The second seed is clinched. The real work starts now.

Boston finished 57–26, second in the East, healthy roster, three-game winning streak. On paper, that's a good place to be. The problem is that the team that closed the regular season looks almost nothing like the one the front office assembled over the summer, and the playoffs will ask questions that 83 regular-season games never quite got around to answering.

The Brown trade was the whole bet. Boston moved its leading scorer to Philadelphia, brought in Paul George, and banked on a Tatum-George partnership carrying the franchise forward. That partnership has had almost no time to breathe. The offseason was shadowed by Tatum's health uncertainty, the preseason opener saw most of the core unavailable, and the regular season became a long exercise in White and Pritchard holding things together while the intended lineup tried to find itself. The Celtics went 10-10 in games decided by five points or fewer — fine in isolation, concerning when you consider that a roster still learning to trust each other tends to show the seams exactly when the margin tightens.

The good news is that no injuries are currently on the board, the offense has been humming, and the wins have been coming. But the bracket will eventually produce a Philadelphia team with Brown, Embiid, Maxey, and LeBron on the same floor — a scenario nobody in this front office envisioned when they made the trade. Tatum and George together, in a close playoff game, under that kind of pressure: that's the test. We haven't seen it yet.