Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and the Celtics appear to be the favorites entering the 2024-25 season.
We’re counting down 24 key storylines heading into the 2024-25 NBA season. Our senior analysts will dissect a new topic each day as we help you get ready for opening night on Oct. 22.
Here is storyline No. 1:
Celtics are locked, loaded and favored to repeat as NBA champs
In a perfect world – well, perfect for 24 teams – the NBA’s streak of six different champions in six seasons would stretch to seven. It would serve the ambitions for parity that are baked into the latest collective bargaining agreement. It would satisfy the maximum number of fan bases, at least short term. It would appeal to a concept of “fairness” that a child would enjoy. Everybody gets a turn at the top. Orange slices all around!
Welp, we might as well dash those hopes now, even before the first of this season’s 1,230 games tips off. The Boston Celtics are the best team in the league, with the most continuity and the greatest potential – after winning 64 games last season – to improve from within.
Boston isn’t without flaws, mind you. Center Kristaps Porzingis won’t be available for a while, his rehab from foot surgery stretching to Christmas or so. His counterpart Al Horford is 38. Backups after that aren’t title-worthy, but that’s a worry for May, not now.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have reached the stage where teams are reconfiguring themselves to match up – they’re the obvious reason the Knicks are ready to unleash both Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby, with other clubs prioritizing wing defenders too. They’ll get rings Tuesday, they’ve each got hardware a-plenty and they’re still ascending.
A solid supporting cast around those two would be plenty, but Boston is overqualified there. Derrick White, Jrue Holiday and even Luke Kornet and Payton Pritchard are a notch up from what their roles in the pecking order might require. Then there is coach Joe Mazzulla, an all-business grinder to the outside world but one who has maxed-out credibility within that Celtics sanctum.
Look, the CBA eventually comes grim-reaping for every team. Boston’s burgeoning payroll will be no exception starting in 2025-26 and beyond. But the gap between this season’s Celtics and everybody else remains sizeable. No one in the East has improved enough to overtake them, and by the time the smoke clears out West, that Finals rep will either be too battered or just lacking.
Dynasties might not be what they once were. Back-to-back titles are novel enough now, happening five times in the first 18 years of this millennium but not at all in the past six, which is fine. A variety of champions is nice, but one team as an evil empire, setting the standards and uniting all rivals in a competition to chase that down, is healthy and fun.
* * *
Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Warner Bros. Discovery.
