When a new season is about to begin, the one thing everyone looks forward to is seeing who the starting five for their favorite teams will be. It’s an integral part of how a team plans to enter the season, and a coach usually knows head-on whom he plans to put on his starting lineup. However, Boston Celtics’ head coach doesn’t consider it as big a deal as people make it out to be.
The Celtics are at par with the Los Angeles Lakers with the number of titles they have under their franchise name. Last season, they were inches away from reaching the Finals, but the Miami Heat turned out to be a better team. With a young core, they will continue to be the dominant team they are.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have been the backbone of the team’s success. With a good supporting cast, they are easily one of the top teams in the East.
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So, with a star-studded team laid out, wouldn’t it be easy for Stevens to pick the starting five? Well, it looks like he still hasn’t made up his mind, and for good reason.
Starting five is not a big deal for the Celtics head coach
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It was a question that Stevens did not want to answer. But he shed some light on where they are in choosing the starting five. “We are very much in the evaluation phase,” he said on Wednesday afternoon.
“I know it’s a question you have to ask and I know it’s something that everybody talks about, but starting is so often inconsequential to what happens throughout the whole game. I think starting the second half has an even bigger impact.
There is a mindset that bench players aren’t as good as the starters, which Stevens doesn’t like. “Unfortunately, it’s such a big talking point and it’s been made into such a big deal by everyone where I think what we are trying to do is just find how it best fits together. Obviously, the guys that are most impactful to winning will play the most. Whether that means they are starting or not, I don’t know.”
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One can assume that Tatum, Brown, and Marcus Smart will be part of the five. However, if you had to guess, who do you think would make it to the Celtics’ fantastic five?