The Blue & White

by Angelo Santos

Ever since Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum was diagnosed with COVID-19 on January 9th, everything has gone downhill for the team.

The Celtics ended their season with a 36-36 record and sitting 7th in the Eastern Conference. Although that isn’t bad, it is not good for their expectations. Last year the Celtics were two games away from making the NBA finals, now they are barely in the playoffs.

The Celtics longest winning streak this season was 6 games, and that isn’t very good. Compared to last year, the longest winning streak they went on was a 10 game winning streak. That is very impressive, but they haven’t accomplished something like that this year.

A lot of people ask, “why are the Celtics struggling?” The main reasons are because point guard Kemba Walker missed 18 games, Marcus Smart has missed 19 games, All-star forward Jaylen Brown has missed 3 games and other All-star Jayson Tatum has missed 6 games while struggling with COVID-19 symptoms.

Of course, the biggest hit to the Celtics came at the very end of the season, when they announced on May 10th that Brown would undergo season-ending wrist surgery.

On March 25th the Celtics acquired Orlando Magic Guard, Evan Fournier, who is a great player and will hopefully help the Celtics through the playoffs.

This season has been a mess for a lot of teams besides the Celtics, though, mainly because of COVID-19. Multiple players have contracted the virus, and that means they can’t play for at least 2 weeks and have to go through conditioning when they are ready to return. It hurts a lot of teams but that is the rule for now.

The Celtics have the most days of players missed because of COVID-19 protocols. By early April, Celtics players lost over 130 game days to COVID-19.