The loaded Boston Celtics have retained their championship roster and added new depth in the form of Lonnie Walker IV, but will they repeat? The last team to win back-to-back championships was the Kevin Durant version of the Golden State Warriors in 2016-17 and 2017-18. Since then, the same team hasn’t even won more than once, let alone back-to-back. Unless you count the Warriors winning again in 2021-22, of course.
Will Loaded Celtics Break The KD Repeat Curse?
What happened to those other teams that have won it all following Golden State’s back-to-back? Is it the case that after the problematic dominance of the KD Warriors, the league has managed to correct course? And can Boston avoid the same fate of falling foul of the KD curse?
Nuggets: What Can Be Learned From This Failed Repeat?
The first team to look at might as well be the one who most recently faced an abrupt end to their title defense. Much of the NBA media was willing to declare the Denver Nuggets a dynasty in the making. Nikola Jokic may not be a superstar in the LeBron James mold, but he is the best player in the league. The Nuggets have him, and then they have a player who plays like a superstar in the playoffs. Or at least one who did in the 2023 postseason as well as the 2020 bubble.
The Nuggets had more than one issue in their title defense. They lost a significant amount of depth, losing out on retaining two of their seven playoff mainstay rotation players. Perhaps there could have been more effective ways to remedy that than relying on a youth movement.
But the Nuggets’ biggest problem was really that Jamal Murray didn’t play very well. That is, compared with how he played the year before. Murray went from 58.6% true shooting in the 2023 playoffs to 47.4% in the next. And disconcertingly for the Nuggets, Murray also looked in poor form during Canada’s recent Olympic campaign. But they’ll hope that it’s a temporary ailment that he’ll be fully recovered from in time for the 24-25 playoffs. Murray showed in the Lakers series that he still has ice in his veins.
Could it Happen To The Celtics?
The comparable situation for this loaded Celtics squad on their road to a repeat would be a sudden drop-off for star wing Jaylen Brown. That’s conceivable if teams change how they’re defending Boston next postseason. This year, the attention was mostly on slightly better star wing Jayson Tatum. Meanwhile, Brown got free reign within Boston’s five-out offense. That combined with Tatum’s shooting slump is how Brown wound up with both the Eastern Conference and the Finals MVP awards. But it goes without saying that if Brown dropped off for that reason, then Tatum would look better.
Warriors: Can The Celtics Repeat To Forge The Next Dynasty?
Before the Nuggets, it was the Warriors’ return to glory season. This one always had the faint whiff of last hurrah about it. Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson had something to prove. They’d won before Durant got there. They’d win again after he left. If Boston does prove to be the next NBA dynasty, it would be fitting that it was an iteration of the Tatum Celtics that the Warriors defeated in these finals.
Three older stars and a preference for small ball in an era of reemerging big man dominance may have been the main downfall of this title defense. But what people will primarily talk about is the altercation that was had between team leader Green and young prospect Jordan Poole. Head coach Steve Kerr even acknowledged that it may have had a powerfully detrimental effect on the team’s chemistry that season.
So What About Boston?
This Celtics team may get some flack for not “having that dog in them”. But they’ll probably take that over a violent practice hall disturbance derailing their season. The small ball versus dominant big men theme is probably a more relevant concern for them. The Warriors ran into Anthony Davis in their title defense, and their lack of size left them powerless to contain him on offense or occupy him on defense.
And as for Boston, nobody was surprised when the Celtics’ starting center, Kristaps Porzingis, got injured last postseason. The matchups turned out in such a way it didn’t matter. And they were helped by the continued steady excellence of veteran Al Horford. But Horford is 38 years old. As loaded as the Celtics are, the teams’ repeat efforts could run afoul of a size deficit. Especially if other lurking big men in the East can avoid the injury bug this time around. The Celtics didn’t see Joel Embiid as he was knocked out in the first round by the Knicks and dodged Giannis Antetokounmpo entirely.
Bucks: Can The Celtics BUCK The Trend?
Speaking of the Milwaukee Bucks legend, Giannis led his team to a title the year before the Warriors in 2020-21. Their run was probably the scrappiest of all these teams. Then head coach Mike Budenholzer‘s refusal to switch up his coverage on Durant came a big toe away from costing him his job. There’s only so much you can reasonably expect six-foot-four Jrue Holiday and six-foot-five PJ Tucker to do to the Slim Reaper in man-to-man.
The Bucks wound up down two-nothing to the Phoenix Suns, who’d forged an improbable route to the finals themselves. And then there were the plays that everyone will remember, the ones that will be brought up when discussing Giannis’ place in the all-time top twenty. The impossible block on Suns center DeAndre Ayton‘s alley-oop. Giannis’ own inexplicable alley-oop after the Holiday steal. Fifty points to close it out.
But the year after, the Bucks found themselves outgunned by that earlier finals-bound Celtics team. It’s the closest that any of these title defenses have come to ending at the hands of the next champion, as the Celtics would go on to lose to the Warriors in the finals.
Milwaukee’s main issue was an over-reliance on Giannis and Holiday as offensive creators. That was due to an injury to their midrange specialist, Khris Middleton. It goes without saying that any team’s title chances could be undone by an injury to a key player. Even with all the Celtics’ depth, if they lost Tatum (or even Brown), they would be significantly de-fanged.
Lakers: Can Celtics Succeed Where Historic Rival Failed?
The situation for the Los Angeles Lakers was just that. Davis, who had run LeBron closer than anyone else for Finals MVP the year before, was injured. There is really very little other explanation required. The moves around the margins the Lakers had made that offseason were generally well-liked. The team replaced the largely interchangeable rim-running bruisers Javale McGee and Dwight Howard with a more versatile combination of Marc Gasol and Montrezl Harrell. But their perimeter core of Kyle Kuzma, (new Oklahoma City Thunder addition) Alex Caruso, and (former Nugget, now Orlando Magic sniper) Kentavious Caldwell-Pope remained in place. They even added another creator in Dennis Schroder. They were viewed as favorites going into the season. But the Davis injury left them short of even the playoffs. The front office’s response would be a major source of consternation to Lakers fans to this day.
Boston fans have no reason for such an attitude towards their own front office. Trading for Porzingis may have been a risk, but general manager Brad Stevens has done an exquisite job of building a championship roster around what seemed to some to be a redundant star pairing. His predecessor Danny Ainge also deserves some credit for putting this loaded Celtics squad in the position to repeat.
Raptors: Celtics May Take The Rap For Being Loaded But…
And finally, there’s the team that started this all off. The case of the Toronto Raptors championship defense is pretty straight forward. The team that prevented a three-peat and started this whole thing. They’d lost the player responsible for one of the greatest single postseason runs of all-time. Kawhi Leonard had skipped ship back to California, just like he said he would. Raptors fans were understandably frustrated with their team’s coverage that season. They had a phenomenal team still, full of players instrumental to winning a title just the year before. And nobody talked about them. But the reality was they weren’t a true contender anymore without the Klaw. And it could be fitting that it was yet another iteration of a Tatum Celtics team that ended this squad’s defense.
But no one can diminish what that Raptors team did the year before. Anyone who says, “But the KD Warriors would have been unbeatable if they’d been healthy” is really doing more to devalue the two rings the Warriors did win with him than the one they didn’t. They stacked the deck in a way that made the league feel despondently predictable. The James Harden Rockets did their utmost to upset the monotony. LeBron had an all-time performance in Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals to almost steal a win on the road. Nobody likes the boy who cried “not fair”, but the league is better without such an overwhelming favorite. So what does that mean for 2024-25?
The Loaded Celtics’ Path To A Repeat
The reigning champion Celtics just added Lonnie Walker IV. He was, at one time, probably the third-best player on the supposedly still-title-contending Los Angeles Lakers. The deepest team in the NBA one-through-six just got a little deeper. Their toughest opponents in the East this year look likely to be the Philadelphia 76ers and the New York Knicks. If a Giannis and Damian Lillard partnership can be sufficiently tinkered with, then the Bucks could be a threat as well. Any of those teams, fully healthy, would present a much more challenging path for the Celtics this time around. Even last season’s finals opponent probably improved with the extra shooting threat of a freshly pilfered Klay. That’s not to mention a hopefully healthier Luka Doncic and a more experienced Dereck Lively II.
The Last Word
It’s reasonable to call the Celtics favorites to repeat. Maybe even with the best odds to do so since those KD Warriors teams. But the league is deep. So deep that rumored new expansion teams really are surely just around the bend. And the Celtics make themselves vulnerable to shooting variance with their unwavering dedication to the three-point line. This isn’t the 2018-19 season where an injury seemingly had to happen for anyone else to stand a chance. The Celtics have stacked the deck as best they can, but even they can’t guarantee drawing a repeat of last season.
