With a new season comes a new challenge.
Those rules apply even for the NBA title-defending Boston Celtics, who begin their 2024-25 campaign on Tuesday’s banner-raising Opening Night against the New York Knicks at TD Garden.
Boston, although nearly identical in terms of its cast, watched as teams across the NBA, and especially in the Eastern Conference, strived to improve their rosters. Knowing the Celtics weren’t willing to part ways with most of the members from last season’s locker room, rival organizations such as the Knicks, the Philadelphia 76ers, the Indiana Pacers and the Cleveland Cavaliers put forth a valiant effort respectively in hopes of matching what Boston built last offseason: a mega-strong foundation.
Navigating through that won’t be easy, and the C’s understand that.
“I think something that’s been awesome about our league is there’s new great players and there’s new teams with different styles and strategies,” Luke Kornet told reporters at Saturday’s practice, per CLNS Media. “That challenge just game-to-game in the regular season is something you just have to embrace and I feel like knowing that there’s not a perfect way and there’s not a way that it’s going to look like for us on any given day — which I think we’ve reinforced in practice.”
Paul George signed a four-year, $212 million supermax deal with the Sixers. Julius Randle (plus more) got swapped out for Karl-Athony Towns, who joined the Knicks, and the Milwaukee Bucks can’t be counted out, either. Now, the Celtics are the team to beat. Boston did everything last season from leading the NBA in wins (64), setting records left and right and staying on track throughout the playoffs with a fresh and healthy Kristaps Porzingis along for most of the ride. So there’s plenty of cause for confidence.
Boston, however, doesn’t intend to get ahead of itself and skip any steps.
Patience, sacrifice and adapting to the uncomfortableness that comes from an 82-game journey molded Boston’s identity last season. It allowed the Celtics to win 21-of-25 games when Porzingis was sidelined, snag the No. 1 seed in the East on Nov. 14 and hold onto it until Game 82 and kept Boston from losing more than twice consecutively.
“Do we have the potential to be (great)? Yes. Yet, the keyword, ‘Yet,’ is very important,” head coach Joe Mazzulla told reporters Saturday, per CLNS Media. “Do we have great talent? Yes. Do we have great players? Yes. Do we have a great foundation? Yes. Is this 24-25 team great yet? No, because we haven’t been in a game. It just takes time and every season is different and assuming that you’re just going to — what we say before — doing this in the past doesn’t necessarily mean this is going to work now.”
The wild, wild Western Conference, too, will present plenty of challenges for the Celtics. Teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder, Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets and the Dallas Mavericks will present plenty of issues of their own for Mazzulla and Boston to solve when those much-anticipated marquee matchups arrive.
