Sports Illustrated projection has Celtics winning 47 games, finishing 5th in East in 2015-16
Last season the Celtics were 40-42. However, they went 24-12 over their final 36 games (44 percent of the regular season). This year's squad should be better. As I wrote a few weeks ago while discussing the benefits of David Lee, a win total in the high 40s seems like a legitimate possibility.
A friend of mine recently asked me to pick a number, to which I responded "47-48 wouldn't surprise me." You can imagine how pleased I was shortly thereafter to read this Sports Illustrated article projecting Boston at 47.4 victories in 2015-16.
Author Will Laws calculated his predictions based on Win Shares, "a statistic that aims to quantify how many wins each player contributes to his team in a given season." He used numbers from 2014-15, so Lee coming over from Golden State and Amir Johnson from Toronto definitely works in the Celtics' favor.
Here's what Laws writes about the C's:
The rebuilding job at the Garden continues to zoom along without a hitch. The Celtics will be a ton of fun to watch in 2015-16, and should expect to improve on their playoff seeding from last season.
Acquiring Lee gives Boston some much-needed scoring down low, as well as a respected, team-first veteran with championship experience. And it’s somewhat of a miracle that Danny Ainge was able to convince Johnson to sign for two years and $16 million after the power forward had earned himself a more ludicrous deal in Toronto.
The metric is clearly an inexact science--the Raptors are first in the East at 52.9, followed by the Cavs (51.4), Bulls (51.2), Hawks (50.8) and Celtics--but hey, I'll take it.
Follow Mark Vandeusen on Twitter @LucidSportsFan