Boston Celtics: Team awards for each season of the 2010s
2017-18 Season
Defensive Player: Marcus Smart
Marcus Smart continued ramping up his defensive pressure in the 2017-18 season.
With better defenders around him, like Marcus Morris Sr., Kyrie Irving, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Aron Baynes, he didn’t have to force anything on that side of the ball.
Thus, he averaged nearly the same amount of steals (1.3), the same amount of blocks, and his defensive rating was 99.6, ranking third on the team, behind Baynes and just short of Shane Larkin.
With him off of the court, the team’s defensive rating rose to 104.3, a steep 4.7 rating difference.
He even had arguably the best play of his career in this season, drawing two charges on James Harden in less than 20 seconds, thereby securing the win for the Boston Celtics.
Smart has consistently been one of the best defenders in the league for quite some time, and it is becoming easy to see how he has progressed over time.
It’d be a shame if he doesn’t end up getting any Defensive Player of the Year recognition by the time his career is over.
He most definitely deserves it.
Fan Favorite: Jayson Tatum
Everyone knows about Gordon Hayward‘s nasty injury just minutes into his Boston Celtics career.
When that happened, every NBA fan around the world held their breath while Hayward was stretchered off the court. The arena was silent, no player spoke, and the teams were forced to resume the game like nothing had happened.
After the game, analysts and fans alike began predicting how far Boston would fall. Folks tended to agree on a five or six seed for the depth-depleted Celtics.
light. Also. Celtics: Is Marcus Smart underappreciated around the NBA?
Little did they know, rookie Jayson Tatum would soon make fans forget that Gordon Hayward was injured.
He showed the utmost confidence from the jump, and along with Jaylen Brown, they aided Kyrie Irving and Al Horford in claiming the second seed in the East.
Once the playoffs kicked in, and Kyrie was announced out, people wrote the Celtics off again. Instead, Tatum averaged 18.5 points on 47 percent shooting as he led the Celtics past the Milwaukee Bucks, Philadelphia 76ers, and took the Cavs and LeBron James to seven games.
Although they lost the series, Tatum provided all Celtics fans with his famous dunk over the King.
MVP: Al Horford
Al Horford, outside of Boston fans, did not get the recognition he deserved from the NBA community. While his stats were not always the greatest, they weren’t awful.
He, like Marcus Smart, proved that box scores do not tell the whole story.
He took to task the best big man on every team, doing a fantastic job on Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid in back to back rounds in the playoffs.
On top of that, he led the team in blocks (1.1) and rebounds (7.4) per game in this season.
He was relatively healthy as well, playing in 70 games, and every single playoff game.
His experience is the key component that cannot be underestimated. In the playoffs, he was a leader on the floor, and allowed for Jayson Tatum, Terry Rozier, and more players to shine on the big stage.
If it was Horford who got injured instead of Hayward, the Celtics most likely would not have gotten the second seed in the East.