Will Celtics surpass Cavs with Horford? What if they add Durant?
— -- The Boston Celtics finally landed the kind of star they've been trying to acquire: Al Horford. Now, they're going to try to pair him with another, even bigger catch: former MVP Kevin Durant.
Would Horford and Durant make the Celtics the best team in the East?
On Saturday, Horford declared on Twitter that he was signing in Boston. The four-time All-Star will reportedly sign a four-year max contract worth approximately $113 million after the Atlanta Hawks were unwilling to offer a full five-year maximum deal for their unrestricted free agent.
But Horford's biggest impact could be on the Celtics' recruiting of Durant. Boston met with the Oklahoma City Thunder free agent earlier Saturday and can now sell him on the idea of joining Horford; the Celtics can make both moves without having to execute any trades to clear the requisite space.
So, after surprising the league by winning 48 games last season, how good is Boston now? And how good might the Celtics be with both Horford and Durant?
Projecting Boston with Horford
While the Celtics' 2015-16 season might have been unexpected in many quarters, their rise was predicted by ESPN's real plus-minus (RPM). Projections based on the multiyear, predictive version of RPM pegged Boston for precisely 48 wins before the season, the second-best forecast in the Eastern Conference.
While they did win 48, as predicted, the Celtics didn't finish quite that high because the Toronto Raptors dramatically outperformed their RPM projection. Still, the C's did finish tied for third in the East during the regular season. (Tiebreakers pushed the Celtics down to the fifth playoff seed, where they lost to Horford's Hawks without home-court advantage in the first round.)
So now let's take a look at what the preliminary version of those projections says about the 2016-17 Celtics, taking into account only their 13 players currently under contract.
RPM sees next season's Celtics as a much more balanced team. In 2015-16, Boston was only league average in offensive rating, but the 2016-17 projection calls for the Celtics to score 1.9 more points per 100 possessions than an average team.
In fact, just three teams were as good relative to average at both ends last season as the Celtics' projection, all of them in the West: the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Clippers and San Antonio Spurs.
Overall, RPM pegs Boston for about 53 wins, which would have tied for the league's sixth-best record last season. With the Raptors likely to take a step backward after the best season in franchise history, I'd consider the Celtics the early favorites to finish second in the East behind the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Of course, Horford's greatest value probably won't be evident until the playoffs. After all, depth, defense and execution meant Boston was already a good regular-season team. That didn't translate in the playoffs, when the Celtics couldn't find enough capable two-way options to compete against Atlanta after losing Avery Bradley to injury.
Most notably, Boston's starting frontcourt of Amir Johnson and Jared Sullinger couldn't defend mobile Hawks counterparts Horford and Paul Millsap. Presumably, Horford will take Sullinger's spot in the starting lineup, upgrading the Celtics' shooting and making them more athletic defensively.
Projecting Boston with Horford and Durant
While the Celtics were already one of the six teams to secure a meeting with Durant, beating out bigger markets, adding Horford surely strengthens their pitch.
One big advantage for Boston over anyone else except the Thunder: The Celtics don't have to trade away any core pieces to clear the necessary cap space to sign both Durant and Horford.
All Boston has to do is renounce its free agents and waive Johnson and Jonas Jerebko, whose 2016-17 salaries are non-guaranteed through later this week. (More realistically, the Celtics would probably trade Jerebko and Johnson, and might get something of value in return.)
If Durant signs on, that would produce a rotation that looks something like this:
Adding Durant would push the Celtics' offense from good to great. Just two teams -- the Golden State Warriors and Durant's Thunder -- were better relative to league average offensively than RPM projects for Boston with Durant and Horford.
The Celtics with Durant and Horford project slightly better by RPM than the Thunder (with Durant), whose projection after adding Victor Oladipo called for 56 or 57 wins in 2016-17.
Moreover, Boston has more avenues for improvement going forward. No matter how good the Celtics get, they've got a chance to pick high in the lottery the next two seasons thanks to a 2017 pick swap with the Brooklyn Nets and their holding the Nets' 2018 first-round pick outright.
Boston also has its core players locked up, while Oklahoma City star Russell Westbrook can become an unrestricted free agent next summer. None of the Celtics' rotation players can become an unrestricted free agent until after the 2017-18 season, when Avery Bradley and Isaiah Thomas are due to become free agents.
Last week, I projected how the teams in the Durant hunt might perform with him over the next three seasons. Adding Horford doesn't dramatically improve Boston's projection, which already called for 60-plus wins in 2017-18 and 2018-19.
But it does solidify the Celtics as the team with the best long-term outlook with Durant aside from the Warriors. Among the other teams, only Boston can expect to keep getting better in subsequent seasons after adding Durant.
Our evaluation of the Horford signing shouldn't hinge on whether Durant joins him in Celtics green. Either way, adding Horford is a coup for Boston and a big step forward in the team's long-term plan -- it adds a player who helps now and might attract other players later. And the Celtics have a chance to reach the Eastern Conference finals with or without Durant.
But if Durant joins up, it would turn Horford's signing from one that shifts the team's fortunes to one that shifts the entire league, with Boston a serious contender to win its 18th championship banner and then some.
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