Why the Boston Celtics Are Never Surprised By Wins, Even When Everyone Else Is

The Boston Celtics were not playing along with the line of questioning.

Even after a win most people would characterize as something from surprising, to maybe even shocking, or perhaps a string of expletives muttered with wide eyes and your hands on your head, the Celtics weren’t buying into the premise.

“We said it all year, one through 15, whoever steps on the floor, there's an expectation to put us in position with an opportunity to win,” Joe Mazzulla said after beating Orlando. “We had seven, eight guys, and the expectation is to put us in position to win, to execute, to play hard, to play together. So today is no different than the other 81 times, regardless of who's in, who's out.”

Yeah, but still, those eight guys aren’t exactly fixtures in the league. Baylor Scheierman was the only first round pick on the floor for Boston, and he was the last pick of the round in 2024. Everyone else, except for undrafted Ron Harper Jr., was picked no higher than 38th overall. They were going against a starting Orlando lineup that featured four top-eight picks, including the number one overall pick in 2022, Paolo Banchero.

The Celtics didn’t exactly put a group out there that should have been considered a prime upset candidate. But to a man, they stuck to their script. They didn’t even want to play the “we proved people wrong” card.

“I just feel like we know our group, we know our capabilities,” Harper Jr. said after dropping a career-high 27 in the game. “Some guys just need a chance, so I feel like we all got a chance tonight and we capitalized great, but we definitely didn’t go into the game thinking this is David vs. Goliath thinking we’re like ultimate underdogs. We came into this game expecting to compete and expecting to win at the end of the day.”

In short, the Celtics just don’t want to hear it. They never have. Not this season, anyway. What we witnessed Sunday wasn’t some miracle. It was a microcosm of what this year has been: A bunch of guys who helped the team win in the past weren’t playing, so a bunch of other guys no one believed in started slow, figured things out, and left everyone’s jaws on the floor.

“Luka said it before the game. This is for all the times that we're on the bench, all the times that we wanted an opportunity,” Harper said. “We had a chance to go out there and show it. I just feel like we all went out there with the utmost confidence, all the guys sitting out had a lot of confidence in us. At the end of the day, we just went out there and executed. That was the most important thing."

It’s Celtics culture in a nutshell. Brad Stevens has stocked the roster with the types of people who will buy into what Mazzulla is saying. And Mazzulla has gone out of his way to make sure everyone in that locker room understands that the expectation is the same every time, and that applies to him, too.

“I think you owe it to the guys who are playing,” Mazzulla said before the game. “You owe it to the guys to treat this as if it's the most important game because, one, it's the next one and, two, you have guys playing that have won for us and we will need to be impactful at some point in time. So you treat it as a regular game.”

If the coach is on the sidelines fully invested like this is already a playoff game, then why wouldn't the players? That's culture at its finest. Everyone who is out there is treated like an NBA player because, newsflash, they're all NBA players. The stands were packed with people expecting great effort and hoping for a win, and that's what everyone’s job is.

So they don’t want to hear anything else, especially not from the media, about being surprised by anything. From the first game to the 82nd, the outside world has been talking about the Celtics having something to prove, but that's never been what this season has been about. It’s been about understanding what the team is trying to accomplish, and being ready to jump in whenever needed, because if your number is called, it’s because you’re the right person for the job.

“I think it's the culture that he tried to create in the beginning of the year, training camp, just knowing that everyone on this roster is going to be used and needs to be ready,” Garza said. “I think this was a great example tonight of guys taking advantage of that opportunity. And a lot of these guys, we've been doing it all year in terms of just not knowing when our time is coming, but being ready when it is.”