7 Biggest Threats to the Celtics' Chances to Repeat as NBA Champions

1. Injuries

If you haven't heard by now, the Celtics have by far and away the best lineup in the NBA. They did not lose any of their top nine players and maintained the rest of a roster that only lost three playoff games and averaged the fifth-best point differential in league history.

A team that boasts three Olympians, two Defensive Player of the Year finalists, five ESPN Top 100 players, two All-Stars, and three 20 ppg players is going to be hard for any team to match. Tatum and Brown are in their primes and somehow still improving from their already dominant forms. White and Holiday have excelled in their roles and are playing the best basketball of their lives. Kristaps Porzingis has been the dominant big man the Celtics had been missing for so long, while also being lethal from beyond the arc as he demonstrated in Game 1 of the Finals. Having Al Horford and Payton Pritchard come off of the bench is a luxury most teams wish they had.

The trophy the Celtics earned in June proves more than any of these stats and facts ever could that this unit was talented last season, but the Celtics have something that most defending champions struggle to find: motivation.

Jaylen Brown's Olympic snub lit a fire under him that motivated him to train even harder than he had in previous offseasons. Jayson Tatum had the misfortune of having to listen to debates about his "aura" rather than receive praise for winning his first championship. Coach Joe Mazzulla has even stated that "People's going to say the target's on our back, but I hope it's right on our forehead, in between our eyes. I hope I can see the red dot."

With such a roster talented paired with that killer mentality, no other team is going to be able to take down the Celtics. The problem again is that games aren't played on paper, and injuries can derail entire seasons. Boston fans recall when Tatum went down in the opening minutes of Game 7 of the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals and the team could not recover.

Last season, the Heat, Knicks, Pacers, and Bucks had to play meaningful playoff games without their biggest stars. Even the Celtics had to play a majority of the playoffs without Porzingis, who is particularly injury-prone. Losing Porzingis again for a large chunk of the season could prove more challenging to navigate this time around, and a worst-case scenario where the Celtics lose a star or multiple starters for a large chunk of the season or postseason could sink the repeat bid.

These are all problems that Mazzulla would have to navigate in a nightmare scenario, but worst-case scenarios have been foreign to Boston in recent years. If this roster can stay healthy and all goes according to plan, Celtics fans can expect to spend another summer on cloud nine, or perhaps more fittingly, Cloud 19.

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