Boston Celtics: “Buy or Sell” on 3 recent bold predictions for C’s season

When it comes to a team like the Boston Celtics, 2021-22 should be viewed as somewhat of a redemption season.

After making it to the Eastern Conference Finals in three of the previous four campaigns, the Cs endured one of their most disappointing seasons in recent memory in 2020-21, sporting their worst record (36-36) since 2014-15 and seeing their first Quarterfinals exit since 2015-16.

Within just 24-hours after their Game 5 playoff defeat against the Brooklyn Nets, the franchise went about and kicked off their summer of shakeups by seeing long-tenured executive, Danny Ainge, step down from his front office duties and, stepping in as his replacement as President of Basketball Operations, Brad Stevens moved on up the chain of command.

From there, we began to see transaction after transaction take place and now, as of this writing, the team’s rotation looks quite different when being compared to last year’s squad, and we mean this in a good way.

Now, with this new-look roster comes new expectations and, as we inch closer to the start of the season we anticipate fans and media alike will start churning out their takes on what they believe could transpire during this upcoming 82-game stretch.

For the folks at Bleacher Report, it would appear that they’ve already gotten a head start on these activities, as they recently pushed out an article discussing 3 bold predictions for the Boston Celtics this year.

With this piece, it inspired us at the Houdini to do a little analysis of our own and play a new game we like to call “Buy or Sell”, where we look at some recently made takes/ claims and discuss whether we agree with them or if we believe them to be a little far-fetched.

So, without further adieu, let’s get started:

Boston Celtics prediction No. 1) “Josh Richardson starts more games than Dennis Schroder”

For his first bold prediction, writer, Zach Buckley, decided to dive right into a conversation pertaining to two of the biggest acquisitions the Boston Celtics made this offseason in Dennis Schroder and Josh Richardson.

Both newcomers have spent a large chunk of their careers serving in the first five for their respective ball clubs and now, with the shamrocks, they more than likely have aspirations of continuing this trend.

However, with the likes of Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and arguably even Marcus Smart all coming into the year guaranteed a starting role, Boston seemingly has just two spots available in this lineup that need to be filled, and one of them is center which is a position neither of these offseason acquisitions will qualify for.

With Smart being as versatile as he is, he could realistically lineup at either the one or two, thus giving both Schroder and Richardson an equal chance of nabbing a starting gig.

However, as far as Buckley’s concerned, the wing should find himself running in this rotation more often, for he believes his playstyle fits far better with Boston’s core players:

"They’ve seen what his length and energy can do defensively. They know he can help keep things moving as a secondary ball-handler and ball-mover. They also believe he can rediscover his touch from distance, a sentiment felt by Udoka, an assistant coach on that same Sixers squad. “He didn’t shoot as well the last few years but we are going to get him back to that,” the coach told reporters. “He’s a better shooter than he showed in Dallas.” If the Tennessee product gets his groove back from range—he shot 36.6 percent outside his last two seasons in South Beach—he’d become a cleaner fit for the first five than Schroder, whose ball-dominance and scorer’s mentality arguably fits best in a sixth man spot."

Even though Schroder has proven to be a solid starting point guard in this league — yes, even including his play from last season — and certainly could end up landing a starting spot at some point this season, we can’t help but agree that his ideal fit on this team is likely as their spark-plug sixth man.

The last time he served in this type of role was in 2019-20 with the OKC Thunder, where he would boast stellar per-game averages of 18.9 points, four assists, and 3.6 rebounds on 47 percent shooting from the field and 38.5 percent shooting from deep and, with this high-level production, he wound up finishing second in the running for the Sixth Man of the Year award.

After not living up to his self-appointed lofty expectations last season, Schroder is more than likely coming into 2021-22 with redemption on his mind.

Because of this, he should be more than welcoming to the idea of being shifted back to the role off the bench that he played so well in just two years back, and the Boston Celtics should desire this same sort of scheme as well.

Verdict: Buy