Buy Celtics stock: Boston could be BEST TEAM in EAST if Jayson Tatum returns

Buy Celtics stock: Boston could be BEST TEAM in EAST if Jayson Tatum returns

I watched most of the Celtics big uh win in Toronto yesterday and I find myself wanting to buy all of the Celtics stock right now. I’ve been underwhelmed by most of the East teams this year outside of Detroit. Detroit is a real team. They deserve to be viewed as the favorites in the East right now. They’re dominating in crunch time. Kate Cunningham has been unbelievable. They’ve got a bunch of guys that are making shots and getting big offensive rebounds in the clutch. We’re going to talk about Detroit when we get to our power rankings, but Cleveland has been super disappointing. Every time I start to believe in the Knicks, they drop a game like they did against Boston where all of the same weaknesses from the last few years are on display. Orlando’s been up and down and they can’t seem to stay healthy. Milwaukee has fallen off. The East feels very open. And this surge from Boston has me feeling as though they have a legitimate chance to win this conference. They’ve won five in a row. They’re 10-2 in their last 12. In that 12ame span, they have a 129 offensive rating. playing some of the best offense in the Joe Missoula era. We’re going to get to that in a second. 19th in defense at a 116 defensive rating, but even that’s complicated because it has to do with their center vers centerless looks, which we’ll talk about in a minute. The offense is just cooking everyone right now. In their last four games in particular, just this last four games, they’re already 137 offensive rating. Jaylen Brown has been just masterful as their lead shot creator, doing a awesome impersonation of what Jason Tatum did last year, just like being very deliberate about which matchups he’s attacking, abusing those matchups one-on-one, and then every single time the defense reacts to him making the appropriate kickout reads. I’ve been super impressed by his drives over the course of the last 10 games in particular. His volume of attacks to the basket have gone up to about five makes per game at the rim, which is uh about 25% up from where he was to start the season. He’s been great at hitting those natural angles that exist in the offense, like catching on the wing. When a dude’s closing out at his shoulder, he rips the opposite way. when a team is shading him in a direction, he’ll just attack that angle and he’ll come downhill with so much force that he just blows through a guy’s shoulder and he’s getting another layup. All the kick outs that he’s making in those rim pressuring situations. And then both Pritchard and White have been in great grooves in pick and roll. The Celtics are running a lot of stack where they’re having one of those dudes back screen for the roll man as they’re getting downhill. They’re hitting threes off of those screens off the dribble. Derek White has got his pull-up three going like crazy right now on those kickbacks. They’re hitting them. And then their spot up efficiency is through the roof. 117 offensive rating in spot-ups against Toronto. 170 offensive rating in spot-ups against the Lakers. They shot insanely well in that game. 127 offensive rating in spot-ups against Washington, 113 against New York, and 122 against Cleveland. Just literally lighting teams up on kickouts in those spot-up situations. Set Jason Tatum and his injury aside for a second. This is some of the best offense that this team has played in this decade. And a lot of it has to do with continuity. Like they’re playing the same style that they did with Jason Tatum. And so a lot of these guys have actually been here a long time and they’re getting very familiar with the system. They’re getting very similar shots to what they’ve been getting in recent years. And so there’s a level of comfort that they’re reaching in the offense as a group that is manifesting in this hot stretch of offense that we’ve seen from them. We talked last week about their offensive rebounding. I’m not going to go into that today because we did a deep dive last week. Jackson broke it out for us in a clip. So if you look on our YouTube feed and you find the video that talks about Jaylen Brown leveling up, if you click on that one, we talk about their offensive rebounding. But the short version is the Celtics are winning the second chance points battle despite being an awful defensive rebounding team. And it’s because they turn their offensive rebounds into easy putbacks while swarming the opponent bigs whenever they get offensive rebounds on them. And yes, with the defense, the numbers are more complicated than they appear. They’ve been a below average defense in the aggregate over these 12 games. But with Kada on the floor, they’ve been great. A 107 defensive rating in Kada’s minutes over that 12ame span. That’s an excellent number. And where they defended poorly is in their centerless looks. But in those centerless looks, they’re scoring at such an insane rate that they’re dominating those minutes. They have a 141 offensive rating in their centerless looks this season, plus 16 points per 100 possessions. And again, ultimately, whenever they need to get stops for whatever reason, their offense cooled down, they want to win in more of a slugfest type of fashion, they can just go to Kada. And they’ve been scoring just fine in the Kada lineups this year. If this team can get Jason Tatum back, I mean, let’s really look at it. Like, Jaylen Brown’s better than he’s ever been. Pritchard and White are both in plenty of a groove. They look more or less what they were last year, if not a little better in these last couple of weeks. You have a le a level of depth at the guard position with Anthony Simons. Now, we’ll see if that ends up being the piece they use to try to balance the roster a little bit, but like they they look as good on the perimeter as ever without, you know, obviously removing Jason Tatum from the equation. The dirty little secret is like Chris Porzingis and Drew Holidayiday both can’t stay healthy this year. The Celtics seem to have gotten off of them just in time. I’d argue Nimic Kada and Jordan Walsh have been like better rotation players flat out this year in the NBA than Porzingis and Holiday have been. Jordan Walsh has blossomed into one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA this season. He did probably the best job I’ve ever seen on Austin Reeves. You guys know I root for the Lakers. I’ve watched the majority of Austin Reeves games in his career. The vast majority of them. I’ve never seen somebody make Austin look as uncomfortable as he looked in that first quarter against Jordan Walsh. Getting blocked on back pressure, fumbling the basketball everywhere, turnovers, missed shots. Jordan had him in a box to start that game. Jordan has been a godsend for them as a point of attack defender, as a corner crasher on the offensive end. He’s hitting threes. He’s running the floor in transition. He’s like just an awesome rotation player that they found. Neim Kada looks like a legitimately perfectly fine starting center in this league. You bring Jason Tatum back, you convert Anthony Simon’s contract into another rotation level center, this could easily be the best team in the Eastern Conference. That seemed like an insane thing to say before the start of the season, but it’s not just a pipe dream anymore. It’s like a it’s a completely legitimate outcome. And frankly, if I’m Brad Stevens, I’m looking at this as an opportunity this season in a wideopen Eastern Conference. That’s how good I think this team is. And who the hell knows what happens out west. Whoever comes out of that blood bath could be beat to Even OKC. I there’s an opportunity here for Boston. There’s an there’s a continuity with their core players. You don’t think Tatum’s Tatum’s not going to struggle when he comes back to this? This is this is easy basketball for him. They’re they have so much continuity now and it’s manifesting in just a machine on both ends of the floor. Joe Missoula has them achieving margin where they have no business achieving margin. It’s just a really really good basketball team and I’m just buying all the Celtic stock right now.

Jason reacts to the Boston Celtics beating the Toronto Raptors and explains how well Jaylen Brown and Derrick White are playing. He predicts that if they continue to play like this and Jayson Tatum returns in the spring, Boston could be the best team in the NBA’s Eastern Conference.

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