Celtics Fans Hoping For Strategic Tank Aren’t Thinking Things Through
Tanking doesn't happen in Boston.
A lot of Boston Celtics fans before the season were pushing for a full-blown tank job in 2025-26. Heck, plenty of pundits were, too. With Jayson Tatum out for most of the season, and with Boston losing a handful of rotational players, tons of people considered tanking the most prudent decision for Boston.
On the flip side, no one in the Celtics organization ever acknowledged that tanking in 2025-26 was an option. Celtics president Rich Gotham and president of basketball operations Brad Stevens maintained in pressers that winning was the priority. Joe Mazzulla would never be interested in tanking, neither would a Celtics roster that, despite being without JT, didn’t receive nearly enough respect for having a core of Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser.
Even if you undervalue Boston’s current depth chart, though, or don’t believe in the competitive and philosophical advantages to steering clear of a tank (always), there’s another reason entirely why it wouldn’t make any sense for the Celtics to tank this season.
CLNS Media’s Noa Dalzell did well to point out this reason. Even if the Celtics tried to tank this season, they’d still be thoroughly out-tanked by a handful of other awful teams.
While it’s not hard to imagine the Pacers getting out of the gutter at some point due to the magic of Rick Carlisle, you can count on the Nets, Pelicans and Wizards to be very bad for the rest of the season, although the Wiz are definitely a step above New Orleans and Brooklyn.
There are other teams to think about, too, as Dalzell alluded to. The Memphis Grizzlies (3-6 currently) don’t look headed in a winning direction, especially with all of the Ja Morant drama unfolding.
Additionally, the Sacramento Kings (3-5) are more or less terrible, and the Utah Jazz (3-5), though looking better than expected under maestro Will Hardy, just lost Walker Kessler for the season.
Unless your argument is that the Celtics should be tanking simply to hope that the basketball gods miraculously reward them with a top pick the way the Dallas Mavericks benefitted in 2025, there is no argument.
For the Celtics right now, the negatives of tanking far outweigh the positives, of which there are none.
Moreover, we haven’t even mentioned yet that Tatum might return late in the season. This means that if Boston is good enough to get into the playoffs, and JT comes back healthy, anything can happen.
