Despite the injuries to Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward throughout the year, the Boston Celtics were able to have a really good 2017-18 season, reaching the Eastern Conference Finals stages of the playoffs.

Their hopes of winning an NBA Championship this year were extinguished by the Cleveland Cavaliers at that stage of the postseason, but there's a strong feeling of optimism amongst Celtics fans about this team because of what they were able to achieve without their star players.

When Irving and Hayward went down with injuries, the likes of Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Marcus Morris were able to step up to the plate and perform for Boston, helping the team earn back-to-back Conference Finals appearances for the first time in 30 years.

During an appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast, via NESN, Irving explained that he knew from the first day the Celtics were going to be great this season just gone.

He said: “We had a really good training camp, like a really good training camp. The preseason games weren’t even going to be the factor to determining how great we were going to be, I knew it from the first day. Because the challenge of forming this team wasn’t really hitting us. We had already come from different situations.”

While the season may not have ended the way the Celtics would have liked it to, there will be a huge amount of confidence within the team entering the 2018-19 season because of what they were able to achieve on the court without Irving and Hayward.

Plus, with their injured stars returning to the court ahead of next season, there's a strong chance they could go one better than their 2017-18 season finish and reach the NBA Finals for the first time since the 2009-10 season.

The Celtics are in a really good position to take over the Eastern Conference, as the rest of the teams around them have been through, or could have significant changes before the start of next season.

The Toronto Raptors have changed their head coach, the Cavaliers could be losing LeBron James, and the Philadelphia 76ers are still trying to find those final pieces before they become a real challenger in the East themselves. The Eastern Conference is Boston's for the taking and they have the squad to do it.

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