What do the Celtics need out of this upcoming season?

The Boston Celtics’ “expectations” used to be simple: win a championship. So now what the hell do we do?

Until the moment the Celtics donned their championship hats, the goal of this team was to win it all. There was an aura of necessity, of impending doom and an understanding that the Celtics not raising would feel like dropping a 45-pound kettlebell directly on your pinkie toe.

But now our pinkie toes are safe, and — at least for a while — nobody seems to be pointing any weapons of mass destruction at any of our extremities. For all of last season, I was writing articles basically saying, “we have to enjoy this team while we have it!,” which was basically just me inhaling industrial-grade Copium* in case they failed to win it all. But now we’re just… good, right?

*Copium (noun); a satirical amalgamation of the words “Cope” and “Opium” to imply that you could smoke it in order to cope.

They say it’s lonely at the top, but perhaps it’s just boring. Sure, we can all say that we’re just as hungry for Banner 19 as we were for Banner 18, but that’s just like saying a kid who had ice cream for lunch is as excited for the ice cream truck as the kid whose mom crusades against J.P. Licks as an arm of the capitalist industrial complex and sees ice cream as the devil’s dairy. The absence of victory is what makes you hungry for it, and having a lounge chair of success to lean back on makes it impossible to simulate that desire.

But I’ve written about all this already. I’ve spent plenty of words on my concerns of focus or desire, but I want to take a minute to ask a different question: what do I — or you, or we — need out of this season?

I’m not asking what we “want,” since the answer to that question is always “another ring.” I’m talking about the feeling that dominated last season; need, demand, the non-negotiables or the things that you could actually criticize the Celtics for not doing. Sure, you could criticize them for not winning it all, but you couldn’t call them a total failure given last season.

So I’m going to posit a few ideas about what I need out of this season. Your mileage may vary, and feel free to posit your own needs down in the comments. If anything, we have a lot of freedom with what we need now, since it isn’t as simple as “a championship.” Let’s get creative.

Need #1: A strong title defense

This one is about self-respect in the history books. Nothing is lamer than a team that just rolls over and dies after winning a championship. It’s like if you graduated valedictorian from your high school, and then got a C- in Introduction to Psychology during your freshman fall at Columbia. It’s not like… the end of the world, but it’s kind of lame and not befitting of your prior accomplishments.

The Celtics are more than capable of putting the league in a head lock to let them know who is in charge around here. The New York Knicks had a cute summer rebuilding a college team, but this is the NBA. We don’t play college hoops from 2016 around here, we have 7’3” Latvian dudes getting chase down blocks in the NBA Finals. We have late-blooming transfers from Colorado turning into one of the best defensive guards in the league. We have Jaylen Brown dunking on dudes with extreme prejudice.

So, what would this look like? Well, at least a return to the Eastern Conference Finals and really the NBA Finals would work. More so, I just want it to look convincing. The 2021 Milwaukee Bucks are a good example of how to do this without getting back to the Finals; they gave the 2022 Celtics a second round slugfest that left both teams with a swollen lip, crushed collarbone and two black eyes. Even if the Celtics encounter something that’s more than they can handle — which they really shouldn’t — they better be kicking and screaming on their way out the door.

Photo by Billie Weiss/Getty Images

Need #2: A peaceful (and wealthy) transition of power

The Boston Celtics are for sale, and the Grousbeck father and son duo should, theoretically, have sold the team by the end of this coming season. That is going to be a distraction, like it or not, like if you were renting an apartment and got a new landlord halfway through the year. Theoretically, your couch and oven and microwave should all work fine, but it will surely present new challenges and anxieties.

I’m not going to speculate about who will buy the Celtics. All I will say is that whoever buys the team better have the net-worth and financial liberality to pay the half a billion dollars in contracts Brad Stevens just dished out. If the new owner(s) shows up, takes one look at the budget spreadsheet and says “holy guacamole we have to trade Jayson Tatum or I’m going to have to mortgage my yacht,” I am going to lose my mind.

Thankfully, I’m about 81 percent confident that will happen. Wyc Grousbeck has shown every understanding of the importance of a spending-positive owner, and I doubt he would hand the car keys to someone with any other intentions. But you never really know the priorities of the new owner until they sit in the big chair, so this one is critical.

Photo by Pool/Getty Images

Need #3: To dunk on the haters

One of the main features of being in a cult is the total insulation of its adherents from reality and protection from factual and logical challenges to their worldview. Celtics Nation is a cult I have voluntarily joined, and this season will be about leaning into it.

Another feature is about the constant discovery of “new” and “dangerous” enemies, even if those enemies do not exist or are not actually dangerous. The Celtics and their fans can easily find bits and pieces of hate within the post-championship haze — from people saying Tatum lacks “aura” to pundits picking the Knicks or 76ers as the real threats in the East — and spin that into an overall anti-Celtics agenda. I’m not saying it’s actually true, I’m just saying that this is a cult and around here, that’s absolutely true.

So this season, I am calling on the Celtics to make that kind of rhetoric logically impossible. Beat every team that purports to challenge them. Make Tatum and Brown into the most aura-oozing badass duo in the history of the league. Do it without Porzingis for the first half of the season, and then level up again around Christmas as a nice holiday present for the rest of the league.

Bring the pain. Don’t just be good, look good. Show the NBA that the league runs through Boston for the foreseeable future, even if the Celtics don’t repeat. Make it undeniable, and then — finally — we will become immortal. Wow, cults are great!