The Boston Celtics are preparing to defend their crown as NBA champions as they will open the 2025 NBA Playoffs this weekend against whichever team emerges from the Play-In Tournament as the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference. That matchup will be determined on Tuesday night as the winner of the matchup between the Atlanta Hawks and the Orlando Magic.
Regardless of who the Celtics ultimately wind up facing in the opening round of the postseason, fans can expect Joe Mazzulla to shorten the rotation from what we saw over the course of Boston's 82-game schedule. The stakes are higher now, which means you are going to put even more trust in the key players who got you to this point now that the Celtics will be entering what they hope is another deep run of best-of-seven series.
While he will still be called upon to contribute to the team's success throughout the playoffs, there is one regular rotation player in particular who will likely see a reduction in minutes as the team moves forward.
Celtics Forward Sam Hauser Needs to Play Less as Playoffs Tip Off
Sam Hauser has been a piece of the puzzle for the Celtics all year long and he will surely make meaningful contributions at some point during Boston's postseason run. However, given the fact that rotations always get tighter during the postseason, Hauser could see the 21.7 minutes per game he received throughout the regular season go down a good bit.
There is no doubt what Hauser is able to bring to the fold as a floor spacer in an offense that is predicated on getting as many good looks as possible from beyond the arc. What isn't as much of a strong suit for the former University of Virginia standout are his abilities on the defensive end.
While it was one of the best marks of his career, Hauser had a defensive rating of 109.8 over the course of the 2024-25 campaign, it was still one of the worst marks of any player on Boston's roster. For those of you who are unfamiliar with how individual defensive ratings are calculated in the NBA and what it means for those players, a player's defensive rating estimates how many points the player allowed per 100 possessions he individually faced while on the court, per basketball-reference.com.
Defense wins championships, as the old adage goes, and the level of intensity on that end of the floor needs to be raised once the postseason begins to match what the opposition is trying to do in terms of scoring the ball. Hauser's ability to shoot the ball from the perimeter is without question beneficial to the Celtics' efforts on the offensive end but that alone will not be enough to justify him being on the floor for nearly half of the game once the playoffs start.
Mazzulla has pushed all the right buttons to this point during his tenure as head coach in Boston. We will find out soon enough just how much trust he has in Hauser to be on the floor now that the games will be taking place on the league's biggest stage.