Boston Celtics: Team awards for each season of the 2010s

2018-19 Awards

Defensive Player: Aron Baynes

Marcus Smart suffered significantly this season, as did most players on the team. In general, this season was one to be forgotten for Boston Celtics fans.

The defensive player during the season, though, is Aron Baynes. Aron Baynes has always been a player not afraid to challenge a dunk. That explains why he has gotten put on a poster by Giannis and other players throughout his career.

That fearlessness is the same thing that helped him on defense, though. His statistics don’t jump out at you or tell a great story, but simply his presence was enough to distract opponents from entering the paint.

His defensive rating was a stout 102.2, a number that jumped to 107 when he sat down. Any increase of five points is certainly a notable one.

An interesting point to note is that opponents averaged just 15 rebounds when he was on the court, but when he sat, the opposition hauled in 36.6.

He only played 16 minutes per game, therefore the numbers may be a little off, and not the best measure of his true value.

Despite that, he still made a huge impact on the game, as evidenced by his 15 opponent points in the paint when he was on the court.

Fan Favorite: Al Horford + Jaylen Brown

This was something that was a tough choice to make.

After evaluating each player, and reminiscing about their seasons last year, the conclusion is that there was no definitive fan favorite. So two were chosen.

Kyrie Irving was wanted out by fans at the end of the year, Jayson Tatum was getting flack for his shooting decisions, Gordon Hayward wasn’t ready to return, which was clear after the first 25 games.

Terry Rozier wasn’t building on his extraordinary playoff run the year prior, and other role players were too inconsistent to garner any significant love from fans.

By default, the two fan favorites were Jaylen Brown and Al Horford. Neither caught any negative attention from fans, and they stayed silent in times when others spoke poorly of the team’s play.

Al embraced his leadership role, and kept internal problems within the locker room. Jaylen did the same thing.

On the court, neither really forced anything, and they attempted to play within the discombobulated system.

Kudos to those two for being nearly the only two that didn’t have negative media attention on them.

MVP: Al Horford

Not much else can be said about Al Horford that has already said.

In this season, Horford 13.6 points, and a team leading 6.7 rebounds. He was second on the team in assists with 4.2, was top five on the team in steals with .9, and led the team in blocks (1.3 per game).

Essentially, Horford did everything he was asked of, and the struggles that the team went through were not the fault of Horford.

He did his thing in the playoffs, locking up Giannis in the first two games of that series before the team unraveled in games three and beyond.

It’s sad that he chose to leave the C’s, but he did what he could to help the team be a championship contender in his four years with the squad.