Important Playoff Run For The Boston Celtics

By: Steve Atkinson

This playoff run for the Boston Celtics is very important. This maybe Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s last chance at a title together on the same team. Brown’s contract is up after the 2024 season and after his latest comments, it doesn’t seem he likes Boston and wants to leave. The Celtics slid after the all-star break and finished with the number two seed in the Eastern Conference. They play the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday in game one of the playoffs.

The Boston Celtics Need To Win The Whole Thing

Does this Celtics team have what it takes to win the whole thing? The answer to that question is still to be determined because they haven’t won a championship yet. How much were they bothered last year after losing to Golden State in the NBA Finals? Does Tatum want to win a championship or is he too invested in self-accomplishments? Tatum did say after the Finals that it kept him up at night. However, I want to see that fight in the playoffs from him. Recently in the playoffs, it’s Brown that is the bigger star than Tatum. We saw that last year in the NBA Finals.

Boston Celtics President Brad Stevens Shares His Thoughts

President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens spoke to reporters about the Celtics in the playoffs.

“Whether it’s the staff, whether it’s the players, everybody has done their jobs well and the character in the room is really high,” said Stevens. “You could go through each person and how they’ve added to that. The great examples are a couple of the older guys that we’ve brought in. They’ve just embraced what’s important, being about the team, doing whatever role they need to do to help us have success throughout the entire year, including as we’re going through ups and downs of the season. “It’s so easy to get off-kilter; it’s so easy to say you’re excited about that in October and not be excited about that in February or March. So I’d say it’s the character in the room — that these guys are about team. So I want them to all have an amazing run coming up, but it’s going to be really hard right from the get-go. But this group deserves it because of the kind of people they are.”

Can the Celtics put away the drama when it comes to Tatum and Brown? They are going to have to ignore the outside noise and keep fighting till the end. Use last year’s Finals loss as motivation to win it all this season. They should sweep the Hawks in three games and can beat Milwaukee. There is no excuse to not win the NBA Finals this year. If they don’t then the season will be a failure considering the great start they had.

The Boston Celtics Might Have A Winner In Joe Mazzulla

I said this when they hired Joe Mazzulla, he knows how to win championships. I know it’s high school but he and my cousin David Rufful one four championships for Bishop Hendricken. They still had to work together and all have the same goal in mind to win the whole thing. Same thing for this Celtics team. Put self-egos aside come together and win the whole thing.

“[Mazzulla] was going to be really good,” Stevens said on Sunday. “That’s been pretty obvious for a long time. But he’s been consistent in his own approach. Win, lose, he comes back and works the next day. He wants to grow, wants to improve. He demands that of the team. I think he does a good job of picking what the emphasis needs to be in the big picture and also in those small moments, those snippets of games where something is waning a little.”