Celtics Proving to Be Historically Great on Road This Season

Boston may be "just" the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, but the team has proven to be insanely elite away from TD Garden.

Jan 3, 2025; Houston, Texas, USA; Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum (0) handles the ball against the Houston Rockets during the third quarter at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Erik Williams-Imagn Images / Erik Williams-Imagn Images

At 26-9 on the 2024-25 season, the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics may be "just" the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, but the team has proven to be insanely elite away from TD Garden.

Per former NBC Sports statistician Dick Lipe, the Celtics' current point differential on the road, +10.9, ranks as the second-best such metric in league history, behind only the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers' +11.3. That squad, led by Hall of Famers Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain, went on to win a then-league record 69 games and the NBA championship.

Ominously, the Western Conference's top seed this year, the mighty Oklahoma City Thunder (29-5), boast a +10.6 early road point differential, good for the third-best ever — and right ahead of the East's No. 1 seed, the 30-4 Cleveland Cavaliers, whose +9.4 road point differential is the fourth-best in NBA history.

The 1970-71 New York Knicks, fresh off their first league title, round out the all-time top five with a +9.1 road point differential. New York, however, would not go on to repeat and win the 1971 championship. The Milwaukee Bucks, then led by superstar point guard Oscar Robertson and superstar center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, would go on to claim that distinction.

Lipe reports that the best road point differential over the course of a single season in Celtics franchise history (which, as you'll recall, includes a league-record 18 championship teams) belongs to the 2007-08 vintage. That team — led by Hall of Famers Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, plus future four-time All-Star point guard Rajon Rondo — boasted a +8.0 point differential.

This year's Celtics, as guided by All-Stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, All-Defensive Team guards Jrue Holiday and Derrick White, and former All-Stars Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford, are angling to become the first NBA champions to repeat since 2018. They clearly have the bona fides to do the deed.

Having a dominant road scoring differential isn't necessarily directly predictive of whether or not a team will go on to win it all, of course. And the fact that three teams just this season are in the top five suggests that the league's new 3-point shooting era may skew these traditional metrics. All the same, the fact that arguably the NBA's three best teams this year are doing so well away from their home crowds serves as a strong indicator that they are dangerous everywhere, and is a testament to their quality.

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