The last two teams to win the Eastern Conference, the Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers, entered this season with similarly diminished outlooks after both suffered severe roster attrition.

Their respective superstars, Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton, tore their Achilles tendons in last season’s playoffs. But the losses go further. Indiana lost starting center Myles Turner in free agency. Meanwhile, the NBA’s second apron ripped Boston apart, forcing them to trade Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday for slim returns and leaving them unable to re-sign centers Al Horford and Luke Kornet.

But despite the teams being kindred spirits in the offseason, the course of their campaigns has diverged.

The Celtics are 13-9 with the ninth-best net rating (point differential per 100 possessions) in the league entering Friday’s games, per Cleaning the Glass. The Pacers – who also faced early-season injuries to key players such as Bennedict Mathurin, Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith and Obi Toppin – are 4-18 and probably keeping at least one, if not both, eyes on May’s draft lottery.

The organizations have also approached their stars’ rehabs differently. The Pacers have already ruled out Haliburton from returning this season. Boston hasn’t done the same with Tatum, who tore his Achilles about six weeks before Haliburton and could be eyeing a comeback if Boston has something to play for late in the season.

The Celtics are giving him a shot. After starting 5-7, they’ve won eight of their last 10 after trouncing the hapless Wizards on Thursday, even as their lone remaining star, Jaylen Brown, didn’t play.

“There’s an identity that we want to play at, and throughout the season, this is the longest stretch that we’ve played to who we are as a team,” Boston Coach Joe Mazzulla said before the game. “I think the test of that is: ‘Can we keep that up?’”

If that happens, Mazzulla’s hard-edged motivation could earn the 37-year-old his first Coach of the Year award for the job he has done with an upended roster.

“It doesn’t matter who’s in, who’s out. At the end of the day, every team is different,” he said after an early-November win. “Even if you have the same guys back, it would be a different team. You just got to coach to the strengths, the personalities, the relationships that you have with them.”

One guy he has had more often than not is Brown – Thursday was the first game the 29-year-old wing, averaging career-highs in points (29) and assists (4.8) per game, had missed all season.

Among the ways Brown leads, Mazzulla said before Thursday’s win, are his presence, competitiveness and reliability.

“As a coach, one of the best things you’re always asking for is who you can depend on,” he said. “The consistency of your best players from a mindset standpoint, from a physical standpoint. Jaylen has definitely done that this year, but he’s done it his entire career.”

Brown has blown past his career-high usage rate this season, on par with heliocentric stars like Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, per Cleaning the Glass. The California product has lived in the midrange – usually considered an analytically inefficient shot – but making more than enough of them to justify doing so.

Brown has also drawn shooting fouls at a career-best rate. He has often done so on jump shots, something he wanted the league to help him with in the offseason. Brown and Boston sent in clips of plays where defenders impeded his progress as he rose up. They believed those should have been called fouls – and they seem to be whistled as such now.

He was more ready than Mazzulla after that early-November win to acknowledge Boston’s reality.

“Definitely a big difference, not just JT [Tatum] being out but Al [Horford] being out … Luke, Jrue and Porzingis,” Brown said. “Obviously those are some really good players that we lost. … But for me, I’m just being aggressive and trying to empower my teammates as much as possible.”

For Indiana, which started 1-13 and has lost five of its last seven, the second star has not been enough to overcome the team’s depleted roster. Pascal Siakam, a former NBA champion whose all-around game translates less to being a No. 1 option, is averaging 24 points per game (second-highest of career) and taking on a similarly heavy offensive load to Brown. But his effective field goal percentage is the lowest it’s been since 2022-23.

The offseason losses also elevated players lower in the rotations to varying degrees of success.

Boston center Neemias Queta has been a revelation. The 26-year-old, a 2021 second-round pick, has already started more games this season (20) than he did in his first four combined (six). His counting stats aren’t impressive, but he holds the highest on-off differential on the team: Boston is about 20 points per 100 possessions better when he plays compared with when he sits.

That growth was needed on a team that got decimated at center.

So is Mazzulla’s ability to play small, taxing wings like Jordan Walsh and Josh Minott who have risen to his challenge. Among the reasons for Boston’s offensive success is its ability to nab offensive rebounds and limit turnovers – Walsh has excelled with the former.

“Just coaching them,” said Mazzulla when asked about an in-game moment where he had stern words for both after poor hustle while up more than 20 points. “And those guys want to be coached. They want to be held accountable.

“And like I said, they’ve done some really good things for us. And I think in order to get to a place that we know we can get to, we just got to fight for execution all the time. So they understand that, they hold themselves to a high standard.”

That kind of growth has been less apparent for Indiana and Coach Rick Carlisle.

Mathurin, the No. 6 pick in 2022, has increased his scoring and efficiency, with career-highs in points (20.5) and effective field goal percentage (53.2). Ben Sheppard has gotten an “amazing opportunity” to play a bunch of different positions, guarding and being guarded by top-tier players, Carlisle said. The 2023 first-round pick is playing 25 minutes a game, averaging 6.5 points and shooting 35.4 percent from the field.

Growth requires challenges, and those have been abundant in a season that now shifts to a future with Haliburton back to guide the path – and potentially a high pick in a deep 2026 draft following behind him.

Carlisle didn’t want to look that far ahead in late November.

“It’s day-to-day stuff. We got to stay with it,” Carlisle said. “The wins have been hard to come by, but there’s been really a spectacular opportunity for some of these younger guys to step into bigger roles. We have to help them handle the additional responsibility and we just got to remain positive but truthful with our guys about the things that we need to do better on a game-to-game basis.”

How does he help them handle those increased roles?

“It’s coaching.”