The Celtics’ final preseason game is not offering much in the way of mystery, but it is offering something unusual: a Celtics starting lineup built around four Exhibit-10 players and rookie Chris Cenac Jr. That alone tells you this is less about one more dress rehearsal and more about clearing the runway toward Tuesday’s opener in Detroit.
Friday’s exhibition against the Philadelphia 76ers comes with the Celtics already 3-0 in preseason action, which means the broader goal has been met before the regular season even begins. The Celtics have already spent the first three games sorting through combinations, and the previous two outings gave them a more familiar look, with Derrick White, Jayson Tatum, Paul George, Jordan Walsh and Mitchell Robinson starting together. This time, Joe Mazzulla said Sam Cassell will coach the game, while Milos Uzan, Hayden Gray, Tucker DeVries, Gabe McGlothan and Chris Cenac Jr. are set to open.
What the lineup says
The lineup is striking less because of who is missing than because of what it signals. In the preseason opener in Cleveland, the Celtics sat Jayson Tatum, Derrick White, Paul George, Mitchell Robinson, Neemias Queta, Sam Hauser, Ron Harper Jr. and Payton Pritchard. In the two games that followed, the rotation became much closer to the standard regular-season picture. Friday reverses that pattern and pushes the focus toward evaluation at the margins, where the Celtics are still learning which players can hold up in live NBA minutes.
That is what makes the Celtics starting lineup so notable. Four Exhibit-10 players in one starting five is not a normal preseason decision for a team that has already banked three wins. It suggests the coaching staff is using the final exhibition not to chase rhythm for the top end of the roster, but to get one more hard look at depth, energy and role fit before the games start to count.
There is also a practical side to it. The Celtics had the full roster mostly available in the previous two preseason games, which made those matchups more useful as a preview of what the regular season might look like. This one is different. It is a final checkpoint, not a declaration of the opening-night rotation.
The result matters less than the message, and the message is clear: the Celtics are close enough to the start of the season that they can afford to treat one preseason game as a laboratory. By Tuesday, October 20th at 3pm ET in Detroit, the conversation should shift back to the real rotation and the real stakes. For now, though, the Celtics starting lineup is the story, because it is the kind of lineup you only see when a team has already decided the bigger test is still ahead.
