Who would be in your Celtics 2023-24 Starting Lineup?

[playa-hater]

Our starting 6 is obvious.. I want to know who the 7th, 8th and 9th man will be.

Plus Horford misses B2B, what Center or 4-man gets the first Nod??

[JTMVP]

Can’t start Horford. He’ll play limited minutes in the regular season. Look for around 20 per with no B2B. It might be a different story in the postseason depending on the opponent’s size down low. White should be the starter plus the obvious four with Horford off the bench.

[Floody23]

Awesome logic - We’re already thin on the front line so let’s start the only two that will get significant minutes in the playoffs leaving us no back up big ..
Add to the fact you can’t play Horford on back to backs which ends up meaning your chopping & changing your starting lineup all the time which is usually never a great idea. I get people’s logic when they bring up the idea of starting double big against Milwaukee to limit the size difference but going away from the lineup you should be playing just to try match up like for like with the opposition is the wrong decision IMO

Guys Horford’s 37, it’s time to start him on the bench. White deserves to be starting.

[BK_2020]

In the playoffs there are no b2bs.

[hugepatsfan]

My thoughts are always about the playoff rotation and how that lines up.

Id really like to avoid having to play Pritchard or any other small guard like that. It’s a liability defensively. To accommodate that, I’d want to stagger rest for Jrue and White so the two of them can fill the full 48 minutes at point guard.

The more I think about it, that might be easier to accomplish if you brought White off the bench. They’d close together, but bringing White off the bench to start might make it a little easier to line the rotations up throughout the game where one is always out there without forcing anyone into long stints on the court.

Issue is that if you start Horford to do this with White, you’ve created the same issue in the front court where we need to stagger rest for Horford and Porzingis in the same way. Come playoff time, we’re going to want those two filling the full 48 at Center.

With Reggie Bullock getting bought out, that’s a guy I’d rather heavily because I think he’s a starting caliber 3&D wing. Having him serve as one of those guys who starts but plays relatively low minutes just to line up the rotations might be best. He’s a more established player than any of our in-house reserves with a history of starting for playoff caliber teams.

Playoff rotation could be:

PG: Holiday (35), White (13)
SG: Bullock (20), White (22), Brown (6)
SF: Brown (30), Hauser (18)
PF: Tatum (38), Horford (10)
C: Porzingis (32), Horford (16)

I think the logistics of that would work really, really well.

[Roger Federer]

Not sure if everyone remembers how completely cooked Horford looked by the end of the playoff run last year but he has no business being in anyone's starting lineup at this point in his career...

[threrf23]

Jrue
White
Tatum
Porzingis
Horford

This was actually my lineup too

But, I should add that Jaylen would be playing 30+ mins off the bench for me as my 6th man. Also not sure if Jrue would be my PG over DWhite.

[return2glory]

Our starting 6 is obvious.. I want to know who the 7th, 8th and 9th man will be.

Plus Horford misses B2B, what Center or 4-man gets the first Nod??

Pritchard, Stevens, Brissett, not in any particular order for 7-9.
Then probably Hauser or Svi. Closely followed by Kornet or Gabriel.

This team is deeper than most know it to be right now. 7-12 will bring a lot to this team in limited minutes. They have shooting in Hauser, Svi and Pritchard to open things up. They have defense and energy in guys like Stevens, Brissett and Gabriel. We have plenty of scoring in our top 5 or 6. We need 7-12 do do some of the dirty work and Brad has done a really good job of getting those types of players.

Joe's job will be tough to figure out who he plays outside of the top 6 players. But Brad has gotten really good assistant coaches to help Joe out.

[threrf23]

I want to know who the 7th, 8th and 9th man will be.

For the 7/8/9 slots, we should have one guard, one wing, one big IMO.

Hauser's my wing, underrated and a good fit. He's not the defensive liability he gets credit for being. Coincidentally, by the numbers Lamar Stevens isn't the defensive stopper he gets credit for being.

Would like to see Pritch swapped for a big man who rebounds, if possible, but for now he has little competition for the guard slot.

I'm not a fan of any of our quasi bigs; I think Brissett has the most potential, but not sure if he won't disrupt the flow of our offense, and esp with Timelord gone, we could use more rebounding than he gives. I know Tatum helps us out on the defensive boards, but by asking him to save us on the boards, it takes away from the rest of his game.

For now, I am going to hope that Queta emerges and makes good on his Erick Dampier upside.

[dans1230]

Not sure if everyone remembers how completely cooked Horford looked by the end of the playoff run last year but he has no business being in anyone's starting lineup at this point in his career...

Horford will be important to this team, but in situational instances. No need to have him in the starting lineup as they should really be managing his minutes throughout the season. I do think that consistency in the starting lineup barring injuries is important and finishing the game with the players most impactful in the moment based on matchups and whos playing good.
Porzingis
Tatum
Brown
White
Holiday
That is a great all around starting lineup.

[Patsfan1081]

If healthy I thing they’ll change it up depending on the matchups. I expect Almto be in there vs Embiid, Jokic, ect…

[chakdaddy]

I might go with a different complementary guy at 3. Hauser for shooting or someone else who steps up for D/intensity (Stevens????)

Unless you can stagger minutes very effectively, White starting means we rely on PP; Al starting we rely on Kornet.

[hugepatsfan]

Not sure if everyone remembers how completely cooked Horford looked by the end of the playoff run last year but he has no business being in anyone's starting lineup at this point in his career...

Meh I don’t think he looked cooked. It was a shooting slump. It happens. He didn’t look lost defensively or overpowered with strength or quickness. He just couldn’t hit his 3s, which can be streaky.

[chakdaddy]

Not sure if everyone remembers how completely cooked Horford looked by the end of the playoff run last year but he has no business being in anyone's starting lineup at this point in his career...

Meh I don’t think he looked cooked. It was a shooting slump. It happens. He didn’t look lost defensively or overpowered with strength or quickness. He just couldn’t hit his 3s, which can be streaky.

He looked like he had no legs or strength on those 3s, he was worn out IMO.

[TatumMVP]

Jrue White Borwn Tatum Porizngis in RS
When PO start depends on match up:
Jrue Brown Tatum Al Porzingis vs Philly, Bucks.

[Parliament10]

We really need another Starter Quality Big. Horford should be coming off the Bench, and we need the Double-Bigs.

[snowman]

1st team A:
White (Coach already said that he was going to be the starting point guard for the team. Looks bad if he goes back on that now)
Holiday (can't have a guy you gave up that much for and making that much money coming off the bench)
Brown (look at above answer)
Tatum (DUH)
Porzingis (again, DUH)
UNLESS: we are going against Philly, Mil, or another team using two big's, then:
1st team B:
Horford starts over White for matchups.

I know it wasn't asked for but:
2nd / 3rd team:
Pritchard/Banton
Svi/Walsh
Hauser/Stevens
Brissett/Gabriel
Horford/Kornet
UNLESS we are starting 1st team B:
Then White starts over Pritchard and Kornet fills in behind Porzingis and Horford, or Queta is brought up from G-league.

[31to6]

We really need another Starter Quality Big. Horford should be coming off the Bench, and we need the Double-Bigs.

Joe didn't seem to like double-bigs very much last season, and I don't see an avenue for them to get a starting-caliber big soon.
My guess is Tatum starts at the 4, but we'll see soon!

[Hal14]

I might go with a different complementary guy at 3. Hauser for shooting or someone else who steps up for D/intensity (Stevens????)

Unless you can stagger minutes very effectively, White starting means we rely on PP; Al starting we rely on Kornet.

Perhaps. But I don't see why you can't just stagger guys. It's what we did for the past 2 seasons when Rob and Al started together. they both started, one of them subbed out 6 mins into the 1st quarter, then after getting a few mins of rest he would come back into the lineup and replace the other big.

You then just keep rotating them like that so that sometimes one of them is on the bench resting and sometimes they're both on the floor together.

You could stagger like that with Al and KP..and you could stagger like that with Jrue and D-White.

I get what you mean about possibly starting Hauser or Stevens (or maybe even Svi or Brissett). That way it makes for a smoother rotation to bring White and Horford both off the bench. But the downside of that approach is:

a) It might be hard to get White or Horford happy with coming off the bench..so it could be *really* hard to get them both happy with coming off the bench. 1 (or both) of them are even more likely to get pissy if it's an unproven player like Hauser or Stevens starting over them.

b) Ideally, you play your best players as many minutes as possible, which means having the best players in the starting lineup and not starting a guy who is (at best) your 7th best player and having him start over 1 (or even 2) guys who he is clearly not as good as. You run the risk of starting games off slow if you're putting out a weaker starting lineup..

[Hal14]

We really need another Starter Quality Big.

Having 3 starter quality bigs is a luxury that most teams in the league don't have. I think the only team in the league that has 3 starter quality bigs is perhaps Milwaukee (maybe Minnesota and Memphis too but it's iffy whether you consider guys like Naz Reid, Xavier Tillman and Santi Aldama to be starter quality bigs..even Bobby Portis for that matter is kind of iffy..)

We had 3 of them before (Rob, Al, KP) but Brad decided to sacrifice that luxury in order to add another all-star to this team (Jrue Holiday).

By doing that trade, Brad was essentially saying that we can have 3 starter quality bigs or we can have 4 all-stars but we can't have both. Clearly, he chose the 2nd option - having 4 all-stars on the same team.

Sadly, we can't have it all

I'm optimistic that between Gabriel, Kornet and Queta, one of them will emerge as a solid 3rd big.

Horford should be coming off the Bench

I agree with you here. I would start White and bring Horford off the bench.

With that being said, Horford has started every single game he's played in a Celtic uniform. He's only come off the bench in like 2 or 3 games during his entire 16 year NBA career. He still has some gas left in the tank. Averaged 31 MPG last season, shut down Embiid in the playoffs and was 2nd in the league in 3 pt %. Still appears to be in good shape.

So while I would personally start White and bring Al off the bench, I don't think it's that crazy of an idea if Al starts and White is the 6th man.

we need the Double-Bigs.

Maybe we do, maybe we don't. Any particular reason you feel so strongly that double bigs is the way to go? Just curious.

Double bigs works well sometimes. But often times it works out really bad, like Turner and Sabonis in Indy, like Theis and Vucevic in Chicago, like any combination of Theis/Tristan Thompson/Time Lord, etc.

If we look at teams who have gone to the finals over the past few years, they sometimes play double bigs (Rob and Al for us in 2022, Giannis and Lopez for the Bucks in 2021) and sometimes they start single big (Suns with just Ayton in 2021, Nuggets with just Jokic in 2023 as I don't really consider Aaron Gordon to be a big, Miami mostly plays single big with just Bam, Lakers mostly went with AD as single big in 2020) and the warriors sometimes went single big (just draymond) and sometimes when double big (draymond, Looney) and Draymond is also kind of more of a forward than a true big..

Getting back to the Celtics..Tatum seems to be pretty effective as a 4. He reportedly put on another 12 lbs this offseason so he's now even bigger and more capable of playing the 4 spot. His rebounding % over the past few years has been really solid - definitely a number that is good enough to play the 4.

Lastly, if we look at this video at around the 6:48 mark, he makes a case for why our best lineup is with Porzingis at the 5 and Tatum at the 4.

Watch on YouTube