In response to the dozens of Boston-centric questions submitted for this week’s Mailbag, let’s boil them down to this:
Are the Celtics a legitimate title contender?
Five short months ago, imagining Boston a contender took a lot of, well, imagination. The Celtics had lost Kyrie Irving. And Al Horford. And Aron Baynes. Maybe they could overcome the loss of Irving—the 2018 playoffs offered evidence of how well the team could play without Irving and, well, there was Kemba Walker—but Horford and Baynes, too? The defensive backbone had been stripped out … and replaced with Enes Kanter.