It might be too early in the 2020-21 NBA season to start ranking teams for some fans, but for the die-hards out there, we already have enough data from the first week of this year’s campaign to at least get a rough outline of where things stand in the league so far.
And with a big win over the Milwaukee Bucks, a narrow loss to the Indiana Pacers and a blowout by the Brooklyn Nets, power ranking the Boston Celtics is a bit of a fraught proposition. That did not stop several popular NBA outlets from trying their hand nonetheless, with a fair amount of variance unsurprisingly between them.
What are the experts saying about Boston and its place in the early league hierarchy? Let’s dive into where they estimate the Celtics to stand, and what they have to say about it.
Pritchard has been Boston’s best rookie so far. The Celtics took the four-year senior out of Oregon 26th, and he’s come in right away and contributed. Pritchard is draining 3s and stabilizing the offense with his advanced feel for the game. During Sunday’s loss to Indiana, Pritchard came in off the bench and injected the energy Boston was lacking. These are the qualities teams look for in a backup point guard.
Prospects like Pritchard are so tough to rank in the predraft process. I had him 33rd on my board, but if you asked me to rank the players based solely on who has the best chance to have a 10-year career, then Pritchard would have ranked highly. The 6-foot-2, 22-year-old rookie guard may not have All-Star upside, but he’s already looking like an important rotation player for the Celtics, who lost Gordon Hayward and are without Kemba Walker because of a knee problem. Sometimes drafting for need is the way to go, though the 1-2 Celtics need more help from the rest of their roster to rack up wins.