Last season, the Boston Celtics were considered to be one of the NBA title favorites. After an offseason of change, they are no longer considered to be as strong. But that may actually be a good thing for the C's.
While the public and media aren't as bullish on the Celtics, the young players on the team are buying into the squad. And in a recent interview, first-round pick Grant Williams expressed his thoughts on the team and called the Celtics "underrated."
"I feel like we're (an) underestimated, underrated team because we have a lot of veteran guys who may be young," Williams said on Sirius XM NBA Radio. "You have Enes Kanter who's probably 28, 27 years old. Kemba Walker. You have guys that have high talent in Jayson (Tatum) and Jaylen (Brown) who have proven themselves over the last couple of years. There's a lot of talent on this team that I feel is undervalued."
Williams would go on to explain some of the undervalued talent, including Jayson Tatum and Kemba Walker.
"A guy like Jayson who has two or three years and has competed as a star in the league still is one of those guys -- he may have had a quote down year, but if you look at the team, he had to be a little bit more passive and a little bit less shot selection," Williams said. "And adding a guy like Kemba who is a superstar already but may not have been considered a superstar because he was in Charlotte, because he wasn't necessarily winning as much.
"So, hopefully, we can add not only to their portfolios but add it to the team, and get back to what Boston is known as. A team that has championship-caliber players every year and is fighting for that next banner that will (put) us even further away from the competition."
Boston Celtics
This is likely to excite Celtics fans, who quickly grew tired of watching last season's lackadaisical squad fail to live up to expectations. It seems that the Celtics rookies and new talent are really buying into the system in place and are forging a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that could spark the team as an underdog. And that mentality was a huge part of the team's success during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons.
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