The top six players on the Celtics roster are as clear-cut as probably any team in the league. Brad Stevens has openly talked about his ‘top five players’ since training camp, and the success of Daniel Theis as a starting center firmly adds him to that mix after a career-year so far.
After that? Things begin to get a little bit fuzzy down the remainder of the C’s depth chart. Outside of an established veteran like Enes Kanter, no other player on Boston’s bench has more than three years of NBA experience. Add Tremont Waters and Tacko Fall to the mix and there are now seven rookies on Boston’s bench in Orlando, nearly half of the entire roster.
Many of these players won’t get a sniff of meaningful rotation minutes by the time the postseason rolls around and minutes go up for the core. Still, there is going to be an opportunity for a number of these guys to make an impression and push for spot minutes in the seeding games and beyond based on a couple of factors.
- Enes Kanter remains a serious defensive liability in certain matchups. While he could play 20-25 minutes in games against a true big like Joel Embiid, just a couple minutes are possible against teams that regularly play perimeter-oriented bigs. We saw the best and worst of Kanter over the shortened season so far from being a magnet for rebounds and putbacks to leaving the C’s especially vulnerable on the defensive end.
- Kemba Walker’s knee is going to create more minutes opportunities before postseason: The every other day schedule that Celtics trainers have created for Walker during this summer camp period will likely carry over in some form to the seeding games. There’s just one back-to-back for Boston that Walker will miss a leg of, but a minutes restriction will add another 5-10 minutes to the bench pie on a nightly basis.
