Unlike the Hawks in the first retrospective, the Celtics didn't have a single player get completely picked out over the course of the year. Jayson Tatum came the closest with eight selections and had several standout performances on the way. His 62 PRA outing against the Wizards in the Eastern Conference Play-In round was one of six times a veteran produced at least 60 PRA during a selected day.
Tatum wasn't the only Celt to eclipse that vaunted mark though. During the first of several Walker injury spells, first round pick Payton Pritchard became a prime rookie target for players. This culminated in a point guard perfect storm as on January 4th Marcus Smart and Jeff Teague joined Walker in street clothes and the Oregon product went for a rookie boosted 66 PRA, the best total from an NBA freshman at that point.
In terms of overall selections, Walker got to seven. Five of those came in what can be politely described as a period where we collectively wanted to get him before he was gone again. Marcus Smart, Aaron Nesmith, and Evan Fournier got to six. Smart was the only one that saw usage throughout the season with a gap of nearly five months between his first and last picks. Nesmith was mostly a product of late season lineup tinkering and participants trying to make sure that they exhausted all of their rookie boosting potential. Fournier's lone regular season selection came when he was still in Orlando before coming over at the trade deadline.
Brown was by far the biggest letdown for Celtics supporters and Pick One players. A bonafide star scorer never broke 40 PRA during his four successful selections and had a DNP to boot from a then-undisclosed injury. When a very disclosed wrist injury ended his season in early May, over half of the field still had his section blank on their pick ledger.
Speaking of blanks, the Celtics had six players end the year with nil-pwa in terms of picks. Carsen Edwards, Tacko Fall (shocked he was never taken even as a meme), Luke Kornet, Semi Ojeleye, Jabari Parker (was picked once in Sacramento but DNP'ed), and Tremont Waters all felt Pick One neglect. Of that lot, the best you could have done was 30 PRA from Ojeleye on February 11th against the Raptors or 27 PRA from either Waters or Parker on the season's final day against the Knicks.
| SIX TIMERS (4 PLAYERS) Evan Fournier (5 g w/ Boston, 1 g w/ Orlando) - 23.3 AVG PRA Aaron Nesmith (R)- 31.3 AVG PRA Payton Pritchard (R)- 37.0 AVG PRA Marcus Smart- 27.1 AVG PRA |
| FOUR TIMERS (2 PLAYERS) Jaylen Brown- 34.5 AVG PRA (1 DNP) Robert Williams- 18.0 AVG PRA |
All Images From Basketball Reference Except Evan Fournier, Celtics Logo From Wikipedia