The Celtics were the youngest team to win a playoff series last season.
They apparently weren’t young enough for their own taste.
Boston’s trade for Kyrie Irving was the most dramatic step in a youth movement by a team that won 53 games and reached the conference finals a year go.
The Celtics lost four of their top six in playoff minutes (Avery Bradley, Jae Crowder, Isaiah Thomas and Kelly Olynyk) and replaced them with – top four newcomers by value – Irving, Jayson Tatum, Gordon Hayward and Guerschon Yabusele. Average age of the outgoing players right now? 27.2. Average age of the incoming players? 23.5.
Most teams with seasons like Celtics keep the core together, meaning everyone gets a year older. That doesn’t apply in Boston, which shed 11 of 15 players.
Marcus Morris (27) and Aron Baynes (30) are in line for rotation roles. Al Horford is 31. They’ll hedge against the team’s average age freefalling. But returners Marcus Smart (23), Terry Rozier (23) and Jaylen Brown (20) should receive larger roles previously held by much older veterans.
The Celtics had an average age – using players’ ages Feb. 1 and weighted by playing time, the same method used in this post’s first sentence – of 25.9 in the 2017 postseason. Just three teams had an average age below 26 during a postseason in which they won a playoff series then got even younger while still winning a playoff series the following year:
- 1956 Syracuse Nationals
- 1959 Minneapolis Lakers
- 1960 Los Angeles Lakers
The Celtics will try to become the fourth. They’re not only expected to advance again, but return to the conference finals – and once again face the Cavaliers.
LeBron James looms over all this, his seven-year stranglehold over the East causing many to believe last year’s Celtics had hit their ceiling. If Boston somehow got past him, the all-time-great Warriors loom in the Finals.
It’s logical for the Celtics to delay their window.
Boston has between four and six first-round picks the next two years, and the two uncertain ones will eventually convey. The Celtics possess the tools to keep getting even younger.
But, as punctuated by trading the Nets’ unprotected 2018 first-rounder for Irving, this isn’t a complete teardown.
The Celtics are attempting the rare feat of rebuilding on the fly. They’re even doing it with an added degree of difficulty – starting the process already young.