The All Star Game has come and gone so it’s a good time to check in on the state of the Celtics and some of the stories that are important to the team’s short long-term fate.

Team Performance and Expectations

Boston currently sits second in the East at 40-19 with the fourth best point differential in the NBA. That’s right about where the team was expected to be in preseason and puts them on track to win 56 games, just a shade below their preseason over/under. However, if you had offered most Celtics fans a 56-win pace after Gordon Hayward went down they would have grabbed it with both hands. If you had offered it at the end of the team’s early season 17-game winning streak those same fans may have fallen into a deep despair.

Interestingly, the team is playing more like the Celtics of two seasons ago than last year. The Isaiah Thomas of that season looks more like this year’s Kyrie in terms of shot profile and play style. Aron Baynes plays more like Jared Sullinger than Amir Johnson, too. One place where losing Gordon Hayward shows up is that the team of two seasons ago juiced their scoring by getting steals leading to transition; this team has not done that. They shoot more threes, but so does the whole league so that doesn’t close the scoring gap. I sometimes wonder if Brad Stevens even likes this team. I don’t mean in terms of personalities; it’s just a much bigger, slower, more isolation-heavy team than what he talks about wanting.

Putting all that together, the team has over-performed reasonable post-injury expectations which is more important than the exact manner in which they achieved it. Had they started slow in the wake of the injury and a frustratingly dense schedule and then turned things around with a long winning streak everyone would be feeling great. More recent games do have somewhat more meaning that earlier ones, but the team with the high-level defense that smothered the league for two months is still in there.

The Toronto Raptors have separated from the Celtics, though. They aren’t only two games up in the standings; they also have a far superior point differential. In fact, they look to be closer to the Warriors and Rockets (in the regular season, anyway) and have to be a strong favorite for the 1-seed. It’s certainly not impossible that Boston would reel them back in, but realistically the goal now should be to solidify the second seed ahead of the Cavaliers.

The new look Cavs may have returned to their perch atop the minds of the Eastern Conference contenders but there’s a long way to go before we know what they really are. For a team with the Celtics age and injury profile, we have to say that getting to Round 2 would be a reasonably good outcome, so I’m not sure how much Cleveland really matters in defining the Celtics season. If the C’s beat them in the playoffs it’s great; if they lose to them in means they got about as far as they “should” have anyway.

The risks to the Celtics come lower down in the Eastern Conference standings. Unlike in years past, the middle of the conference is not garbage. The 76ers have performed better than their record and Joel Embiid is starting to play back-to-backs so if they stay healthy it’s fair to expect them to move up from the 7-seed, where they would currently match up with Boston. If they don’t, they would provide a difficult first round opponent as a team better than their record who provide positional match-up issues. Boston would be the favorite, but it’s not an ideal pairing.

If there is a best match-up it’s probably Miami, but they’ve been sliding down the standings and look more likely to fall out entirely than move back up out of eighth. Indiana have given Boston fits but they’re still probably preferable to Milwaukee and Giannis. There aren’t any patsies down there this season. A team with the number of young players filling key roles would do well to get through any of those potential series and on to the Cavaliers. Climbing back up to the 1-seed would do wonders for their odds of a deep playoff run, but barring a miraculous full recovery from Gordon Hayward we need to maintain fair expectations.

It’s been a roller coaster getting here, but the team feels like they’re ahead of where they “should” be at this checkpoint.

Trade Tracking

2017 1st Pick for 2017 3rd Pick and Future 1st Round Selection

This trade has been an unequivocal win so far. Jayson Tatum hit an early season peak that, had he been able to maintain it through the year, would have been nearly unprecedented for a teenage rookie. However, he hasn’t sustained that level as his shooting has fallen off significantly and some of the warning signs from his college performance have started to show up.

It’s possible that this is related to injury, as the turning point in his season does coincide with dislocating a finger, but that was two months ago and it’s hard to attribute this level of drop-off to an injury that didn’t even keep him out for a game. It could also be the famed “rookie wall” as he has played a lot of minutes for a 19 year old. It could also be simple regression to his true level. Jayson’s three point shot has fallen off but the bigger concern may be with his struggles around the rim. He seems to lose handle of the ball a lot and is putting the ball in the hoop at a disappointingly low rate when he gets within three feet. His mid-range jumper is smooth, but a 20′ isolation scorer is what we were afraid he’d be, not what we were hoping for after his brilliant opening 25 games.

We have to be hyper critical of a player taken with such a prime selection, but even by that measure he’s still had a strong rookie campaign. I imagine Donovan Mitchell would go first in a redraft, but I don’t know if that would apply to the Celtics. My guess is that Ainge would still go for Tatum’s position and youth if he had control of the top pick.

Fultz has been an enigmatic disaster. It’s way too soon to write him off entirely, but if Philadelphia offered Fultz for just the Lakers/Kings/Sixers pick that remains an unknown in the trade, would you take it? The Lakers have put some distance between themselves and the large group of truly terrible squads so it’s very likely the pick rolls over to 2019, but the Kings are always bad and will probably stay that way. The top-1 protection next season, and the changes in lottery odds, may end up being the story of that pick. I think I would rather have Fultz than that pick, but I could make the argument for the pick if I had to.

If you make a two-for-one trade and less than a season later have the clear best player/asset, plus the remaining two parts are of similar value, that’s a huge win. As of today, Jayson Tatum is probably the single most important Celtic in determining if this franchise wins another title in the foreseeable future, either by becoming an MVP candidate, or the centerpiece of a trade that returns one.

Avery Bradley and a 2019 2nd Round Pick for Marcus Morris

The depressed salary cap (thanks, stupid overspending teams and a short playoffs) forced the Celtics hand here. The team had to clear cap room for Gordon Hayward and the choices seemed to be dumping Marcus Smart for very little, moving Jae Crowder for a small salary, or the swap they eventually did make moving Avery Bradley out. They clearly made the correct decision as Bradley was revealed to have serious off-court questions and followed that up with an extremely poor season in Detroit. He’s since been moved on to the Clippers but his hopes of a $20M/season contract this summer have evaporated.

Meanwhile, Marcus Smart’s injury absence has shown his value more clearly than his “eye of the beholder” play ever could. Boston’s defense has collapsed without him which may be a coincidence, but also may not be. We’ve seen a similar thing happen in OKC just after the loss of Andre Roberson; maybe elite and versatile wing defenders have become more important to team defense as the game as migrated behind the 3PT line. Giving Marcus away for nothing would have been much worse than the trade that was made.

Jae Crowder became a part of the Kyrie Irving trade and then saw his performance also disappoint. Because of his position and contract, Crowder was always more valuable in trade than Bradley and so having him for the Irving trade makes that a clearly correct choice.

Marcus Morris is a frustrating player who I personally don’t like watching, and who I think is often a net-negative player, but for $5M with another season locked up he’s outperformed Bradley. This isn’t the first time that Danny Ainge has executed a salary dump trade and yet come out with the best player on the other end.

Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, 2018 Nets Pick, and a Future 2nd Round Pick for Kyrie Irving

There’s no way that this analysis doesn’t make some people angry…

When this trade was made it was one of the hardest to analyze I could remember. It’s rare for a player like Kyrie to get traded under the circumstances he was, but it’s also rare for a pick like the Nets 2018 unprotected selection to be moved. Picks that become very good ones are usually traded years in advance and become much better than expected, or are traded at the draft when everyone is exactly sure what they’re giving up. This pick was neither of those things; the expectation was that the pick would be very good, but it was impossible to know exactly how good.

The pick would currently be seventh in the lottery but the Nets are only one win ahead of the six teams tied with 18 wins. The Nets have no reason to tank, but they didn’t last year and haven’t to this point this season and were bad in both instances. They have the fourth worst point differential but one of the worse teams is actually Chicago with one more win. The Nets pick could easily enter the lottery anywhere from one to nine. The draft class continues to be heralded; your opinion on Luka Doncic determines just how good you think it is at the top. Regardless, this is a very high value pick that has a non-zero chance of being a generational talent.

While that pick means that the Celtics could definitely still “lose” this trade, in the media it seems like it’s already been decided that they “won” because of how Isaiah Thomas and Jae Crowder have performed. Isaiah has produced at the extreme low end of post-injury possibilities. He’s been a net-negative and was moved as a simple expiring contract. That being said, the Celtics could have used a medium sized expiring at the deadline, though it would have been much harder for Boston to move him on like that than Cleveland did, and an expiring contract is ultimately a small piece here.

Crowder is more interesting as he was also very bad for the Cavs but was then flipped as part of a move for Rodney Hood, who is a good player that might sign a bargain deal in the looming difficult free agent market. Once the Celtics signed Hayward and become an over-the-cap team Jae became less valuable to Boston than he had previously been. Players who help maintain cap flexibility are more useful than players who help you avoid tax payments, after all. It would be nice to have had Crowder on the Celtics, but the trade has functionally become the premium Nets pick and Hood (plus a piece of Nance, who I like, and Clarkson, who is fine).

Meanwhile, Kyrie has been about what you would expect, which is both very good and mildly troubling. The free throw line chants are wrong, Irving is definitely not an MVP candidate. My concerns with this trade was always that Kyrie would provide about as much value as Thomas did last season (a little less on offense but more on defense) but over a longer period of time and for a lot more money. That seems great, but we know what a team led by that level of talent caps out at. That’s been about right. At the halfway point in the season I think Kyrie would have been a 2nd Team All NBA winner. That could still be the case, but with James Harden, Stephen Curry, and Chris Paul all now ahead of him, plus Russell Westbrook, DeMar DeRozan, and Victor Oladipo challenging, it’s also not a lock that he makes All NBA at all.

The Celtics continue to steam towards a situation where they’re paying 90+% of the salary cap to three players, with two of those players being “third best on a normal title winner” level and one being “second best.” That’s a recipe for being very good but never quite good enough, unless you happen to be the roughly one champion per decade who have a different talent profile than most.

It’s still possible that Kyrie could make the final leap from here, but he hasn’t made it this season and the only player to ever have done it from a similar circumstance to where Irving currently is would be Steph Curry. It’s also possible that he could be the ace recruiter that helps bring that top star to Boston (hi Anthony!) or could have a long enough prime to still be a “second star” level player when Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, or the future LaKings pick hits that rarefied level, however unlikely that is.

When the trade was made I was very concerned that the Celtics were on the wrong end of a big gamble. From the start, Boston clearly was more likely to end up getting more value, but if the only measure is winning a title that isn’t necessarily what you want. With more complete knowledge of Thomas’s injury the trade seems like a better deal for the Celtics, but that base concern still exists and Kyrie settling in to the level that he played at in Cleveland is unsettling.

Player Development

Jaylen Brown

At first glance the young Celtics wing looks to have taken a significant step forward but we have to somewhat separate increased minutes from real development. On a per 100 possessions basis his offensive advancement doesn’t look all that impressive.

However, that ignores the change in circumstances as “Rookie Jaleyn” received a much higher percentage of his minutes against bench units or in garbage time. “Second Season Jaylen” has started every game and played heavy minutes against better opposition. Last season he played 45% of his minutes with Isaiah Thomas also on the floor; this season 71% of his minutes have come alongside Kyrie Irving. That’s why more advanced stats like Real Plus-Minus show a substantial improvement in his level.

I think we can say that he’s made real progress and put himself in a position where the “third season leap” could vault him all the way up to All Star contention next season. His more likely career path is still a high-end 3-and-D-and-vicious-dunks role player than perennial All Star, but everything has shifted upwards in his career probabilities curve.

The majority of Brown’s improvement this season has come in those “3-and-D” categories. Passing and, oddly, finishing at the rim will determine where he goes from here.

Al Horford

The five-time All Star and defensive linchpin continues to have a fascinating career arc. His stats now look more those of a big guard than a PF/C. He’s even more of a facilitator than last season, though his turnover rate has also spiked. Just three seasons ago he was a reluctant 3PT shooter, now he’s a medium-volume dead eye. In fact, the Celtics would really benefit from Horford having a quicker trigger from behind the arc; the team can produce few shots better than a lightly contested three from Al. Selfishness simply isn’t in his makeup; maybe Brad Stevens can convince him that it’s all for the team good and draw that out of him.

On the other end, Horford’s versatility and mobility are what make the defense work. He’s guarded everyone from Ben Simmons to Boogie Cousins. He’s not blocking any more shots or getting more steals but his rebounding has ticked up. Early in the season he was the front-runner for DPOY but that’s probably not the case now. Still, he could go from being barely an afterthought for All Defense votes to a member of those award teams. Every successful defense needs a big like Al. It’s rare that a player can do what he does on both ends. He’s developed along with the league and stayed a thoroughly modern player even at 31 years old.

Marcus Smart

Marcus isn’t shooting, passing, or rebounding any better than last season. He was already a great defender so he’s probably not doing that any better. Nothing about his performance ever makes sense, but we know when he was playing the team was winning and since he lost a fight with an inanimate object they’ve been losing. It may be that his play this season has both hurt his free agent market and strengthened the team’s resolve to match higher offers, like if his market was improving. He’s just one of those players who you have to see a lot to understand his impact, and no one sees him as often as the Celtics.

From a pure on-court development perspective it’s been a disappointment. The hope was that he’d be able to settle into a more defined role, see a reasonable uptick in his shooting percents, and become established as a starting quality point guard. He’s 23 years old and in his fourth season; every week that goes by makes it more likely that he simply is what he is and no major developments are forthcoming. That’s still a useful, wildly entertaining, fully commited player, but it’s also not exactly what you dream about from a sixth pick.

Terry Rozier III

Boston’s other 23 year old development project has shown some of the advancement that Smart has not, though his baseline was also lower. Rozier is taking a few more shots than last season and has been taking them from three, which is a good sign. Even better, he’s been making his threes at an above league-average rate. He’s also cut down on his turnovers a bit which is what you want out of a young, developing guard.

With Smart and Shane Larkin sidelined Terry has been playing more point guard than in the past but he’s still more of a combo-guard. He defends PGs but isn’t a natural ball-mover like Brad Stevens would like his guards to be. He tends to over-dribble but his ability to score out of isolation has improved so that hasn’t been total death like it would have been last campaign.

Developing natural point guard instincts is what I hope comes next. He doesn’t need to play as a traditional PG, it’s a matter of having better vision and sometimes thinking pass first. Brown and Tatum are nearly black holes at the moment (not to mention Marcus Morris who I don’t think has a long-term future with the franchise) so adding in a guard who doesn’t think pass first or see the court well leads to too much stagnation. If he shows the same ability to develop in this area as he has in his shot making, Boston has a good one on their hands.

Outlook

So much about the Celtics feels like it sits on a knife edge. We know that there is a very high level of play possible for this team if Tatum is making threes, Brown and Smart are engaged on defense, and Rozier is balancing scoring and playmaking. A question for this season has been: will the youth mean that the team sees in-season development that drives them on, or wear down and get found out by the league as they do? At the moment it looks like the latter is happening, but a week of hot shooting coming out of the All Star break could quickly flip perception.

It’s been a year of shifting expectations from the acquisition of Kyrie overheating things to the despair after Hayward’s fall. The winning streak went on long enough to make the squad look like title contenders, but the offense grinding to a halt in January and February now has things looking worse than they probably are. This team could definitely go out in the first round of the playoffs but it also wouldn’t be a historic shock if they go on from here to make the NBA Finals. That describes a lot of team in NBA history though, and the Celtics aren’t trying to just be “above average.”

When you constantly run advertisements about the blank championship banner in your practice facility you set the standard to be measured against. This team is very good, with a lot of avenues to improvement, but they’re also just as far away from that ultimate goal as feared when the season opened.