Fantasy Review For 2018/19 Season:
It was the very first season in Brad Stevens career when he was coaching a favourite instead of a dark horse kind of team. And while everybody had extremely high hopes for Celtics their season ended with the meltdown, and some bad vibes coming from the locker room. What is easy now is to blame Kyrie and the way Gordon Hayward been treated by the coaching staff, but probably what caused all of that mess was simply a fact that many of their young players faced a premature success a season before. If half of your team is more concerned about minutes, shots and role that they get, there is no room for success. In the end it was season to forget in Boston, with most of their players staying put or even taking a step back at their development arcs.
Changes in the offseason
Lost = Kyrie Irving, Al Horford, Terry Rozier, Aron Baynes, Marcus Morris
Added = Kemba Walker, Enes Kanter, Carsen Edwards, Grant Williams
Projected Depth Chart:
| PG | SG | SF | PF | C |
| Kemba Walker | Jaylen Brown | Gordon Hayward | Jayson Tatum | Daniel Theis |
| Marcus Smart | Carsen Edwards | Semi Ojeleye | Grant Williams | Enes Kanter |
| Brad Wanamaker | Tremont Waters | Romeo Langford | Vincent Piorer | Robert Williams |
Positional Battles: C
All of their rotation and roles are set and easy to predict, despite the one position – four players will compete for a starting center job and center minutes at all and as each of them has a different skill set and a different mind set, C rotation might be matchup based and truly unpredictable, what shifts all of this guys to late round flier types.
Fantasy Relevant in leagues with 12- to 15-teams:
He has quite a role to fill, as he takes over Kyrie Irving’s job as a team main star and ballhandler. The bad news for his fantasy owners is that he comes into a really stacked team and his usage and minutes should be noticeably lower than almost 32% in 35 mpg in Charrlotte. For a better context – Kyrie’s usage last season was only 29.6% in 33mpg… and I don’t expect Kemba to reach even that level – much more probable is something around 27-28%. This obviously means less shots, less assists, threes and steals, but on the other hand Stevens has a good track record of using PG of Kemba’s type (Isaiah Thomas was thriving in his system) and playing with better partners we may expect him to raise his FG% to the career high levels.
After many severe injuries a typical process of getting back to optimal disposition takes not only a year in the training room, but also another one on court. To expect great things of Hayward right of the bat was obviously a bit too much. Still, we’ve seen flashes of him being like his former self when the season neared to the end. The real comeback year in fact should be this upcoming season. It’s easy to assume career-year thanks to Stevens’ magic but you would have to ignore that recent season. Still I think that he is heading back to where he belongs, that is top50 in fantasy ranks
After spectacular rookie season many expect him to blossom into fantasy star but there were two obstacles that slowed this hype train down – lower usage, his reluctance to attack the basket and regression in 3P%. Not to mention him being a bit full of himself and begining to play more like he did in Duke – iso heavy style of play based on the log twos not threes, which was unacceptable in the star stucked Celtics team.
However, this year fantasy owners should be more optimistic. Playing along Kemba not-Kyrie should only help him as Walker is much better team player. Also – amazing rookies tend to take a step back in their sophomore season and take a leap in a third. Its exactly the same reason why we expect Donovan Mitchell to be good this year. Lets expect Tatum to be a positive in every category, maybe with the exception for FG%.
He is mostly a FG% streamer, that when given enough minutes should also grant you some rebounds and points. Just dont expect him to play more than 21-23 minutes per game in that Celtics team.
Threes and steals with some decent assists, as he would finally have a chance to perform more ballhandling duties. He is no longer a field goal killer, and it is reasonable to consider him a cheap top80-90 player for the upcoming season (1.8 3PTM, 6as and 2 stl should grant that). Also he is only other than Kemba true point guard on that team.
Could be useful with trades/injuries [or in deeper leagues than 15 teams]:
Jaylen Brown, Daniel Theis, Robert Williams, Grant Williams, Carsen Edwards
Just don’t bother with:
Vincent Poirer, Romeo Langford, Semi Ojeleye
Don’t forget to check the rest of the Boston Celtics fantasy basketball projections..
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