In the 2021-22 NBA hierarchy, where should we rank the Boston Celtics?

Which teams are Boston’s relative peers going into next season, and what should be the bar they aspire to surpass?

By now, most fans of the Boston Celtics and analysts agree that the team is not quite ready to contend for a title, and may not even be ready to get quite as far in the postseason as it had while All-Star forwards Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum were still in their first few seasons in the league.

But where are the Celtics with respect to the rest of the NBA for the 2021-22 season, and what should our expectations of what qualifies as a “good” season for this retooling franchise already strapped with a pair of stars and a stronger bench under first-year head coach Ime Udoka?

Bleacher Report’s Mo Dakhil recently wrote an article dividing the NBA into tiers based on where in their respective competitive lifecycle each team was at, and views Boston as among teams which have arrived at their “time to bounce back.”