Celtics: the offseason so far
the record
The desk keeps a day-by-day record of everything that happens to the Boston Celtics: results with the players who decided them, injury changes, roster moves, reports, milestones and the schedule ahead. The story of the offseason is written from that record every week; the timeline below is the record itself, each line linked to the page that proves it.
The projection
all 30 teams →The season depends most on Derrick White (15.5 wins without him), Neemias Queta (10.9 wins without him), Paul George (3.5 wins without him), Sam Hauser (2.5 wins without him) and Mitchell Robinson (1.4 wins without him): on/off from 2025-26, details under Injuries. Computed Thu, Sep 10; the method is on the methods page.
Day by day
the record starts with the first news of the seasonThe franchise today
Updated 2026-09-09Now
Joe Mazzulla enters this season as head coach of a Celtics core built mostly through the draft and one enormous trade this summer. Jayson Tatum, in Boston since 2017, still anchors the roster, playing alongside Derrick White, Payton Pritchard and Paul George, who arrived when the Celtics sent Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers for George and two first-round and two second-round picks, closing the book on the Brown-Tatum era. Last season Boston went 56-26, with the No. 2 offense and the No. 4 defense in the league and a net rating that ranked fourth overall. The roster runs 19 players deep with an average age of 26.3. Payroll sits at $201.4 million across 16 contracts, above the $200.4 million luxury tax line and pressed up against the $209.0 million first apron, with Tatum's $58.5 million, George's $54.1 million and White's $30.3 million as the three biggest deals. Boston holds its own first-round picks in 2027 and 2030, a protected 2028 first, and swap rights in 2027 and 2029, while owing second-round picks to San Antonio, Oklahoma City and Brooklyn. There have been no further trades since the Brown-for-George swap, and the summer's talk has mostly been about how that deal reshapes the frontcourt around Tatum.
Identity and rivalries
The Celtics play deliberate, half-court basketball, walking the ball up at a pace of 95.58 possessions a game and leaning on ball movement and switching defense. That identity is inseparable from history: 18 championships, an NBA record, built first by Red Auerbach, Bob Cousy and Bill Russell in the 1950s and 60s and added to as recently as 2023-24, when Boston beat Dallas for the title. That title total sits one ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers' 17, and every Celtics-Lakers series still plays out against that number, a rivalry that goes back to Finals meetings across decades. Philadelphia is the sharper, current rival: the 76ers eliminated Boston in the first round this past spring after the Celtics blew a 3-1 series lead, a defeat that still stings entering this season.
Home, owners and numbers
Boston has been controlled by Boston Basketball Partners L.L.C. since 2003, when Paul Gaston sold the team to a group led by H. Irving Grousbeck, Wycliffe Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca. Home is still the parquet floor that has defined the Celtics' court for generations, worked into their City edition uniforms as a running motif. The rafters carry more retired numbers than any other team in American sports, 23 in all, with Bob Cousy and Bill Russell among the names hanging there alongside 49 total Hall of Famers connected to the franchise, plus Red Auerbach, whose signature appears on Boston's City jerseys as a mark of how much of the identity still traces back to him.
What they are chasing
Boston is chasing a 19th championship and a return to the conference finals. The nearer-term issue is health: Tatum played just 16 games last season, and how he and Paul George, at 36, hold up together is the swing factor for a real push. Ownership is also watching the ledger, with the $221.7 million second apron now the line the front office is trying to stay under. Whether trading Jaylen Brown for George and four picks was a fair swap, and whether this roster can finally get past Philadelphia, is what fans argue about all fall.
The Boston Celtics were formed on June 6, 1946, by Walter A. Brown as one of the original eight teams in the Basketball Association of America, joining the NBA on August 3, 1949 after the BAA-NBL merger. They play at TD Garden, shared with the Bruins, and hold NBA records for most championships, with 18, and most wins of any franchise. In 1950 they signed Chuck Cooper, becoming the first NBA franchise to draft a black player.
The dynasty began when coach Red Auerbach acquired Bill Russell in 1956. With Russell, Bob Cousy, and Tom Heinsohn, the Celtics won their first title in 1957, then eight straight championships from 1959 to 1966, the longest title streak in U.S. professional sports. That era's supporting cast included Don Nelson, K. C. Jones, John Havlicek, Sam Jones, Satch Sanders, and Bill Sharman. In 1966 Russell became player-coach, the first African American head coach in U.S. pro sports, and led back-to-back titles in 1968 and 1969 before retiring, having won 11 championships in 13 seasons, the most by any NBA player.
After a rebuild, Dave Cowens, Havlicek, and Jo Jo White won championships in 1974 and 1976 under coach Tom Heinsohn. The 1980s brought the "Big Three" of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish, revived the rivalry with the "Showtime" Lakers, and produced titles in 1981, 1984, and 1986, the latter two under coach K. C. Jones. Maxwell was Finals MVP in 1981. The team then struggled through the deaths of 1986 draft pick Len Bias and star Reggie Lewis, and through much of the 1990s and early 2000s.
A new "Big Three" formed in 2007 around captain Paul Pierce with the additions of Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett; under coach Doc Rivers they beat the Lakers for the 17th championship in 2008 and lost to the Lakers in the 2010 Finals. After Garnett and Pierce were traded to the Brooklyn Nets for four first-round picks, the Celtics drafted Jaylen Brown (2016) and Jayson Tatum (2017). "The Jays" reached the 2022 Finals, losing to the Golden State Warriors, then beat the Dallas Mavericks in 2024 for the 18th championship.
The Celtics' name and mascot, Lucky the Leprechaun, nod to Boston's Irish population and the barnstorming Original Celtics. Their rivalry with the Lakers, second in titles with 17, peaked in the 1960s and 1980s; the two franchises have met a record 12 times in the Finals, with Boston winning nine. Forty-one Basketball Hall of Famers have played for the Celtics, and four Celtics — Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, Dave Cowens, and Larry Bird — have won NBA MVP, part of an NBA-record 10 MVP awards by Celtics players. In May 2025, the franchise sold to William Chisholm for $6.1 billion, a deal later passed as the second-highest-valued sports franchise transaction in U.S. history after the Lakers' roughly $10 billion sale.