The 2019-2020 NBA season was a wild one. It featured a five-month long break and was at the forefront of social justice issues. The Boston Celtics were a popular team this year. . Before the stoppage on March 11th, the Celtics were 41-19, and they then won seven out of the 12 regular season games in the restart. They won their first playoff series, needing all seven games to beat the Toronto Raptors. Unfortunately, they lost the Eastern Conference Finals in six games to the Miami Heat. 

There was a lot of good in the 2019-2020 Celtics season. We saw large improvement in the Celtics’ two young stars Jayson Tatum and Jalyen Brown. Tatum made his first all star game and all NBA third team. Brown saw a seven point growth and improved in almost every stat category. There was significant improvement in chemistry and team morale. After the departure of Kyrie Irving, the C’s brought in former UCONN star Kemba Walker. Walker was fine not being the star, being encouraging of his teammates all throughout the season and it allowed players like Tatum and Brown to develop their skills.

However their demise was their lack of talent at center. Their starter was Daniel Theis (who is best off the bench) and their backup was Enes Kanter, who despite seeing a little improvement is still a liability on defense, being in the bottom half of the NBA in Defensive Box plus-minus an advanced metric that shows how good a player is on defense. They also have Robert Williams, a young player who is great at rim protection, but that is all he is good at. Their weakness was exposed when they faced Heat player Bam Adebayo. The Heat are going to continue to be an impressive franchise and players like Adebayo are going to keep developing and improving, so if the Celtics are going to reach the next level they are going to need to improve the center position.

My final thoughts on the season is that it was a successful one. They made it to the Eastern Conference Finals for the third time in four years which is quite impressive, but the team they have right now is not a championship caliber team So, if next year is going to be theirs, General Manager Danny Ainge has to live up to his nickname of Trader Danny and make some moves such as adding a center and some depth to their roster and he better do it quick the season starting in December.