You can count the Celtics among the most disappointing teams of the season so far (if not the most disappointing), as they now sit at the 8th spot in the East with a sobering 10-10 record.
The expectation was that they would dominate the Eastern Conference, build on what they were able to (impressively, considering injury woes) accomplish last season and coast to The Finals with a chance to defeat the incumbent Warriors.
Well, that hasn’t been the case. At all. And the Celtics have been hitting wall after wall as they try to get over the slump. They’ve tried benching Gordon Hayward–the apparent benefit of which is still too early to diagnose–and have expressed joyless frustration even after rare wins.
In the words of Chowder and Champions’ Joe DeFerrari:
“Right now, [the Celtics are] mediocre at best. You can say it holds minimal or even no predictive value, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re a quarter of the way through the season and this team looks broken. We expected a learning curve. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Bill Simmons Predicts the Celtics Will Hit Their Stride by the Playoffs
In a tweet sent once the Celtics dropped to 8th place in the East, The Ringer’s Bill Simmons made a prediction that the Celtics may remain so low in the rankings heading into the playoffs, but they’ll have reached their potential and become a “dangerous 8-seed” by then:
The Celts are gonna be a dangerous 8-seed.
If this ends up being true, the Celtics will continue to struggle through an excruciating next few months. But come playoff time they’ll be ready to dominate like they were supposed to–and they may be the most “dangerous 8-seed” we’ve seen in a while.
If Hayward can get in a groove and the team can find the stride they had so seamlessly earlier this year, they’ll be tough to beat. As far as whether or not they’ll stay in 8th place until then, only time will tell.
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Bill Simmons Predicts That the Celtics Will Be a ‘Dangerous 8-Seed’