Kendrick Perkins pours cold water on Celtics' back-to-back pursuit
Yesterday at 04:53 PM
Former Boston Celtics big man Kendrick Perkins doesn’t feel good about the chances of his old team winning another NBA championship this season. Perkins says that the Celtics won’t be winning another title, that easily.
"No one in the NBA is scared right now of the Boston Celtics. I'm just letting you know this… Teams are getting better every single offseason."
– Kendrick Perkins
(via @ESPNNBA)pic.twitter.com/i8TTFZzc83
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) September 24, 2024
“At the end of the day teams did stack up in the rest of the league and especially in the Eastern Conference to look at the Celtics eye-to-eye and they are going to do that this season,” Perkins said on ESPN. “It’s hard. Teams are getting better every single offseason.”
Perkins points to both the New York Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers as possible challengers to Boston in the East. The former NBA star says both of those clubs upgraded their rosters respectively, heading into the 2024-25 NBA season. New York added Mikal Bridges, while the 76ers now have Paul George on the roster.
The Celtics won the NBA title in 2024, defeating the Dallas Mavericks in five games. The last time Boston had won a NBA title was in 2008 before that, when Perkins was on the roster.
The Celtics are a contender to win again
The Celtics and their fans respectfully disagree with Perkins. They believe the team can contend for back-to-back titles, and it makes sense why they feel that way. The team returns superstar Jayson Tatum, as well as several other roster pieces that helped the squad this past season. Head coach Joe Mazzulla is also back on the floor in Boston.
Perkins is right, however, that it is difficult for teams to win back-to-back NBA championships. The last squad to do that was the Golden State Warriors, who took the title in 2017 and 2018. The NBA has seen six different teams win the title since that, culminating with the Celtics last season.
If Boston does get through the Eastern Conference again this coming season, it will be interesting to see who they would match up with in the NBA Finals. There are plenty of teams in the West that would love a chance to win a title, including the Denver Nuggets and Nikola Jokic.
“The unique part, and the cool part is, right now, it’s the start of the season, and we gotta start over,” Celtics star Tatum said, per Sports Illustrated. “We gotta build it up from the ground and not look forward to June. We gotta start with our first day of practice and training camp and just get one percent better every day.”
Boston gets their chance to show they can win it all again, starting on October 4. That’s the date of the team’s first preseason game, against the Denver Nuggets.
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