Three reasons why Celtics should be motivated for NBA Cup games originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
The Boston Celtics tip off group play in the Emirates NBA Cup on Tuesday night with a visit from the Atlanta Hawks. That is the same Hawks team that Boston beat by 30 a little over a week ago. And Atlanta is even more battered and bruised with Trae Young and De’Andre Hunter highlighting a list of Hawks players already banned.
The Celtics could easily go down. They could easily dismiss the notion of this year’s in-season tournament. But here are three reasons why we think the team could find motivation in this year’s NBA Cup:
Rto claim that title season was no fluke
The Celtics spent much of the offseason hearing about how their playoff run was soft and how the team benefited from the injuries that other teams navigated.
Considering Boston’s postseason quests are routinely derailed by premature injuries, it’s all somewhat ironic. But there’s nothing Boston can do to change anyone’s mind about the past. They can, however, send an early-season message that their success last year was no fluke.
Look, it’s hard find motivation for 82 games when you were on the mountain top. You start thinking about the slowness that creeps in in January and February, and it’s hard for any team to keep their foot on the accelerator. Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla is trying to break the season down into little miniature themes with the idea that it’s easy to digest the season in, say, 10-game appetizers rather than an 82-game buffet.
The Celtics have already sent a message with a 9-2 start, but this set of NBA Cup games over the next month offers a growing stage to remind anyone who hasn’t been paying enough attention just how good this team is.
Winning the NBA Cup isn’t necessarily the prize — and this team certainly won’t raise banners like a certain squad in Southern California — but it’s a chance for a roster that looks nearly identical to last season to show how. far in front of the field they remain.
Mone for the budget crew
Brad Stevens handed out about $1 billion in contract extensions over the past two years, with every player in Boston’s top eight getting their slice of that pie. So the $500,000 prize for winning the Cup might not sound like a lot of money for guys like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown after signing the biggest contracts in NBA history over the past two summers.
But it’s not a rash change, especially to those players who signed team-friendly deals this past summer.
Luke Kornet and Xavier Tillman could have chased bigger paydays this past offseason. Instead, they quickly re-signed with Boston, keeping the core of the team intact from last year’s title run. The Celtics have six players making $2.8 million or less this season in Kornet, Tillman, rookie Baylor Scheierman, Neemias Queta, Jordan Walsh, and Sam Hauser (whose contract extension begins next season).
For those players, $500,000 is a remarkable holiday bonus. Kornet joked last season that if Boston won the Cup, he would use the money to pay off his mortgage. That players like Kornet were willing to return to maintain continuity and chase another title, they deserve a reward that could come with an inspirational Cup.
Big-time conflict in the middle of group play
Not to look too far ahead, but the Cleveland Cavaliers are now 12-0 to start the season. There’s a chance they could show up to TD Garden next Tuesday night with an undefeated record still intact, and at worst, they’ll probably still be sitting atop the Eastern Conference.
It doesn’t matter what color the court is in that matchup; The Celtics should be favored to see Cleveland in a rematch of last year’s Eastern Conference semifinal series. This is also Boston’s only game during a five-day stretch, with rare two-day breaks on both sides, positioning the team to go all out that evening.
The winner of each group, along with one wildcard from each conference, advances to the quarterfinals starting on December 10. Winners there get a trip to Vegas for the semifinals and finals — the perfect chance to escape the Boston winter chill.
To be clear, the NBA Cup is not the end-all for these Celtics. If they stumble along the way — as they did while being bounced by a fired-up Pacers squad a year ago — that clearly doesn’t change the ultimate goal of the season.
And even if Boston wins, we don’t expect a robust celebration. We can envision Mazzulla getting the NBA Cup and handing it over as quickly as Bill Belichick used to throw away the AFC championship trophy during his time in New England.
But maybe that’s a bit of motivation too. The Lakers won last year’s NBA Cup and did the whole banner party. That won’t fly in Boston. So watching the Celtics stuff that Cup in some vacant corner of the Auerbach Center and never talking about it again would also speak volumes.
