Celtics enter playoffs embracing adversity, tougher path to repeating as NBA champions

BOSTON (AP) - The Boston Celtics are days away from beginning their quest to repeat as NBA champions. But guard Jrue Holiday is celebrating a much smaller victory.

It was just over a month ago that Holiday missed four games after being diagnosed with a condition called mallet finger, a unique tendon injury that caused the tip of his right pinky finger to stay bent.

After a painful month of not being able to move the finger while a cast kept it straightened, he was recently fitted with a more flexible brace.

"It feels kind of weird. I haven't moved it in like six weeks, that knuckle part," Holiday said this week. "But it seems like it's all right."

And that could also be the Celtics in a nutshell entering the playoffs as they try to become the first repeat NBA champions in nearly a decade: stirred but not shaken.

The Celtics are, in fact, experiencing a lot of deja vu as they look to defend the Larry O'Brien Trophy they hoisted last season, and become the first repeat champions since the Golden State Warriors did it in 2018. Even if star Jayson Tatum isn't willing to call these upcoming playoffs a title defense.

"We're not defending the championship we won last year. Nobody can take it from us," Tatum said. "But last year is last season. That's out the window."

Still, things are trending in the right direction for Boston.

The Celtics posted a second straight 60-win regular season. And like last year, Tatum is coming off another All-Star season with scoring, rebound and assist numbers that mirror those he put up leading into last year's run.

Though unlike last season there is a young, improved and healthy Cleveland Cavaliers team perched at the top of the Eastern Conference. And this time, reigning conference and Finals MVP Jaylen Brown begins the postseason with health concerns.

He continues to work his way back from a bone bruise in his right knee that hampered him during the final stretch of the regular season. But he’s been a full participant in practices this week and appears on course to be ready when the Celtics’ first-round series against Orlando begins Sunday.

Those are all challenges the second-seeded Celtics believe they're built to take on.

"I think it's do whatever it takes to win," Holiday said of the team's mindset. "We've seen people step up throughout the whole year - I guess the last two years. We'll continue to do that."

Boston has plenty of reasons to have confidence they can make a run back to the Finals.

While they did struggle at home, going just 28-13 at TD Garden this season, the Celtics set a franchise record with a 33-8 mark on the road, just one win shy of the NBA record held by the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors (34).

Along the way they again finished top 5 in team defensive rating and were second in offensive rating behind the 64-win Cavaliers a year after finishing at the top of the league in that category.

This has also been a breakout season by reserve guard Payton Pritchard. He is a leading candidate for NBA Sixth Man of the Year honors after averaging a career-high 14.3 points and finishing with 255 made 3-pointers - the second most in a single season in Celtics' history behind only the 265 made by teammate Derrick White this season.

Of the previous five teams to win NBA title, four lost in the second round the following season. And one, the Los Angeles Lakers that won in the Florida bubble during the 2019-20 pandemic season, exited in the first round in their attempt to defend.

It's a fate that Holiday knows all to well. He won the championship with Milwaukee in 2021 only to lose in the second round - the conference semifinals - the following season to Boston.

"We thought we had a chance of going back-to-back. Sometimes things happen. Health is a big part. And a little bit of luck," Holiday said. "But I think it was preparing for our own journey and doing it worrying about us and worrying about the things we can control."

He's eager to see if his new team has the mental toughness to do what the Bucks could not.

"I think for us it's about doing it again … who can do it multiple times, and when you go through something like we did last year we're kind of bonded forever," Holiday said. "So, to go back into the trenches, to go back to war with your guys is always something fun."