After winning the first two games of the 2024 NBA Finals at home, the Boston Celtics are halfway home to raising their 18th championship banner in the rafters at TD Garden. The series now shifts to Dallas, where Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving will look to revitalize the Mavericks’ chances in the series with the home crowd behind them.
Right now, Celtics fans probably don’t want to hear about breaking up a team that is on the doorstep of a championship. But the good news is for Boston fans, this will be far from a “break up the Jays” article.
The Celtics posted a historic regular season, and have won 14 of their first 16 playoff games. For other organizations, they will certainly be looking at Boston’s coaching staff to poach assistants who have helped orchestrate this team’s extraordinary success. There are certainly talented assistants on Mazzulla’s staff that will one day be head coaches in the NBA. In fact, one already has his lined up.
With one eye on the future, here are four players and two coaches who could be playing their final series in Boston.
The 27-year-old Svi Mykhailiuk joined the Celtics on a one-year deal back in August. Boston is his seventh NBA organization after Mykhailiuk was a second-round pick of the Los Angeles Lakers back in 2018.
In 2023-24, Mykhailiuk averaged a mere 4 points per game while also posting 10.1 minutes, 1.2 rebounds, and 0.9 assists. After averaging 10.6 last season in his stint with the Charlotte Hornets, he was unable to replicate that production for the Celtics this season and has been relegated to an end-of-the-bench role.
In the playoffs, Mykhailiuk has only appeared in six of Boston’s 16 postseason contests, while scoring a grand total of five points. As mentioned prior, the Celtics are his seventh organization, so don’t be surprised if he adds another jersey to his collection after his free agency this offseason.
