{"id":620013,"date":"2026-02-23T14:51:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T14:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/620013\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T14:51:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T14:51:14","slug":"will-the-boston-celtics-hit-the-40-20-mark-daily-topic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/620013\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Boston Celtics hit the 40-20 mark? (daily topic)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Celtics are closing in on an interesting benchmark for potential NBA contenders. Their current record is 37-19, which puts 40-20 in play. For those that aren\u2019t familiar, the 40-20 rule is defined as follows (via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/NBATalk\/comments\/1r1dz8w\/the_4020_rule\/?rdt=45372\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBA reddit<\/a>):<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">The 40-20 rule, coined by Phil Jackson, states that legitimate NBA championship contenders must secure 40 wins before losing 20 games. This benchmark, emphasizing consistency and dominance, holds a 90.9% success rate, with 40 of the last 44 champions meeting this criteria since 1979-80.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Celtics have had a strong recent record, going 8-2 in their last 10 and overall are at a .661 winning percentage for the season. They have two more West coast road trip games against the Phoenix Suns and Denver Nuggets. Then they return home against the Brooklyn Nets. If they can win the next 3 games, they\u2019ll have met the criteria for the 40-20 rule.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Of course there\u2019s a Jayson Tatum sized \u201cyeah but\u201d to consider here. The premise of this rule is that teams performing well in the regular season are poised to do well in the postseason (duh). The thing is, if Tatum does return, then the makeup of the team will look noticeably different in the playoffs than it did for the first 3 quarters of the season. So even if the team fails to reach the 40-20 mark, they still have a great chance to be one of the outliers that gets the job done regardless.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Still, it would be pretty cool for the team to reach that goal and something the current construction of the team can hang their hat on. Like \u201clook, we met the criteria of a contending team even without our superstar player.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">So, on to your topic questions: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Celtics are closing in on an interesting benchmark for potential NBA contenders. Their current record is 37-19,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3766],"tags":[7,45,75,65415,3798,46,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-620013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-celtics","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston","10":"tag-boston-celtics","11":"tag-boston-celtics-discussion","12":"tag-bostonceltics","13":"tag-celtics","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116120511123734754","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}