Muttroxia

On his last couple podcasts, Bill Simmons wonders why home court advantage doesn’t matter anymore. He listed several possible reasons, which were mostly moronic. Bill, if something impacts both the home and visiting team equally, it has no explanatory power. Obviously. Let’s look at this a bit more rigorously than he did.

Is it true?
First, is the assumption true? Is the home court advantage diminishing?

In the regular season, the home court team has gone from winning ~60%+ up to the 1990s to ~55% today. Vegas bakes in 2.5-3 points for the home team, it used to be 3-4.5. 

What about the playoffs? This is harder to figure because home court is given to the better team. But here again we’ve gone from ~65% to ~58%, and Vegas bakes in 2.5-3 points, though it varies heavily on context.

Conclusion: Yes, the assumption is true.

Do we know why?

Since the phenomena is true, the next step is to see if we already know why it happened. The answer is yes. It’s been studied and known for decades that the home court advantage comes primarily from unconscious referee bias. They don’t mean to, they don’t want to, but referees are human and react to the fans yelling. One of the ways we can see this is how home court advantage completely disappeared in the bubble.

If home court advantage comes from referee bias, has it changed? Yes it has, and that is the answer. Refereeing has become increasingly professionalized. Modern refereeing is heavily scrutinized, graded by micro-cameras, subjected to centralized NBA replay center, play-by-play reports of the last two minutes, increasing social attention, etc. The days of cowboy referees are long over. For all the jokes about Scott Foster, individual referees just don’t impact a game like they used to.

There you go, that’s the answer.

Other factors:

Three-point shooting: The rise of three point shooting increases scores for both teams, but more importantly increases the variance in the outcomes. Increased variance eats away at the home court advantage. Think of an exaggerated case – let’s say at the end of each game, each team takes one shot. If the shot goes in, they get 100 points. In this imagined scenario, the variance would be enormous, swamping everything else that goes on in the game. (It’s analogous to Quidditch, where the optimum strategy is to ignore everything except getting the Snitch. Everyone on the team should be a seeker.) Note that in the last five years of playoffs the Boston Celtics (who shoot 3-pointers aggressively) have a win-loss percentage 10 points higher when playing on the road than at home.

Easier travel: Every team has chartered flights, most have team planes built especially for their comfort. They stay in nicer hotels. The NBA has reduced the number of back to back games. All of this means that the visitors are in much better shape than they used to be. This also applies to the bubble year control case, so there’s some conflating variables there.

Several of the people I follow are worked up about Trump attending Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden tonight. Because he is attending, they changed the security systems at the game and you can’t bring any bags at all in. Traffic will be shut down all over. MSG is right over Penn Station, so that will be completely disrupted as well. Isn’t that Trump just the worst, ruining everybody’s day like that!?

C’mon. He’s the President of the United States of America. Sometimes the POTUS goes to big sports events, sometimes those big sports events are in big cities, it’s the way of the world. If it was Obama you wouldn’t be complaining, you’d be celebrating. There have been three assassination attempts on the POTUS in the last couple years, it’s appropriate to have a lot of security.

I will enjoy watching Trump get booed for the entirety of the game. I expect and hope it will be non-stop, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he leaves the game early. That’s all fair. But criticizing Trump for doing something all presidents do ain’t fair. Relax. Enjoy the game.

March 8: A large black woman gets in my car while yelling into her phone, “I’m telling you I need you to be cool when the cops show up! They can’t know you’re drunk, you cannot get a DUI and go to jail again! Stay cool!” She repeats this a few times. “Chew some gum. Drink a lot of water. Take some deep breaths… Yes, I know your car is in bad shape, but you’ll make it worse if you’re in jail!” That’s good advice!

My passenger had been out drinking and celebrating with her best friend at their birthday outing. A lot of alcohol was involved. For whatever reason my passenger took an uneventful Uber ride home while her friend drove her own car. On the way home her friend got hit by another car. The other car called the police. Then the other car fled the scene. Now the police are on the way. The best friend is still very drunk, she is at the scene of the accident, and she is loud enough that I hear everything from the phone in the back seat. My passenger is trying to keep her friend from getting arrested for drunk driving, but it’s not getting through. Her friend is still too drunk to understand. It didn’t look like it would end well for the friend.

The capstone: At one point the drunk best friend yelled back, “I can’t go to jail! I’m too small! My brothers are already in jail for that murder!” Yikes.

March 9: You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t put on a seatbelt. And how many of them want to argue about it. You might believe the demographic profile of these folks. It happens a lot. If the trip is under ten minutes I might let it go, but it usually goes like this: I tell the passenger to put their seatbelt on. They are surprised that I would ask and instantly accede. Or I ask and they try to ignore me, or argue with me. Sometime they try to tell me the law. I tell them seatbelts are the law in my car. They can cancel the ride or put it on. They grudgingly put it on. There will be no tip on this ride.

Today, halfway through the trip, he ever so quietly slips the seatbelt off. Really? This is a Tesla. It has sensors for everything. It knows when my eyes are looking at the road. It probably knows my blood pressure and bank balance. You think I don’t know your seatbelt is off!? You can hear the binging noise as well as I can. “Put it back on.” He pretended he didn’t hear me. Enough is enough. I yelled at him. He put it back on. Then he had the balls to take it off a second time near the end of the trip.

An older one: I went to a housing complex near the airport. I couldn’t find the passenger in the complex. I guessed I had driven past the pin… no, wait. There’s the pin, the pin is in a complex on the other side of the highway. It’s two miles to get turned around to the other side of the highway and get there, but I do it. When I get there, the pin has somehow moved back to the first location. What is going on? Here’s what was going on. The passenger wasn’t in either housing complex. He was that guy I had seen walking on the edge of the actual highway. Nope. I’m not driving another two miles to pick up some sketchy dude on the side of a highway. No thank you. No thank you sir!

If ever a post will get me in trouble, this is the one.

I’ve had arguments with MAGA friends about the assassination attempts on Trump. Do they reflect what liberals want? Do ordinary Democrats support it? How much does your average Trump hater actually want him dead? How much do they support his assassination? It was time to look in the mirror and examine my own beliefs.

I hate Trump. I really do. I hate him as a human being, I hate him as President. The country, the planet, the species, are all far worse off because of his existence. But what does that imply? Do I actually want him to be murdered? Is the cure worse than the disease?

Here are my rankings, from most to least desirable, of how the Trump presidency ends.

Trump Exits Early:

1. Trump willingly leaves office now. He decides to run a media empire or something. Being President sucks. He abdicates and leaves the last couple years to JD Vance. (He dies on a bed made of hundred dollar bills surrounded by pretty blond women telling him how great he is. His last words are “I won.”)
2. Trump willingly ends his term now due to mental or physical incapacitation. He abdicates via Section 3 of the 25^th Amendment. JD Vance takes over.
3. Trump dies of natural causes now. JD Vance takes over.
4. Trump unwillingly leaves office now. He is impeached and convicted or is removed by others via Section 4 of the 25^th Amendment. Either way, he leaves office early unwillingly. JD Vance takes over.

Trump Finishes Term:

5. Trump finishes out his term. Nothing special. He leaves at end of his term.
6. Trump finishes out his term. But along the way he gets something horrible and visibly disfiguring. A physical injury, a medical issue, whatever. He is not really in charge but continues as a figurehead. Similar to Woodrow Wilson’s stroke or Reagan’s early dementia. But it must be visible. The humiliation and loss of physical normalcy matters. This is the spiteful one. After his non-stop cruelty to everyone with less than him, he deserves to be pathetic and mocked.

The Exception:

7. Trump ends his term early due to assassination. JD Vance takes over. Although assassination is part of “leaving office early”, assassination is very bad. I moved it down. The societal and moral cost of political violence overrides the benefit of an early exit. But I still prefer assassination to the last category, Trump keeps going.

Trump Keeps Going:

8. Trump somehow pulls a constitutional fast one, serves a 3^rd term (or more).
9. Trump leads another insurrection. He serves a 3^rd term, but relies on overt physical violence rather than pseudo-legal maneuvering.
10. Trump effectively becomes king, doesn’t leave until his death.
11. Trump actually declares himself king, doesn’t leave until his death. He passes the crown to his handpicked heirs, Donald Trump Jr or Jared Kushner.

Who you vote for is private. But the choice of which primary you vote in is not private. As a poll worker, I see in real time who is voting in the Republican, Democratic, or Nonpartisan primary races. Of course this inevitably leads to making guesses. I wonder which party this guy is in? My fellow pollworker and I started developing guidelines.

Disclaimer in advance: This is all ludicrous. It’s blatant stereotyping. Although some people were blindingly obvious, we probably only guessed 60% right. Georgia has open primaries (you can vote in any primary, so people sometimes cross parties to mess with the other team) which undercuts this whole thing. And this is just one random location in a highly Democratic suburb (base rate was roughly two thirds Democrat, one third Republican).

Still, stereotypes usually arise from some core truth. And it’s some fun in a long draining day. Here we go! (Images from AI.)

How to spot a Democrat:

• Handmade jewelry. Made individually by humans. Bonus if it’s in the style of Native Americans or South Americans. Bonus points for colored stones.
• Flowing dresses
• Flaming gay men (youngish, in shape, tight shirts, dyed hair)
• African (not African American, Africans from Africa)
• Generally less put together – don’t care as much how they look

How to spot a Republican:

• Women with blond-dyed hair, dyed fairly recently
• Boating clothes (the right kinds of shorts or shirts)
• Structural dresses
• Kitty heels. I don’t know what these are, but my partner assures me it’s dead on.
• Clothes with African animal patterns: Leopard, Zebra, Cheetah
• Generally more put together – more care put into personal appearance

Non-predictors: In some ways, this was the most interesting list. What stereotypes didn’t stand up to testing?

• Golfing wear was not a predictor.
• T-shirts were not a predictor.
• Initially it seemed like the jerks who barely look at you were Republican, but then there was a string of obnoxious Democrats. Maybe they were DEI jerks.

This list will evolve in the Georgia runoff next month.

Yesterday I worked the Georgia General Primary Election. It’s a long day. You report for duty at 5:30 am and go home around 8:00 pm. I’m not so young anymore, by hour fifteen I was struggling to stay locked in to the job.

• I worked with this same group last year, and will work with them next month for the runoffs. Every person involved with the process is a true professional. I’m pretty sure every worker in my district is solidly Democratic. I guarantee not one voter could tell, everyone was treated the exact same.
• No one can cheat. There are a ridiculous number of systems and checks. The easiest way to think of it is that every step has both a physical and electronic ‘copy’. If you could figger how to jigger one then the other one wouldn’t match. There are a lot of cross checks. I don’t see how it could be done. It would make an interesting Oceans movie.

• There are so many checks, actually too many to be optimally effective. There are far more opportunities for honest mistakes when the many numbers and serial IDs and counts and inventory checklists and zero tapes and check this box in the presence of another sworn official and you can’t believe how much there is and many numbers are copied by hand from point A to B even though there is a perfectly good computer than could do it all. Because of the threat of lawsuits, more and more steps have been added, often making the overall process worse. Additionally, the documentation of procedures are never exactly correct. And elections are of course very intermittent – it’s hard to be perfect with skills that you only use once a year or so.
• If there is a way to cheat, it would have to be in the software, and at “headquarters” (not individual machines). The cheating couldn’t stand up to a recount because all the printed ballots are saved. But it is pathetic that we are using 3^rd party voting machines with proprietary software. The core problems of how to code election software were solved long ago. All states should mandate that all election software be open source. (Here are some of the many software tools already out there). It’s reasonable for anyone (not just Republicans) to be suspicious of fraud when they can’t see how it works and have to “trust the software”.
• You would think being a poll worker (checking you in and getting your voting card ready) is simple. It is simple for 98% of the voters. But every edge case better be handled exactly right. What do you do with the guy who starts voting, then changes his mind which primary to vote in but the system isn’t cancelling his votes correctly so his vote is in limbo. The person who arrives at 6:55 pm in the wrong district but doesn’t have time to get to the right place. The guy with a shirt saying “Women can vote” – is that partisan political speech (banned) or generic support for voting? The drivers license with a picture that doesn’t quite look like this person but doesn’t quite not look like them. The person who sneaks out an iphone while voting (banned) for a few seconds, does their ballot need to be struck?  The woman who asks are these ballots going to end up in Trumps hands like the Fulton County ones, how to respond? And many more.
• Fortunately, we are a quiet district. There’s a couple well known assholes who like to yell at everybody and cause trouble but they are expected and handled. Our manager is incredible at working with people nicely, getting them to follow the law without raising anyone’s temper. She was a librarian for many years – we could all learn from her.
• Many voters say “Thanks for volunteering”, “You folks are saving the country”, and other nice things. It is nice, but it gets weird quick. Is this what it’s like to be a soldier, constantly being thanked for your service? We say, “Thank you for voting!”  And we are paid. Not very much, but we are not volunteers.
• If you know me (Muttrox) personally, you might be wondering why I am just a clerk. Does it seem a bit beneath me? I sure thought so! C’mon, I have a rich varied background in IT and data analytics, I’m comfortable with technology, I’m an expert at building and using systems to gather data to come to a conclusion. You might think I’d be running the show. That was the plan! After serving as an recount observer in 2024, I my personal contribution to democracy was to be an election worker. I signed up for a manager role. The county asked me to start as a poll worker. They were right. There is a lot to learn. Next month will be my third cycle as a poll worker. Then I plan to move up to assistant manager. It’ll be the November midterms — the big time!

Everyone has correctly touted this as one of the best games of the year, maybe of the decade. They’re right, it was! I had to watch it two days after it happened (I was working the election, more on that soon). I already knew who won, who was transcendental, and so on. Normally I’d move on to the next game, but I tuned in for a few minutes and then watched the whole thing. It was still a great watch. Everything professional basketball should be.

Why?

• It featured the top players of the league. Not your Jalen Brunson, Jaylen Brown, Donovan Mitchell, Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Maxey, etc. The top three players in the NBA are obviously Wemby, SGA, and Jokic, whatever order you put them in. We had two of the top three players going at it.
• Wemby is just ridiculously entertaining to watch. One of my good friends who has steadily soured on the NBA is coming back just for Wemby. It’s not just his physical talents, as incredible as they are. It’s the sense that on any play you might see something that no other human being has ever done. Literally. It’s seeing every other player, star or not, completely rethink their strategy based on him. And his attitude. He is driven. In a good way. He gives a shit when others don’t. His attitude singl-handedly saved the All Star game. He is arrogant, but appropriately so. He doesn’t mind showing emotion. He isn’t fake humble. He thinks he’s the best and goes out to prove it every game. He doesn’t bitch and moan to refs, he doesn’t do cheap shots, he doesn’t flop – he just plays basketball every night. He’s ferocious.
• OKC is also  very entertaining. I’m on record as not liking SGAs game, but damn, even when he’s bad he’s good. Where other players jab step or change speed in one step, SGA does it within the same step. I don’t know how he leans so much without taking a step, how do you guard it? I love Chet, I love Caruso, and watching the whole team play defense is a joy. Just running hard and going all out goes a long way.
• Both teams play different than other teams. It wasn’t an endless series of drive/kick/3-point attempts.
• Both teams trying all out.
• The game was close the whole way. You didn’t have to wait until the fourth quarter to see what was going to happen.
• Overtime! And overtime again!
• The home crowd was great. It was a sea of blue. OKC didn’t have to ask their fans to buy tickets. They yelled and supported the whole game.
• The in-arena noise was kept down. You could hear the fans cheering because they weren’t blaring all the stupid noises every other team does. This is an enormous pet peeve of mine, I give this feedback to the Hawks every year. When your team is good, you don’t need to cater to the 10-year olds. It was such a pleasure to watch basketball.

I dunno. What can you say. An epic game. I can’t wait for Game 2 tonight.

Another repeat passenger. I remembered her because her depressing life. She works long hours at Family Dollar and is so tired she can hardly talk. She is in her late twenties but she is already haggard. She lives right next to a MARTA stop in a dump of an apartment and doesn’t have much hope to improve things.

New Years Eve 2025: Driving on major holidays is different. At least that’s what I had heard. I hadn’t done it because (a) my car was in the shop for a while (unrelated to Uber), and (b) I spend time with my own family on holidays. But New Years Eve is a dumb holiday, we’re not doing anything, let’s see what it’s like and earn some good money!

Notables:

1. The couple that I picked up from the fancy restaurant. They seemed like they had been dating for a year or two. They weren’t happy. There was dead silence the entire ride. They didn’t say a word. Until two minutes from the dropoff. Suddenly he turned to her and yelled, “So what the fuck are you so mad about!?” “Because the dinner was terrible, that’s why!” “The dinner was terrible? The $400 dinner I saved up and bought you was terrible!? That dinner!? Jesus, wah wah!!!” It got worse from there.

2. The newly engaged couple. I give them five years at most. He was obsessed with a 4-carat ring his grandfather had passed down to him to use for an engagement ring. The ring had somehow been taken back by the other family branch. There was a lot of family drama that was hard to follow. At any rate he had spent $9,000 of his own money on a new ring to replace his grandfathers. $9,000 was a huge amount of money to him. Every time I pivoted to how did you meet or something nice he kept going back to it, could not get past it. She sat quietly the whole ride and left a nice tip.

3. I picked her up from a nice restaurant in Roswell. She got in. I asked how her night was going. She didn’t answer at first. Then she sighed and very quietly said, “I tried. I really did.” I liked her, this 38-year-old divorced content-creator. She was a very nice woman and we had a great conversation. She did not like New Years Eve, she did not like the noise, she did not like the whole idea of forced fun. She never does stuff like this. This year she left herself be talked into it. She went out for several hours across multiple restaurants and clubs to be social — and it was terrible. She was very happy to get home.

Happy New Years 2025 (to 2026)!

There’s not much to say about the actual playoffs. The Hawks are a good team. They are not a great team. The Knicks showed them the difference, they were much better. I was (un)fortunate enough to watch the historic Game 6 bludgeoning from the first 10 rows with the most active commenter at www.muttrox.com. Still, there is reason to be optimistic!

Going into this year, Muttrox said:

• If Porzingis is healthy and Trae Young plays defense, this is a very good team.
• If just one of those is true, this is a good team.
• If neither one is true, this is a sub-.500 team.

Well, Porzingis wasn’t healthy. And Trae Young didn’t play defense. But they got rid of Trae Young (finally!). As soon as Trae was gone, the team started improving. We had one of the two criteria. The Hawks were, as I predicted, a pretty good team. “Pretty good” is a huge jump for the Hawks!

The Hawks have not been a good team for a long time. Here are The Hawks wins by season:

• 2017-2018: 24
• 2018: 29
• 2019: 20
• 2020: 41 (shortened season)
• 2021: 43
• 2022: 41
• 2023: 36
• 2024: 40
• 2025: 46

They were over .500 in the weird pandemic year and they were barely above .500 in 2021. That’s it. The 46 wins this year is a significant uptick, the best in a decade. It can be somewhat discounted because every team that wasn’t tanking got more wins off of the tanking teams. But in the second half of the season, after trading Trae Young, they were 20-6, including an 11 game winning streak. That is an elite record and can’t be easily written off. They had reason to feel optimistic going into the playoffs.

Looking ahead to next year:

• Jalen Johnson is a borderline All-star. I expect to him to incrementally improve next year.
• Nickeal-Alexander-Walker justly won the most improved player year. Found money.
• CJ McCollum is occasionally unstoppable. Found money.
• More decent players. Dyson Daniels, Okongwu. Kaminga.
• They have the #7 pick (thank you New Orleans and Chief Chump Joe Dumars), and their own #22 pick in a very rich draft.
• They have cap space. They are currently $36 million below the luxury tax, which is far below the first or second aprons.
• Their new ownership is much smarter, and haven’t made any big unforced errors.

They do need a real center. Who doesn’t? They were not able to replace Porzingis. In the playoffs, KAT and Mitchell both destroyed them, there were no answers.

Unlike The Celtics, The Hawks are not a championship contender. But they did improved significantly last season. They will likely improve more next season. I look for the Hawks to get 50+ wins next year and be in the playoff picture all year.

(This entire post may be motivated reasoning. I have season tickets and they are much more valuable if the team is good.)

It’s been sixteen years since I did this last. I got old, I don’t blatantly break traffic laws as much.

Today was second generation “Muttrox Goes to Court”. My son did an illegal U-turn. No one was around, it was perfectly safe. But a cop was right there and got him.

The logistics of his court appearance were tricky. He is in college. He had to come back home (a five hour drive) for his court date last month. When he went to court they said one of his parents had to be present. He had to reschedule and come back today with me. Why did I need to be there? At least we go Muttrox goes to court, second generation.

Court is less interesting these days. All kinds of cases used to be thrown together, now they bring all the traffic incidents in on the same day. Efficient. Boring. I mostly get diverted to the solicitor these days, and so I don’t sit and watch others as much.

Every other court date I’ve had in Georgia has been at DeKalb Country Municipal Court. This one was in Dunwoody, one mile away from the house. The suburbs. Nice new court space, relaxed citizens and officers, much calmer. When we sat down a nice court officer came over and showed us how to fill out the forms. My son had the same clipboard as last time. He recognized the graffiti.

Like usual, we just wanted to avoid the points on our insurance. AI estimated a 25% increase in our premiums from this illegal U-turn, yikes! We wanted to pay the fine and move on with life. We asked for a pre-trial negotiation with the solicitor. Fortunately, Dunwoody’s goal was the same as ours. They don’t want to hold trials, they don’t want the case (and revenue) moved to the county, they want to take their cut and move on.

Our solicitor was a yapper. I mentioned something about the nice facilities they had here and ended up in a 15-minute conversation about municipal buildings. It was sort of interesting. This building was a converted bank. They had a secured room for prisoners in manacles and belt chains, most courts don’t have that. The generous space meant less stress on people (some with mental issues) in a stressful situation. The discussion kept going. I recently read Talk: The Science of Conversation, I was well-armed to go as long as she wanted. You want small talk, I got small talk. The more we talked, the more likely she’d let us off easy.

An illegal U-turn is an astonishing 3 points. It only takes 4 points in a year to have your license suspended! Dunwoody knew that the penalty in points and insurance was huge, that’s why they mandated a parent be present. Ah I see. She gave us a sob story about someone who made a small traffic violation and killed two people, she looked deep into my son’s soul to make sure he was a good kid, then let us off easy. He takes 4 hours of an online course, we pay the fine afterwards, all done. Nothing even goes on the record. We left under an hour.

Been a while. Random collection of funny or interesting links.

• Guinessun Dorma
• Bad Space comics. Dark, depressing, and memorable.
• Teaching gets Real
• Gen Alpha graduation speech
• Oregon Trail! For real! This was cutting edge technology in my childhood.
• Mr. Big covers Baba O’Riley. Paul Gilbert is amazing.
• On a Plate. I repost this every few years. It is still the best encapsulation of why I’m a liberal.

Let’s calm down a bit about data centers and water and energy. Questions don’t use that much water. The water usage isn’t high compared to many other ordinary activities. Overall AI usage in 2025 was around 0.5% of total worldwide electricity, 0.2% of total energy.

Celtics lose game 7 to Philadelphia 76ers

The Celtics lost to The Philadelphia 76ers yesterday in Game 7 to get knocked out of the playoffs in round 1.

It’s easy to see the bad side. Going into the playoffs, The Celtics were favored by many to win the East. Instead, they didn’t even get out of round one. It was the first time the 76ers have ever come back like that. Beating the Sixers has been a constant during my NBA lifetime. I’m sure many will be panicking.

They shouldn’t. The Celtics lost fair and square. Mazzulla tried every lineup under the sun for Game 7, but there was no answer for Embiid. This healthy Embiid played like an MVP again. And when you add Paul George, Maxey, and Edgecombe… that’s quite a good team. I don’t know if they’ll beat the Knicks, but it’s definitely possible.

The Celtics have some good excuses.

They had five or so wide-open shots in the last couple minutes and missed all of them. Some look at that as a lack of shooting skill. I see it as some bad luck when it was needed most.

Jayson Tatum sat out the game, I suspect that decision will be brutally second-guessed.

And we have to call out the terrible support coaches. One coach deliberately held on to the ball too long and got a technical in the first quarter. Another one told Mazzulla to call for a challenge on an obvious foul call. Real points lost from dumb support coaches.

Excuses only go so far, and Philly would have their share of excuses as well if they had lost. Last night the 76ers were the better team.

The Bigger Picture

Although the Celtics got knocked out earlier than expected, it was a great season. A marvelous season. Why?

Let’s reset the clock. Let’s put on our Brad Stevens GM hat and reset the clock.

The Celtics bought many free agents over the last few years. They built a super team. That stacked team won the 2024 title. But a team built like that isn’t sustainable. We were far over the salary cap(s), and the penalties for repeatedly violating the salary cap are too large. We had to dump salary this year. Even if Tatum hadn’t had a season ending injury this team would have been ripped up this year.

The Celtics started this season without Jason Tatum, Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis, Luke Kornet, and Jrue Holiday. They were left with Jaylen Brown as their star, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard as two more good players, and a bunch of nobodies. They even had to trade away Anfernee Simons (their only good off-season acquisition) for the dried out husk of Nikola Vucevic. They were predicted to win around 41 games and be a play-in team. Instead, they were incredible.

They were supposed to tank. The obvious strategy was to keep Tatum out for the whole year, to stink it up, and come back next year with Tatum and a fantastic new rookie. Everyone knew that except Brad Stevens, Joe Mazzulla, Jaylen Brown, and so on. The rest of the league could call it a gap year, these Celtics said all along they were competing for a title.

Brown took on the burden. He elevated himself from star to superstar and justly made first team. Mazzulla evolved the strategies from the superteam, adapting his analytical approach to the talent he had. The group of nobodies quickly grew up. No one knew their name, but they got results. Queta, Walsh, Scheierman, Garza, Harper, Hugo… easily the cheapest supporting cast in the league with the lowest expectation. None of them had a resume or NBA experience. Yet they got results. In the end, the Celtics delivered a stunning 56 wins, 15 games over expectations. They entered the playoffs as the number two seed. Most teams would salivate over this kind of “gap year”.

They are now well positioned for next year. Although they still need to stay under the second apron, by being so ruthless this year, they have a great deal more financial flexibility next year. I honestly don’t fully understand the rules here… I think they now have a mid-level exception ($15-16 MM) they can use to get a quality rotation player. They now have a large trade exception of $27.7 MM they can use to get another piece. They have several players who overperformed this year and will be even better next year. Tatum looks as good as ever, maybe better with all that rest. They have another full year of Tatum and Brown in the primes of their career. This a team with a huge number of assets and good reason to be optimistic going into next year.

So. It’s a shame The Celtics couldn’t close out the 76ers. But this season was an incredible success. Celtics fans should feel delighted with the season that was. They are well positioned to be dominant again next year. Let’s go Celtics!