How have the Celtics so emphatically exceeded expectations this season? How has a team most expected to finish somewhere between sixth and 12th in a bad Eastern Conference become, inarguably, one of the NBA’s best through 57 games?
One simple explanation: Outside of the small handful of rookies and 10-day contracts at the end of Boston’s bench, nearly every player on its roster is enjoying the best season of his career.
A rundown, after the Celtics bludgeoned the Phoenix Suns 97-81 on Tuesday without Jaylen Brown to improve to 38-19 and strengthen their grip on second place in the East:
— Brown, an NBA All-Star starter for the first time, is averaging 29.2 points, 7.0 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game. The only Celtics player ever to match those numbers over a full season: Larry Bird in 1987-88.
— Derrick White, despite posting the worst shooting numbers of his career, is on pace for personal bests in nearly every other category. He ranks third in the NBA in total plus/minus and tied for 11th in blocked shots — as a 6-foot-4 guard.
— In one of the season’s biggest surprises, former fourth-stringer Neemias Queta has emerged as a rock-solid starting center who ranks top-10 in the league in defensive rating and net rating. He’s performed so well that when Boston traded for a proven big man, Nikola Vucevic, earlier this month, it was to complement Queta, not replace him.
— Payton Pritchard transitioned seamlessly from sixth man to starter, then saw his production skyrocket after head coach Joe Mazzulla moved him back to the bench in early February.
In his first seven games as a reserve, Pritchard tallied at least 20 points and seven assists five times. That’s tied for the most by any bench player all season with Miami’s Jaime Jaquez Jr. No one else has more than two.
— Baylor Scheierman, Jordan Walsh, Hugo Gonzalez and now Ron Harper Jr. have given the Celtics a marauding band of high-energy, high-impact wings who rebound like crazy and wreak havoc defensively. In blowout wins over the Lakers and Suns, opponents shot 18-for-60 (30%) against that quartet, per NBA player tracking.
Those players’ resumes entering this season: second-year pro who was a non-rotation player as a rookie, third-year pro who’d never been a rotation player, first-year pro drafted 28th overall and two-way player with 69 minutes of NBA experience, respectively.
The group delivered the defining play of the Phoenix game when Scheierman elevated to contest a shot at the rim, Harper soared in to block it off the backboard and Gonzalez raced the other way for a coast-to-coast Eurostep layup.
Ron’s out here playing spikeball ✋@__RHJR got wayyy up in tonight’s @JetBlue Play of the Game pic.twitter.com/pOLiJR0Ols
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) February 25, 2026
Gonzalez, who turned 20 on Feb. 5, is the only NBA player who ranks in the top 10 in offensive rating (seventh), defensive rating (sixth) and net rating (second). Scheierman is the Celtics’ second-leading rebounder since the start of February, and Harper, who’s seen near-nightly playing time this month, was a combined plus-41 over his first two NBA starts.
— Even Luka Garza, who was pushed out of the rotation after the trade deadline, has had by far his best season, shooting 44.2% from 3-point range while excelling as a screener and offensive rebounder. His 19 games with double-digit points are more than he registered in his first four NBA seasons combined.
The only real exceptions are Vucevic, a 35-year-old former All-Star who just joined the team three weeks ago, and arguably Sam Hauser, whose shooting hasn’t been quite as efficient as it was in years past. But Vucevic has looked like a great addition to Boston’s frontcourt thus far, coming off the bench behind Queta, and Hauser has played well in his expanded role, with the Celtics winning 19 of his last 24 starts.
That kind of across-the-board improvement — much of it coming from players who’d either never been full-time starters or never held regular rotation roles — is not common in the NBA. It’s helped the Celtics go 5-1 in games Brown missed, and win games with 12 different starting lineups.
It also speaks to the quality of Boston’s coaching and development staffs, led by Mazzulla, who’s building a compelling case for NBA Coach of the Year.
Simons injury revealed
Anfernee Simons played in every game during his brief Celtics tenure. But his time in Boston was not injury-free, according to his new head coach.
Billy Donovan, whose Chicago Bulls traded for the veteran guard in the trade-deadline deal that sent Vucevic to Boston, told reporters Tuesday that Simons suffered a left wrist fracture that sidelined him during Celtics training camp.
Simons aggravated the injury on Saturday and sat out Chicago’s last two games.
“He did have some difficulty in Boston … and missed a little bit of time, maybe 10 days with it,” Donovan said, via the Chicago Sun-Times. “The fracture hasn’t quite healed, and I think with him seeing a hand specialist, they decided that once the pain subsides, he’s fine to go back to play. I don’t know how long that’s going to be. If I go off the last time it happened to him in Boston, it was a week to 10 days. That’s where it’s at. I don’t know what will happen (in terms of surgery) at the end of the year.”
The exact timing of Simons’ initial injury was unclear. The Celtics held their first training camp practice on Sept. 30. Simons sat out their preseason opener on Oct. 8, made his debut two nights later and played in every game thereafter. He never appeared on Boston’s injury report.
The free-falling Bulls, who turned over their roster with deadline trades, will have little motivation to rush Simons back. Losers of 10 straight and 13 of 14, Chicago’s priority over the final two months of the season is to improve its draft lottery odds.
Off the rim
Brown, who sat out against the Suns with a right knee contusion, was removed from the Celtics’ injury report and cleared to play Wednesday against the Denver Nuggets on the second night of a back-to-back. The only Boston player unavailable for the nationally televised game was Tatum, who has yet to make his return from offseason Achilles surgery. Worth noting: Tatum has said his first game back will be at TD Garden, and the Celtics play four of their next five at home, including matchups with Brooklyn on Friday and Philadelphia on Sunday. … Sunday’s Celtics-Lakers game averaged 5.6 million viewers, per NBC, making it the most-watched Sunday night NBA game since 2000.
