PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The Boston Celtics are just days away from the start of training camp which will usher in a new season, one with an entirely different set of expectations.
A year ago, the Celtics had on-paper potential to be the last team standing in the Eastern Conference with a roster that was built to compete and potentially upend the Golden era of Golden State basketball.
Rather than regurgitate all that went amiss a year ago, the focus for the Celtics and their fan base has to be on the moment, one that doesn’t offer up nearly as rosy an in-the-moment image from this time last year.
And while the expectations of those outside the Celtics program have changed, they will still toe the company line, which is some incarnation of being the best version of themselves, as much as possible.
Even though expectations may not be as sky-high as they were going into last season, that doesn’t mean the Celtics are going to be content with being a good-but-not-great team.
Former Celtics coach Doc Rivers, now with the Los Angeles Clippers, coached a team last season that was at best supposed to contend for one of the last playoff slots out West.
Boston Celtics
They did just that, playing a scrappy brand of basketball that played a factor in them being this summer’s big winner on the free agent market by landing Kawhi Leonard in addition to trading a lot of everything for what seems like millenia to come, for Paul George.
And in doing so, the Clippers are now one of the league’s favorites to win it all, which has Rivers once again dealing with heightened expectations akin to his time in Boston with the Big Three of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen.
“You don’t want to run from them,” Rivers said recently. “You want to raise them if you can. And so if you have a team that can meet that, then you have a really good team.”
As far as the Celtics are concerned, Rivers added, “It’ll be interesting with the Celtics. I don’t know what their (expectations) are. They can win the East just like anyone else can. The East is open. the West, we can win the West. The West is hard but it’s hard winning in any conference. It doesn’t matter what conference you’re in.”
Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck said in many ways the approach to expectations this year isn’t all that different than in past seasons.
“Every year we walk in, we got all those banners in the facility … there’s no managing our own expectations, our own hopes,” Grousbeck said. “What we hope for, what we strive for, are banners around here. In terms of this roster, this team, they are gluing together.”
Indeed, Celtics coach Brad Stevens has been pleased with what he has seen from the players who have been around the team’s practice facility recently, a group that includes Kemba Walker, who was a starter for Team USA during the FIBA Basketball World Cup in China.
Since returning to the states, Stevens said Walker has been a mainstay at the team’s practice facility.
“He looks good,” Stevens said of Walker. “Once the season hits, he’ll be ready to roll.”
Walker, acquired via sign-and-trade from Charlotte, will be among the new faces joining the Celtics this season.
In addition to new personnel in the mix, the Celtics will also have to deal with an entirely different level of expectations.
“Each team is different. We have so many new guys,” Stevens said while attending the Celtics Annual Shamrock Foundation Golf Tournament. “It’s just a different scenario, a different feel, it’s a different group altogether. So, there’s always going to be noise. No matter what the expectations are, whether you’re not projected to be any good or whether you’re projected to be really good, the bottom line is there’s noise everywhere and that just increases year to year."
Stevens added, “That’s one of the things that, over time, everyone has to get used to. And just being able to sift through what’s important and what’s not and try to be as good as we can be together is all we’re trying to focus on. My care is that we play with great effort and togetherness; that is it. That’s what we’re looking for, that’s what we want to be. We gotta play like a Boston team should.”
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