When the Boston Celtics hoisted the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the 18th time in franchise history on Monday night, they became the sixth different NBA champion in as many years.
That has happened only once over a six-season span, from 1974-75 through 1979-80, a period when NBA parity was at an all-time high. Most of the league’s history has been marked by dynasties, including the way Boston and the Los Angeles Lakers (who won in 1980) subsequently dominated the 1980s, combining to take all but one title over a nine-year period.
Since the Golden State Warriors completed their stretch of five consecutive Finals appearances and three championships, no dynasty has risen in their place. That’s partially by design, as the NBA has tweaked the salary rules to make it more difficult for teams to retain their title-winning cores without paying massive penalties in terms of luxury tax and flexibility.
Although this is Boston’s first championship since 2008, the Celtics have been a constant in a time of turnover, reaching six of the past eight Eastern Conference finals and losing the 2022 Finals before breaking through this season. Can Boston become the next great NBA dynasty, or is the pull of parity too strong?
Let’s look at the factors that have worked against past champions and break down the Celtics’ chances.
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Tim Legler: This is just the beginning for the Celtics
Tim Legler joins Scott Van Pelt and describes why this is just the beginning for the Boston Celtics after winning their first NBA title in 16 years.
A shortened offseason
The way the NBA’s stoppage of play for the COVID-19 pandemic compressed the league’s schedule from 2019-20 through 2021-22 is an often overlooked explanation for recent parity. Consider that from August 2020 to June 2022, the league played three full postseasons in a span of 22 months. Teams such as the Celtics that played deep into the NBA’s 2020 bubble playoffs were hit hardest. It’s surely no coincidence that only one of the four teams that reached the conference finals that year (the Denver Nuggets) won a playoff series in 2021, and none got back to the conference finals — just the fourth time that had happened since the playoffs expanded to 16 teams in 1984.
Although the 2021 offseason wasn’t shortened as dramatically, none of those conference finalists returned the following year either. Instead, the East saw a rematch of the 2020 conference finals, with Boston again facing the Miami Heat a year after both lost in the first round.
Since then, we’ve seen more typical turnover among teams with deep playoff runs. The Celtics and Heat met a third time in the 2023 conference finals, though Boston was the only repeat conference finalist this spring and the only one of the other three to make the 2023 playoffs.
The Celtics will have to deal with guard Jrue Holiday and forward Jayson Tatum — and possibly guard Derrick White, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski — going from the Finals to playing for USA Basketball in the Paris Olympics this summer, but there won’t be the same kind of rapid turnaround we saw in 2021, when Holiday (along with teammate then-Milwaukee Bucks teammate Khris Middleton and Finals opponent Devin Booker) flew to Tokyo to join the team after the Olympics had already started. Boston has shown it can follow up on one long playoff appearance with another.
Increasing playoff injuries
The Celtics managed to overcome another key factor in recent parity: more frequent playoff injuries. Boston won despite Kristaps Porzingis missing 12 games in the postseason, including the entirety of its series wins over the Cleveland Cavaliers and Indiana Pacers.
Besides the Celtics’ depth, they also benefited from injuries to opposing stars in all three East series. Jimmy Butler missed the Miami Heat‘s whole matchup against Boston, while All-Star guards Donovan Mitchell and Tyrese Haliburton were both lost to injury midseries.
When he returned during the Finals, Porzingis was a difference-maker for the Celtics, who joined a small but growing group of teams to win a title with a key player missing multiple games in the playoffs. Between 1979 and 2016, just two champions had a player who averaged at least 25 MPG in the playoffs sit out more than one game: the 1996 Chicago Bulls (Toni Kukoc, who missed three) and the 2012 Heat (Chris Bosh, nine).
Three of the past seven champions have overcome a multigame injury to a key player. The 2017 Warriors had Kevin Durant miss two games, while Stephen Curry and Andre Iguodala missed six apiece the following year. Giannis Antetokounmpo also missed two games during the Bucks’ 2021 title run.
Still, the number of playoff runs derailed by injury is far greater. Not counting players sidelined the entire postseason, before 2012 there had never been more than five players in any postseason who missed multiple games while averaging 25-plus MPG. Since then, there’s been an average of seven such players per year.
With health more randomly distributed than talent, the uptick in injuries helps explain why we’re seeing more upsets in the playoffs. Over the past six playoffs, nearly one in three series (31.5%) has been won by the underdog, according to analysis of SportsOddsHistory.com data, as compared to 20% from 2000 through 2018.
Golden State’s titles in 2017 and 2018 demonstrate that a strong enough team can overcome playoff injuries, particularly if it strikes during the early rounds when the level of competition is lower. Yet an ill-timed absence could prevent the Celtics from repeating, just as Middleton missing Milwaukee’s 2022 series with Boston and Anthony Davis‘ injury during the Lakers’ 2021 first-round loss to the Phoenix Suns affected those matchups.
More expensive superstars
This is a subtle factor and perhaps more of an unintentional consequence than an attack on dynasties, but changes in the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA) have made star players more expensive relative to the salary cap than at any point since the last of the contracts signed before the league instituted a maximum player salary in 1999.
When the CBA was in place from 2005 through 2017, the maximum salary was set based on a slightly lower figure than the cap itself. That changed in 2017, when it became a straight percentage of the cap — 25% for players with six or fewer years of service in the league, 30% for players with seven to nine years and 35% for players with 10-plus years.
The 2017 CBA also introduced supermax contracts, which allowed qualifying players (based on All-NBA appearances, MVP or Defensive Player of the Year) to extend or re-sign for up to 35% of the cap on their third contracts, when typically they would have been limited to 30% by their experience. Add in the cap staying relatively static since the NBA had to play temporarily with limited or no fans during the COVID-19 pandemic and stars — who have continued to get raises year to year — have taken a far higher percentage of their teams’ salary caps.
Since 2010, when the Lakers won the championship with Kobe Bryant making 40% of the cap, only Stephen Curry for the 2021-22 Warriors (41%) has made more than 35% of the cap for a title team. Curry in 2017-18 (precisely 35% at the start of his supermax contract), LeBron James in 2019-20 (34%) and 2015-16 (33%) and Curry’s teammate Klay Thompson (34% in 2021-22) are the other players on title teams since 2010 making more than 31% of the cap.
This season, eight teams had players making than more than 31% of the cap, including two each for Golden State (Curry and Thompson), the LA Clippers (Paul George and Kawhi Leonard), Bucks (Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard) and Suns (Bradley Beal and Durant). Of those eight teams, only the Nuggets (with Nikola Jokic at 35% in the first year of his supermax deal) won a playoff series.
The Celtics’ extended run has come with stars Tatum and Jaylen Brown on team-friendly second contracts. Boston got a break when Tatum missed out on All-NBA honors by a single spot in 2020-21, meaning his rookie extension started at 25% of the cap rather than 30% had he made it. It’s the only time in the past five seasons Tatum hasn’t made All-NBA.
Due to the modest salaries for Brown and Tatum, the Celtics haven’t been forced to sacrifice depth for star power. They were able to add Holiday and Porzingis, the team’s two highest-paid players this season, without pushing too deep into the luxury tax.
The financial bill will start coming due for Boston next season, when Brown begins a supermax extension that is — for a few more weeks — the largest in NBA history. Tatum, eligible to sign a supermax that begins in 2025-26 on July 6, will soon surpass him. That’s when the league’s new second apron extensions will start hampering the Celtics.
More restrictions on taxpaying teams
The most recent CBA, which took effect July 1, 2023, takes aim at high-spending teams with new limitations on teams that spend beyond the second apron, $17.5 million above the luxury tax line. Those teams, including Boston, were prohibited from using the taxpayer midlevel exception to add talent last offseason. Now they’ll be prevented from aggregating salaries together in trades — something the Celtics did to acquire Holiday and Porzingis — or sending out cash.
Boston should stand apart from recent champions by keeping its full rotation for a repeat bid. All eight Celtics who saw at least 20 minutes of action in the Finals are under contract through 2024-25. Every champion since the 2018 Warriors has lost at least one player who averaged 15-plus minutes per game in the Finals, and only Golden State in 2022 (reserves Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr.) did not lose a player who averaged at least 25 MPG, making their inability to go back-to-back somewhat less surprising.
The question is how long Boston can keep this group together given the looming harshest second apron penalties involving draft picks? Assuming the Celtics don’t shed substantial payroll next season, Boston’s 2032 first-round pick will be frozen from trade. If the Celtics exceed the second apron at least twice between 2025-26 and 2028-29, the 2032 pick would move to the end of the first round.
Based on this rule, teams are likely looking at a two-year window spending above the second apron. Fortunately for Boston, this title team doesn’t count as part of that. But that would mean the Celtics will need to cut payroll by 2026-27 to avoid their pick being sent to the end of the round.
Porzingis, whose extension with Boston runs through 2025-26, could be lost for financial reasons. Alternatively, Boston might have to deal Holiday (signed to an extension through 2027-28) or fellow guard White, eligible for a new contract and a healthy raise starting in 2025-26.
Because the second apron restrictions are just starting to kick in, they don’t help explain why there’s been so much parity over the past half-decade. Nonetheless, they represent the biggest threat to the Celtics keeping this core together for the kind of run we saw from Boston in the 1980s. It gives the Celtics little margin for error over the next two postseasons if they want to invoke the term dynasty.
If not the Celtics, it’s inevitable — based on the NBA’s history — that some team will eventually put together another extended stretch as the league’s dominant team. However, whoever pulls it off will do so in the face of forces conspiring to make it more challenging than ever before.