Which Celtics will hear more pressure during the 2025-26 season? – NBC Sports Boston
2025-26 Boston Celtics will face drastically reduced external expectations compared to the mentality of the championship or the bust that has defined the recent seasons. But this does not mean that the individual members of the organization will not have to face their pressures during a so -called “sabbatical year” in front.
Furthermore, the organization of the Celtics – in particular those in the brain of trust – would be fast in reminding us that pressure is only an opportunity in bare mind. While some tend to give a negative tour of this responsibility, the Celtics will encourage all the levels of their organization to embrace the pressure that will come with new roles this season.
So, which members of the Celtics will have to face maximum pressure-o will embrace most of the opportunities-the 2025-26 season? Shoutout to our friend Brian Robb, who recently asked us this question about the podcast “Poddable”.
After some further resolutions, we decided to feed the highest degree of pressure/opportunity based on the Boston roster in early August.
1. Brad Stevens
We are not sure that Stevens ever has a pressure, but it certainly includes the obligation to be responsible for the Celtics roster. Those 18 banners are a constant reminder of the north star you are chasing. Even in a year of transition, Stevens’ challenge is to show that the franchise is actively going back towards that goal.
It is an important season for Stevens’ choices. There should be more minutes and more ability to learn through the bumps for recent designers.
Will the selections of the first round Baylor Scheierman and Hugo Gonzalez show that they can be rotational presences for the next Boston contender? Can Jordan Walsh show greater consistency in the year 3? Stevens did not have the most sumptuous places to choose from in the draft, but the second apron makes it substantially imperative that any team with a list with two maximum players of wages must hit their choices.
In addition, Stevens must trace the next step forward. And this could actually be a step back.
If the Celtics are unable to show signs of being also a subtle contender at the beginning of the 2025-26 season, Stevens embraces himself trying to get completely under the luxury tax with the hope of restoring the repeater penalty of the repeater? Can you do it without mortgage for activities to get an additional salary? Is there a move that can add a low -risk and high -level player that the team can embrace while waiting for Tatum to healthy in health?
Stevens don’t like to procrastinate. Even last summer, he made his initial list to make early, moving from the voluminous salaries of Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday.
This current puzzle of Celtics seems far from finished, for this season and beyond, and Stevens will have many opportunities to trace where things go from here.
Chris Forsberg and Brian Robb react to the relationships that Celtics are interested in Ben Simmons and discuss if the move makes sense for Boston.
2. Joe Mazzulla
We all know what Mazzulla is capable of with a list full of talents. The Celtics have a glittering trophy of Larry O’Brien who confirms his ability to press the right buttons with a championship team. The question is now whether Mazzulla can mask some of the deficiencies of a team in transition.
Stevens had an extraordinary ability to take the teams perceived as less talents than rivals and getting them far exceeded. Stevens did it in Butler with some magical races of the NCAA tournament, and he did it during the childhood of his Boston mandate even before the superstar began to jump here.
How much can Mazzulla mask the defensive abandonment after losing the holidays of Jrue and an al Horford? How does Mazzulla foil with the style of play when Tatum is put aside and the team is missing all the ways in which he makes players around him better on the pitch?
Celtics have many question marks that enter the season, in particular in a new front. Outside of Jaylen Brown and Derrick White, there are roles to cover and it will be fascinating to see how Mazzulla chooses to deploy his available talent.
Derrick White joins Chris Forsberg on Celtics Talk’s Podcast to discuss how Joe Mazzulla will face the challenge of next season
3. Jaylen Brown
We feel like a broken album, but every time the Boston Celtics asked for more from Brown, he gave it to them. While Tatum recovers, Brown will slide in the role 1A that many wondered if in the end he could have craved. It will have any possibility of demonstrating that it can maintain an all-nba level output when it is at the top of the scouting ratio of each opponent.
Perhaps the largest plot of the 2025-26 season will be. How do you catch brown in the most severe spotlight? Every time someone tried to put a ceiling on its potential, she launched it. Brown is usually fueled by those doubtful and will have all the opportunities to do the same this season.
If the absence of Tatum allows Brown to raise at new levels, the Celtics would be extremely well positioned to contend again when Tatum is healthy.
Brad Stevens discusses the progress that Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are doing in their rehabilitation work of accidents in this low season.
4. Payton Pritchard
Some wondered if Pitchard could remain in his role as a bench to start the 2025-26 season. We would far prefer to see that the Celtics push him at a starting point of a high minute and allow him to show even more than what we have seen in his evolution at the sixth man of the year.
We have already seen Pritchard (and White) go for 40 points in a departure spot last season. Experts have long suggested that the teams would have exploited its size if Pitchard was an appetizer, but he usually found a way to corner the biggest opponents.
There is a common theme for each Celtics player this season: let’s see what you have. Maybe if Tatum was healthy, or more the roster had returned, the Celtics would have been satisfied with letting Pitchard attacked the role of reserve. Now? Remove it.
Let’s see if Pitchard can answer persistent questions if it could be a high efficiency appetizer. Given the parsimonious salary in which the team extended it, Pritchard emerges as a starting guard would have absolutely helped the roster building.
5. Neemias queta
It is still really wild that less than two years have passed since the king sacrament renounced these. His Bagliore-Dall’Arba di Due Vuodi, earning his place in the parents’ team thanks to his efforts while Boston was unleashed at the beginning of the season of the 2023-24 title, to guarantee a longer-term agreement with the Celtics later-was fun to watch.
Now, with the revision at the Buston frontcourt after the departures of Porzingis, Luke Kornet and, presumably early, at the Horford, there will be every opportunity for the 26 year old Queta to take his next step.
Whether it is appetizer or a reserve of large minute, the Celtics need a quite to retain the fort, in particular as a defender and bounce. Mazzulla regularly put a queue in difficult points at the beginning of his Boston mandate with the hope he would learn on the fly. Now, it will really have any possibility of fighting through any growing pain.
Queta saw how Kornet turned into a player from $ 41 million. Few thought that Kornet was capable of when he arrived for the first time in Boston. Can this be the next center that Boston feeds in a player at the start level?
6. Sam Hauser
Boston’s Sweet Shooting striker is entering the first year of his four -year extension and $ 45 million. The Celtics have been able to keep it in the roster by making cuts elsewhere, but Hauser has yet to demonstrate that long -term madness is worth.
Even with some troubles of shooting in support of health at the beginning of last season, Hauser has still shot 41.6 percent beyond the 3 -point arch. It should get even more look this season.
7. Jordan Walsh
On the one hand, Walsh was the second youngest player of the Boston Summer League team at the age of 21. On the other, it is the 3rd year for the choice of the second round of 2023 and it is time to demonstrate that it can have an impact in a more coherent way.
Walsh has to play with the edge that showed this year’s summer alloy and make the most of the minutes while Tatum recovers.
Jordan Walsh had another impressive exit in Las Vegas for the NBA Summer League. He led the Celtics with 17 points in victory over the Lakers.
8. Amari Williams
We feel guilty to have a two -way player so at the top of the list, but here is the reality: the Celtics must develop great reliable men and Williams has an obvious ability with his passage and blockade.
Can you take giant steps with its ending around the basket and show its long -term potential? The Celtics did not hesitate to cut the bait with a two -way player of the second round last season to Anton Watson.
9. Luka Garza
Garza did not play more than 250 minutes from his beginner season. It is about to change. Offensive talents are obvious. Celtics need Monsters that can learn and grow on the defensive part.
10. Baylor Scheierman
It is only the year 2, but Scheierman will turn 25 years before the field opens. The end of his beginner season has mentioned great potential as well as only 3 points with his flashy director and high basketball Qi.
Like Walsh, Scheierman must take advantage of the minutes at the point of the wing while they are available.