The Celtics’ long-awaited 18th NBA championship was a weight lifted for franchise centerpieces Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who’d watched the crew fall brief within the convention finals or NBA finals in 5 of the earlier seven seasons.
“However one other burden,” veteran guard Jrue Vacation stated lower than an hour after Boston’s title-clinching win over Dallas again in June, “is doing it once more.”
That burden proved too heavy for each latest NBA champion to bear.
After many years outlined by dynastic runs from the Los Angeles Lakers, San Antonio Spurs, Miami Warmth and Golden State Warriors, we’re now in an age of utmost basketball parity. The final six NBA champs all did not repeat the next season. The final 5 didn’t come shut.
Vacation was on a type of groups: the 2021-22 Milwaukee Bucks, whose back-to-back bid stalled out within the Japanese Convention semifinals.
Because the Celtics, who stampeded their approach via a dominant 2023-24 season and postseason and return almost their complete roster for 2024-25, look to buck that development, right here’s a glance again at why the final six title defenses fell brief:
2018-19 Golden State Warriors
End result: Misplaced in NBA Finals
Golden State’s shot at a three-peat was dashed by premature accidents, most notably to famous person Kevin Durant, who missed almost all the NBA Finals with calf and Achilles accidents. Klay Thompson additionally tore his ACL within the Finals-clinching loss to Toronto, leaving the loaded Warriors with out two of their finest gamers.
The 2018-19 Warriors are an outlier on this listing. No NBA champion since even reached the convention finals the next season. Golden State is also the final reigning champ to earn the No. 1 playoff seed in its convention.
2019-20 Toronto Raptors
End result: Misplaced in Japanese Convention semifinals
It’s exceedingly troublesome to repeat if you lose your solely true famous person. That’s what occurred to the Raptors, who watched 2019 Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard bolt for the Los Angeles Clippers a month after main Toronto to its first title.
Leonard’s departure didn’t fully cripple the Raptors, as they completed second within the East in 2020 with the likes of Pascal Siakam, Kyle Lowry and Fred VanVleet headlining their roster. However they have been bounced by the ascending Celtics in seven video games within the NBA’s COVID-19 bubble and haven’t made it previous the primary spherical since.
2020-21 Los Angeles Lakers
End result: Misplaced in first spherical
After their bubble championship adopted by the shortest offseason in league historical past, the Lakers began sizzling however then have been pummeled by accidents. LeBron James and Anthony Davis missed a mixed 63 video games in the course of the common season, and Davis went down once more within the opening spherical of the playoffs. LA bowed out in six video games to turn into the primary defending champion in almost a decade to fail to achieve the convention semifinals.
2021-22 Milwaukee Bucks
End result: Misplaced in Japanese Convention semifinals
The Bucks acquired one other sensational season and postseason from two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, however an harm to one in all his essential sidekicks derailed their title protection. Khris Middleton, Milwaukee’s second-leading scorer, suffered a season-ending MCL sprain two video games into the playoffs. With out him, the Bucks acquired inside a recreation of the convention finals however have been blown out in Recreation 7 by the Celtics, who went on to win the East.
2022-23 Golden State Warriors
End result: Misplaced in Western Convention semifinals
Golden State’s championship in 2022 was the final gasp of a historic dynasty. By 2023, their time was via. 34-year-old Stephen Curry missed 26 video games. Thompson and Draymond Inexperienced each have been previous their prime at 32. Andrew Wiggins, who killed the Celtics within the ’22 Finals, was unavailable for greater than half the season. The Warriors have been again to full power by the playoffs however didn’t make it out of the second spherical, shedding to the Lakers in six video games.
2023-24 Denver Nuggets
End result: Misplaced in Western Convention semifinals
The Nuggets misplaced beneficial function participant Bruce Brown to free company final offseason, and Jamal Murray dealt together with his typical harm points, lacking 14 video games in October and November and 7 extra in March and April. However neither of these was the most important think about Denver’s failure to repeat. What was? A sudden spike in reliable championship contenders within the Western Convention.
The highest three groups within the West all completed with 56 or 57 wins – together with the upstart Thunder and Timberwolves, neither of whom had even received 50 video games within the earlier seven seasons – and none of them reached the NBA Finals. The fifth-seeded Mavericks made a shock run to a convention title earlier than being vanquished by the juggernaut Celtics. Denver had the perfect participant within the league (Nikola Jokic, who received his third MVP in 4 years) and couldn’t get previous the convention semis.
What can Boston study from these six unsuccessful encores? That prime-end expertise and star energy issues, however so does the depth wanted to resist the harm points that inevitably come up.
The Celtics had each final season, boasting the perfect top-to-bottom roster within the NBA and hardly blinking once they misplaced their third-best participant (Kristaps Porzingis) for a lot of the playoffs. Additionally they benefited from taking part in in a weakened and injury-depleted Japanese Convention, giving them a much more manageable postseason path than their counterparts out West.
Each participant of consequence from that title-winning Celtics squad is again. Their solely two offseason departures (Oshae Brissett and Svi Mykhailiuk) ranked twelfth and thirteenth in minutes per recreation final season and hardly noticed the ground within the playoffs. They’ll have to climate Porzingis’ early-season absence – the standout heart is unlikely to play earlier than December as he recovers from leg surgical procedure – and navigate what must be a stronger East after the rival Knicks and 76ers made strikes to beef up their rosters.
However Boston will enter the season because the clear favourite to defend its title. Simply don’t inform Joe Mazzulla, who pooh-poohed that phrase in a latest interview with the Locked On Celtics podcast.
“Persons are going to say that you just’re defending a quote-unquote title, however I believe the phrase ‘defend’ is a really passive-aggressive time period,” the Celtics’ incomparably intense head coach stated. “You return to the animal kingdom; a number of the strongest animals don’t defend. They’re essentially the most aggressive, they usually assault essentially the most.”
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