What can the Celtics learn from Warriors, Bucks, and Nuggets?
Things can change quickly in the NBA. One year, you’re lifting the Larry O’Brien. The next, you’re fighting to just get out of the first round of the playoffs.
Over the last four years, four different teams have raised a banner: the Celtics, Nuggets, Warriors, and Bucks. There are new top dogs in their respective conferences (Cavaliers and Thunder) and some faces have changed on their rosters, but all four former champs were contending for this year’s chip.
Blame the new collective bargaining agreement. Blame the fleeting nature of team chemistry. Blame the injuries. They’re all at play, and what we might have hoped to be an extended contention window can narrow and close so quickly.
As the “defending champs” — despite the entire team and most notably, Joe Mazzulla rejecting that term — there may be lessons to learn from their most recent predecessors.
Why did Milwaukee dismantle their core? How much did Denver lose after they let key role players walk? When does Golden State’s run finally end?
Later today, the Nuggets and Clippers will face off in a Game 7. It’s a day of destiny for two teams that have lived lifetimes to get to this point in order a face a Thunder team that may have more ahead of them than Denver and LA have experienced to get here.
It is finally this iteration of the Clips that Kawhi Leonard is healthy for the playoffs without Paul George and Russell Westbrook at his side. Westbrook, ironically, is coming off the Nuggets’ bench. For the most part in the regular and postseason, he’s played well, but some of his most glaring mishaps paired with the team’s dismissal of Michael Malone and up-and-down play have only highlighted the key departures since their 2022 run.
Gone are Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown. Denver has cycled through options and Christian Braun and Westbrook have filled in admirably, but if you’re the Celtics, the Nuggets’ mixed results have to at least give them pause at what a disruption in roster construction — even on its perceived edges — can do to a championship team.
Those decisions won’t come until the summer and most likely won’t even be influenced by the outcome of these playoffs. However, second apron financial penalties and basketball restrictions are on the horizon. With ESPN’s Shams Charania reporting the obvious, it only makes this May and June even more important.
The magic trick for Brad Stevens to pull off is doing what the Warriors have done with Steph Curry and Draymond Green. Their window of ultimate success has lasted over a decade. They’ve pivoted here and there, including dealing Klay Thompson and trading for Chris Paul and most recently, Jimmy Butler — all moves made to be in the fight come spring.
You could argue that the Celtics have actually been more successful building around the Jays. They’ve been at it since Jayson Tatum’s rookie season eight years ago. Yes, the ring count doesn’t match Golden State’s. Yes, Brown and Tatum were just kids playing behind the likes of Isaiah Thomas, Kyrie Irving, and Gordon Hayward. But in all those seasons, Boston was a relevant force in the playoffs and those years of experience peaked in 2024 with the Jays front and center.
This is all to say that you have to do what you have to do. Stevens will be faced with the prospects of possibly dealing Kristaps Porzingis or Jrue Holiday this summer. So, while this version of the Celtics has raised Banner 18 and possibly 19 soon, change is inevitable with the Warriors being prime examples that change is necessary and sometimes good.
And despite the Bucks’ early elimination, it might be their current plight that offers the most to learn from. Damian Lillard’s injury is heartbreaking for any fan that’s watched him over the last decade-plus. He was an institution in Portland and everybody was rooting for him when he joined Milwaukee to chase a championship ring.
So, if there’s any perspective to gain from his scary health scare with a blood clot in his right calf to his torn Achilles tendon, it might be that dichotomy of appreciating the immediate moment while understanding its place in the grand scheme of things.
When asked why he tells Jayson Tatum that he loves him in the heat of battle of a playoff game, Joe Mazzulla said, “just perspective. You can get so caught up in thinking what you’re going through in that moment and think it’s the most important thing.
What we do here is not the most important thing — it is an important thing at that time, but when it’s done, it’s done. Just maintaining a level of perspective, but at the end of the day, we’re all on a journey together, however long it lasts — one game, one week, a month, a couple of years — you can’t take that for granted. It’s just good to keep that perspective.”