Successful sports franchises are butterflies.
They're often gross and unrecognizable in the beginning. They grow along the way, shed what they need to shed as they continue their metamorphosis, and in time emerge as something beautiful to watch. Then, after what usually feels like an incredibly short amount of time, it’s over and they have to start fresh again.
The Celtics emerged from their chrysalis this past spring, spreading their wings and beginning a glorious phase of this team’s lifespan. And just like the caterpillar and butterfly having two wholly different diets, so too does a rebuilding team versus one in contention. What they need to survive and reach full potential is just different now.
And so with that comes a shift in how we should be evaluating what this team needs, and how it should operate. As we come off a fun week and a half of summer league, we are filled with the thoughts of enticing young talent and developing hidden gems.
Aside from the dose of reality that good summer league performances from non-lottery picks rarely means much in terms of NBA readiness, there is a simple reality for the Celtics that developmental space is limited.
They have two two-way slots (in addition to the 15 regular spots), a relatively new and evolving tool for teams. This season, two-way players can appear in up to 50 regular season games, and will earn contracts worth $502,000 (two-way contracts do not apply to the team’s payroll for cap and tax purposes). Two-way players cannot play in the playoffs unless their contracts are upgraded to standard NBA deals.
JD Davison and Mfiondu Kabengele fill those two slots, with Kabengele being signed after a nice summer league where he averaged 2.2 blocks per game and was on the receiving end of more than a few Davison alley oops. They are now occupying the two paths the team has of guaranteed developmental time between the team and the G League.
The 15 man roster has very little space for any further long-term bets. Obviously, a third of that is occupied by the starters and the next five spots filled with rotation players Malcolm Brogdon, Danilo Gallinari, Derrick White, Grant Williams, and possibly Payton Pritchard. The team has already said it plans to get another big man to go along with Luke Kornet, and Sam Hauser signed a guaranteed deal this summer.
That leaves two guaranteed spots open for a team hoping to win a title. The Celtics aren’t going to pay luxury tax to bring in a project like Juhann Begarin just so he can G League reps. Maybe they can give one of those to someone like Matt Ryan just to have another shooter deep on the bench just in case, but championship contenders love to have established vets in those roles so they can at least feel good about a break-glass guy not being overwhelmed by the moment due to inexperience.
The last thing a team wants is to have to turn to a few untested rookies or young players in unforeseen playoff circumstances.
This is also why we have to get used to the idea of potentially trading the few promising young players in Boston’s system. As enticing as it is to let our minds wander to the 2025-26 season and believe Davison and Begarin will check into the game, run pick-and-rolls with Kabengele, and kick it out to Ryan on the corner for 3-pointers, the Celtics will be trying to win the 2022-23 championship and worry about the other stuff later.
This is why watching Begarin tear up Vegas for a few days was good news for Boston. If he did enough to get some rival front offices to wonder if he’s available, then Brad Stevens suddenly has a new chip to add to his stack. If Davison does well in Maine and can net the Celtics a game-changer at the deadline, then Stevens has to make the move.
The future for Boston is now, no matter how much we like what a young guy can bring somewhere down the road. And while the obvious ideal situation is that this roster is enough to win while they get to keep all their young talent, that ideal situation rarely plays out like that.
This isn’t baseball. There isn’t some stockpile of young talent rising through the ranks of some multi-letter minor league system. Guys rarely break out after multiple years in the G League, where even marginal NBA talent can look dominant. Hell, Carsen Edwards averaged 27 points and shot 38.4% on 3-pointers in the G League last season and he’s out of the league right now. The leap is hard for one guy to make, much less two or three.
So when a team like Indiana decides to pivot and make a player like Brogdon available, the Celtics have to pounce. If Utah, or Brooklyn, or Portland, or some other team decided to detonate their roster, and if it costs a player we all liked over the past few weeks, or who might be doing well in Maine, then so be it.
Two years ago, I’d be signing a different tune. When Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown were 22 and 23 and just scratching the surface of what they could do, patience would have been more advisable. And a few years from now, when Tatum and Brown are 28 and 29, we can start thinking about the longer-term projects again.
Right now, we have to start searching for that nectar on which championships are built. Boston has a great core that's just looking for the right mix of win-now guys, even if that mix changes from year to year. The Celtics will just flutter through free agency as one of the belles of basketball.
They don’t have time to watch someone crawl before they can run. Crawling is for caterpillars. The Celtics have their wings now, and they need guys who can soar with them.