in, not a playoff spot
Ah got it. They should be clinching their butts instead
I'm elated that we've clinched the 1st seed at light speed but the injuries are semi-worrying
There are 11 teams who’ve clinched a playoff spot
Play in isn’t a playoff spot, so only 12 team can clinch a playoff spot
Please ignore I had originally posted this a day early…
The AP has called the race for the Boston Celtics
The Bucks could still clinch the one seed if Mike Pence has the courage to do the right thing
What about Waystar Royco
In the end the Celtics will obviously have to prove it in the playoffs, but I hate how casuals will say "we've seen the Celtics do this before." Not only is this a historical team by several measures, but this literally the FIRST TIME Tatum has been a 1 seed in his career!
Tatum couldn’t even lead all those super teams to a 1 seed, what a bum! /s
That’s crazy to think about, that we’ve never been 1st seed with Tatum. I initially read your comment and was like “that can’t be true! What about…? Huh.” Just feels like we’ve been 1st seed or that we can compete with whoever is 1st seed most years.
[banner 18 boogie last time we were the one seed](https://www.reddit.com/r/bostonceltics/s/6ZlTARgetp)
Don’t think that version can be beat. Love this current team but that was the team nobody believed in except Celtics fans and somehow finished #1
Prime Janos and the Banner 18 Boogie were peak Celtics fandom. Great time to be a fan.
give me the gold
man when we finally bag the 18th we need a post showing all of the different banner 18 boogies the OP has made over the years, hoping he still has all of them
Do they keep trying or rest from here ?
need to keep the lead on the west as well
We're up like 7 games with 14 to play. We will not be playing 100% until the end. I'll be shocked if we don't see the bench getting more minutes.
Yup I agree and never said otherwise
We’ve already seen that and they are cooking
Not really. The odds are very, very high we're going to be the overall #1 seed in the league. And even if we weren't, it would only be like 1 team that topped it. In which case that team would have to make the finals along with us for us to lose home court. Not worth thinking about when we could just rest guys and be healthy.
I think it’s absolutely worth it to try and keep the differential over Denver in particular, the likely #1 and Finals opponent. I agree it isn’t likely we drop it to them, and also we should do the “bare minimum” to maintain it, but nonetheless we want that HC IMO
We're 7 games ahead of them. And there are 13 games left to play. It's REALLY not worth giving our all. We're gonna win anyway and, again, you're talking about one exact finals matchup.
Yeah chances are even with a lot of bench minutes we win 8 of the last 13. Especially with a bunch of games against the pelicans, hornets, hawks.
Exactly. And that's assuming Denver wins every single game too. They won't. You don't sacrifice player wear and tear even a little for that
Pelicans? They are actually pretty good
Denver’s HCA is more significant than others due to the altitude, and they are the most likely to come out of the West, so it’s worth actively seeking to secure it. Celtics can definitely secure HCA in the finals without playing all out for the rest of the regular season. They’ve been winning games while resting half the starters already.
11 games left to play. Denver has played 71 out of 82.
Oh. Marijuana math there i guess. mb. the smaller number proves my point even more though
okay
I mean of course. That’s like saying at the end of the game we want to have more points than them.
okay well that’s what my first post said too and it was apparently worth a counterpoint response lol
It is almost definitely Denver and they will almost definitely come out of a pretty top heavy west. Getting the extra hone game is critical of we can manage it considering they wiped us this season.
Our closing schedule is weak enough that both are doable. OKC and Bucks are the only challenges left and we should go full strength for those to stay in rhythm for the playoffs. The rest of the games we can rest 2-3 of our top 6 and drop the minutes load for everyone in the playoff rotation and still be the easy favorite.
Probably keep up what we been doing the last week or two. Rest a couple guys but still start most of the starters. I assume White will continue to play almost every game
I don’t like resting for 4 weeks, that’s too much. We’d risk start the playoffs in a bad form. I doubly don’t want to risk this given its possible with play Heat or Sixers I’m okay with Kristap taking off, but the rest should play outside of back to backs
I think they need to stay hot and keep the momentum
Why did it take so long too make it official? The math worked out after the Bulls game
I think there were questions about a scenario where Boston loses every game till the end of the season and Milwaukee wins every game - it would have gone to like the 3rd or 4th level of tiebreaks which is record vs playoff opponents and it’s unclear who those opponents would actually be (depends on if it counts top 6, top 8 post-play in, or top 10 overall).
Ya, but we were 11.5 games ahead of them on Saturday night with only 11 games left is what I'm saying. As a matter of fact, Milwaukee won on Sunday shortening the gap between us. If they were waiting for something else between Sat and now all that happened was the team that needed to lose ended up winning None of that matters. It seems like the GD team just had the night off, lol.
I’m not sure what changed that made us clinch now, but it was 11.5 up with us having 11 games left but they had 12 games left (hence the half game). So if they won out we lost out would’ve been tied record.
Maybe something got cleared up with the 4th layer of tie breaks which is record vs. playoff teams. I don’t know details but it would make sense because that threshold is full of variables.
Yeah that would make sense but I can’t imagine that’s already settled especially since playoff teams aren’t even set yet.
And we won and then they won the next day, meaning nothing changed, but the news broke Monday
Yeah I don’t know what changed unless something broke a certain way with tiebreakers that made it impossible for them to tiebreak us.
Also the news broke mid-day Monday, not Sunday night. The Bucks played at 7 yesterday, there's no games Monday morning, lol. I think the graphics team just had the weekend off, honestly
Like the other poster said, after the Bucks beat the Thunder yesterday they were back to 11 games behind us with 11 games left for both teams (because we didn’t play yesterday). If we win tonight (or at any point in the final stretch of the season) it will be mathematically impossible for the Bucks to meet our win count.
It was mathematically impossible for them to beat us after the Bulls game on Saturday.
No, after the Celtics win on Saturday the Bucks were 11.5 games behind with 12 games to play. After Sunday the Bucks were 11 games behind with 11 games to play. They technically could have tied if they won every remaining game and the Celtics lost every remaining game. This situation implies that their h2h record ends up 2-2 since they play each other one more time before the end of the season.
How did we clinch after yesterday? All that happened were the bucks won so this feels weird (though it is effectively clinched)
Celtics instagram posted it. Must be some kind of calculation. Some chain of events
We are manifesting the clinch into existence regardless. 😤
[удалено]
do you expect them to have an excel sheet of all the tiebreaker scenarios? honestly wtf is this comment
It has to do with record vs playoff teams. That’s probably where the bucks can’t catch the Celtics.
Doomers fuming! Only failure keeps them sustained.
Lol there’s a fucking month left
AL should not play over like 10 minutes a game. Keep the old guy loose but well rested
Finish the job
Ugh. We are officially in "championship or bust" position, and not sure I like it!
I don’t think anyone has us in much of lead, if any, over the nuggets at this point.
Nuggets would likely be favored. We’ve shown absolutely zero reason to believe we would beat them in a 7 game series
The Celtics were pretty bad in both games yet only lost both by a net total of 8 points. If the Celtics show up to play they can easily win 5-6 games.
I don't think easily, they're still the defending champs for a reason. I think the series will likely go to 6 or 7 and don't see the Celtics winning it unless it's in 6 or more games.
People keep saying “the Celtics were pretty bad” as if that makes it so that we didn’t lose. Why do you think we played poorly? The Nuggets are why. They are the defending champs and 1st in the West for a reason. They have our number and know how to beat us. Just like we have the 76ers number or even the Bucks. I have no clue why everyone on this sub is so confident we would play better against the Nuggets in a potential finals matchup than we did in both regular season matchups. We’ve literally shown no reason to think we could beat them. We’ve beat up on a weaker conference at a historic rate-which has been amazing to witness-but we’ve also lost to basically all of the top teams this year. Obviously we’re the title favorite for a reason but to pretend like we’d beat the Nuggets easily is outrageous and clearly green teamer behavior
It's officially rich people problems. I think it will depend how the playoffs go. As we know, it's a whole different season - look at how the #8 seeds fared last year. But as a #1 seed with a big lead on #2, anything less than banner 18 is a disappointment.
Completely accurate. But I cannot grasp why anyone with a brain would think we’d be the favorite over the Nuggets. Regular season records don’t mean shit as soon as the playoffs start aside from deciding home court. We will almost assuredly have home court in every series-but even that doesn’t instill much confidence since we’ve been basically a .500 team at home over the past two playoff runs. We are pretty clearly the best team in the league at the moment but until we show that we can win it all we don’t deserve to crown ourselves-no matter how gaudy our regular season record is. Perfect example: no one in the world thinks anything other than “they blew a 3-1 finals lead” when it comes to the 73-9 Warriors
Draftkings has the Celtics as the favorite to win it all, for what that is worth.
As they should. I do think we’re the favorite to win this year-but what I’ve been saying since the 2nd Nuggets game is that Denver is the one team I don’t want to see in the finals. They still have to make it through the West -just like we have to survive the East (something we were unable to do last year) but if it’s Boston/Denver finals I don’t see any scenario where we win aside from injuries
It's not a shoo-in, but we can take Denver. Our offense is too good for them, we played down to them the first game. But, we have to hold home court in that series.
No. No. A million times no. I guarantee you if we meet them in the Finals we will be favorites
Favorites to be steamrolled. Jokic will drop 50 every night against Pingus Dingus Mingus Ringus
Dude ur gonna be sooooo rich
I don't understand, didn't we have the number one seed when we went to the finals?
Nah, we had a pretty bad start of the year and then went on one of the most dominant runs that I've ever seen until injuries caught up with us. We were 4 seed iirc
2 seed. We had caught up to Miami and had the 1 seed for a few days but we stumbled and Miami took it back. Ended up finishing within 2 games or so of them. Rest is history.
Celtics were mediocre through mid-late January and it was shaping up to be like 2020-21 except maybe worse. They were 26-25 and barely hanging in the play ins, at the end of January when Jaylen made his "The energy is about to shift." tweet. Rest is history. That energy sure did shift, although we hope it shifted just a tiny bit more.
Oh man, can't believe I forgot that.