Whether you call next season a rebuild year, a gap year, a retool year, or an evaluation year, next season will be the first season since 2021 that winning a title is not a realistic expectation for the Celtics.
While competing for championships is always the goal, that doesn’t mean that next season can’t still be fun night in and night out and provide the foundation for the next team that brings a title to Boston. The weight of expectations can take its toll on not only the players and coaches, but the fans as well. The playoffs always sound fun until the Celtics lose Game 4 of the 2022 Finals or go down 3-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Miami Heat. A season of low expectations could be a welcome sabbatical from that postseason stress, especially with a healthy Jayson Tatum and a new contention window on the horizon.
Brad Stevens has approached this upcoming season correctly. He could have leaned into more veteran help, bringing in players with proven track records and experience; instead, he is leaning into youth and development. It would have been a travesty for the Celtics to end up as the 8th seed, and their top minutes earner off the bench at the wing spot be Georges Niang.
Now, if the Celtics end up as the 8th seed, their top minutes earner off the bench at the wing spot will be whichever young guy amongst Baylor Scheierman, Jordan Walsh, Hugo Gonzalez, and Josh Minott wins the battle for those minutes — guys who can help the next iteration of the Celtics as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown move into their 30s. It’s a win-win.
This is why the Chris Boucher trade was so important. It helped the roster fall into place in a way that will help the future Celtics. Boucher could be the starting power forward for the Celtics on Opening Night; however, he will play a huge portion of his minutes at the five spot, opening minutes for the plethora of young, unproven talent on the Celtics bench.
Today, we won’t spend long deliberating how good the Celtics will actually be in the 2025-2026 season. Because that’s the point. If the Celtics are a top-six seed, they will have exceeded expectations, and they will have exceeded expectations in a way that will aid their quest for Banner 19. On the other hand, if the Celtics slip out of the playoffs, as many expect them to, the team will get the chance to inject some much-needed youthful talent into the roster by way of the 2026 NBA Draft.
I’m aware that there’s a large faction of Celtics fans who would like the team to lean into a tank next season. I have found myself in that camp more often than not this offseason. However, there are several scenarios in which the Celtics push their way into a top-six seed. The most likely outcome, in a Celtics playoff push, is that at least one of Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, or Payton Pritchard takes meaningful steps in their development.
Let’s start with the reigning Sixth Man of the Year: Payton Pritchard. Out of the Jaylen-Derrick-Pritchard group, Pritchard is the best candidate to take a legitimate leap next season. Payton Pritchard is going into his age-28 season. While it’s rare for players to break out at this age, Pritchard has a chance to be an outlier.
The obvious case for a late 20s breakout is Pritchard’s usage to this point of his career. Outside of his rookie season, Pritchard has had to contend with deep, talented, and veteran guard rooms. In the 2025 season, Pritchard played a career-high 28.4 minutes per game, significantly up from his previous high of 22.3 minutes in the 2024 season. What did Pritchard do with his opportunity? He turned in the best season of his career.
By any metric, Payton Pritchard put up an outrageous scoring season. There were 102 players who scored at least 14 points per game last season. Pritchard ranked 11th in true shooting efficiency. And when you filter out bigs who only shoot close to the rim like Ivica Zubac, Jakob Poeltl, and Mark Williams, Pritchard moves into 8th on that list.
I know what you’re thinking. Pritchard played a huge chunk of his minutes with Jayson Tatum last season. It’s not realistic to think he can thrive to this extent without Tatum’s gravity. Now let me tell you what Payton Pritchard did in his minutes with Jayson Tatum on the bench last season. The following numbers are per 75 possessions. In 1,033 minutes without Tatum, Pritchard put up 22.1 points, 5.7 assists, 5.5 rebounds, 1.6 turnovers on 65.1% true shooting. Compare that to Pritchard’s numbers in the 1,233 minutes he shared the court with Tatum — 16.8 points, 3.9 assists, 4.9 rebounds, 1.2 turnovers on 61.5% true shooting. That is nutty production from Pritchard in the non-Tatum minutes.
Of course, we have to caveat this by highlighting that Pritchard would have been sharing the court with Al Horford, Jrue Holiday, Luke Kornet, and Kristaps Porzingis in the vast majority of these minutes. Alas, I think it’s still notable that Pritchard not only maintained his production with Tatum on the bench, but he supercharged it. The dream scenario is for Payton Pritchard to take a Jalen Brunson-esque leap. Realistically, a leap into a top-12 player is not on the cards. That being said, if we have learnt anything about Payton Pritchard in his five-year NBA career, it’s that he is going to squeeze every drop of potential out of himself.
There is another player on the Celtics roster who I would not want to bet against taking a step forward next season: Jaylen Brown. I don’t think Jaylen has the same developmental upside as Pritchard at this point in his career. However, I said the same thing after the 2023 season ended with Jaylen melting into a puddle of his own turnovers against the Miami Heat. Then, Jaylen came back and played the best season of his career on the way to a Finals MVP.
Jaylen has expressed his belief that he can be a true number one in this league. I am skeptical. The playmaking and ball handling are key differentiators between him and the top options on contenders in this league. Secondarily, Jaylen’s rebounding and defense have never reached the impact of Tatum’s, but he’s also never been asked to carry this type of load. I believe Jaylen wants this burden and believes he can thrive and push himself to new heights this upcoming season. If Jaylen is able to unlock a new level, the Celtics could find themselves with two top-10 players on their roster. If that were to happen, any other questions about the future become irrelevant because when you have two top ten players that can do as many things as Jaylen and Jayson can do on a basketball court, you will be in the hunt for a championship every season — even if the Celtics have to roll me out there as their starting point guard.
We move to Derrick White. Out of Jaylen, Payton, and Derrick, Derrick feels the least likely to make the type of impactful leap like I’ve outlined for Brown and Pritchard. This feels like a good time to mention that since joining the Celtics, Derrick White has developed from a shaky three-point shooter into one of the league’s most potent weapons from beyond the arc.
A quick reminder of how good a shooter D White is now. Per Shane Young, in the playoffs, there are five players in NBA history to shoot at least eight or more three pointers per game, and shoot at least 40% on those attempts (minimum 15 playoff games): Steph Curry three times, Klay Thompson, and Derrick White. That’s the list. So, if we’re looking for signs that Celtics players could take leaps into unforeseen territory, Derrick White has already done it once with the Celtics. Can he do it again? Probably not. But if he does, the Celtics have a third All-Star on the roster locked up on a bargain contract.
Moving on to the previously mentioned young, unproven talent on the Celtics roster. Depending on where your cutoff for “young” is — let’s make it 28 years old) — then the entire Celtics roster outside of Jaylen Brown (29), Derrick White (31), and Chris Boucher (33) would fall in our “young” category. Let’s run through what it looks like in a Celtics-make-the-playoffs scenario:
- Neemias Queta: he continues to develop as a rim protector and screen setter, but most importantly, he improves his offensive processing speed. This ideally would leave us with a more athletic Luke Kornet.
- Anfernee Simons: Mazzulla is able to coax passable defense out of a player who has ranked near the bottom of the league in defensive estimated plus minus for the entirety of his career.
- Sam Hauser: he is able to expand his offensive game by weaponizing his shooting. I’m intrigued by a scaled-up Sam Hauser. I’m a believer in his passing and feel for the game. By leveraging his shooting gravity, he may be able to unlock some secondary playmaking and inside the arc scoring.
- Luka Garza: Not only does he shoot a lot of threes next season, but he also makes a lot of threes. Up until this point in his career, Garza has proven to be more of a theoretical shooter than a real one. If he can prove to be a legitimate threat from the outside, the Celtics will have restocked some of the firepower that left this past offseason.
- Baylor Scheierman: he’s another Celtic who has been a theoretical shooter throughout their NBA career so far. Across every preseason, Summer League, regular season, and G-League game that Baylor Scheierman has played in for the Boston Celtics, he has shot 139 from 416 from three-point range. That’s a 33.4% clip for those playing along at home. If Baylor is a sub 35% three-point shooter, he is not an NBA player. However, if he develops into a 40%+ three-point shooter, then Baylor’s dynamic passing will shine, and Brad Stevens will have nailed the 30th pick in the 2024 NBA Draft.
- Hugo Gonzalez: I continue to be enamored with Hugo Gonzalez’s frame. Gonzalez coming into the league as a six-foot-six, 220-pound 19-year-old gives him high-end NBA wing tools. If Gonzalez can harness the natural size and strength that he already blends with a high-end motor, then the Celtics could be looking at the steal of the draft.
- Josh Minott:a 22-year-old hyper athletic six-foot-nine guy with solid shooting indicators? Minott might be my favorite Brad Stevens flier of the offseason. Why not Minott?
- Jordan Walsh: we saw signs of life from Jordan Walsh in the 2025 Summer League. The most intriguing development was Walsh’s ability to consistently collapse the defense and generate paint touches. The paint touches led to varying results, but for the most part, I left Summer League encouraged about Walsh. Walsh developing into the six-foot-seven Swiss Army knife bench wing that the Celtics have been searching for would be an electric sub-plot to the 2025-2026 NBA season.
- Xavier Tillman: yes, Xavier Tillman is still on the Boston Celtics. I was worryingly high on Tillman coming into the 2024-2025 season. Unfortunately, he was never able to bounce back from the arthroscopic knee surgery he received in the offseason. If Tillman, still only 27 years old, can regain his athleticism, the Celtics will have themselves the versatile bench big that popped off in Game 3 of the 2024 NBA Finals.
It’s truly remarkable how much unknown there is on a roster that returned the entire 2024 championship team.
For fun, let’s say that for the Celtics to reach their high-end outcome of a top-five or top-six seed, they will need one of the Jaylen/Derrick/Pritchard scenarios to hit, and they need two of the role player scenarios to hit. If I got to pick the most fun way for it to play out, give me a Pritchard leap, a Josh Minott revelation, and a Jordan Walsh renaissance.
Now, if we’re being realists, and we look at each of these scenarios one by one, they are all unlikely to happen. And if none of them come to fruition, the Celtics will likely be looking at a lottery pick. So no matter how next season plays out, there will be reason for hope as we continue our journey in the NBA abyss.
