Alex Cora’s advice to the Celtics when it comes to trying to repeat

It’s only natural that the question is already being asked: Can the Celtics repeat?

They were dominant in both the regular season and postseason this year, and they are expected to bring back pretty much the same team. They are the clear betting favorites to win the 2025 NBA title.

Alex Cora has been in that position before. His 2018 Red Sox team won a franchise record 108 games en route to a World Series title and returned just about the entire core for the 2019 season. Not only would the Red Sox not repeat, however, but they didn’t even make the playoffs in 2019, finishing with an 84-78 record.

Cora learned some tough lessons that year, and offered some advice to the Celtics when he made his weekly appearance on WEEI’s Jones & Mego on Wednesday. Listen to the full interview above.

“I did a mistake saying that, early on, that we're going to just do the same things that we did the previous year and expected to win it again,” Cora said. “That's not the case. We made some adjustments, I think, with the lineup. … Obviously, injuries came into play. You have a target, right? You're the world champs and you gotta take the best punch. Everybody's gonna try to kick your butt. They don't do it on a daily basis when you're not the world champ.

“The offseason is a lot different. It's short, and there's a lot of stuff going on, people traveling. We had that premiere for the documentary of the series. I felt like when the guys showed up in spring training, they weren’t as locked in as the previous year. It was a different season because we had a lot of free agents in ’19. So, from my end, hopefully I can do it again. I have a lot of good ideas to try to repeat, but we get there when we get there. But it’s not easy. It’s not easy.”

That said, Cora does believe this Celtics team is set up to win multiple titles over the next several years, whether they repeat next season or not.

“They were the best team by far. When they're healthy, there's nobody, obviously, better than them. They’re a complete team,” he said. “It feels like staying together the next few years, they should win at least two more in the next four, I believe, because of where they are at buying into the concepts of Joe [Mazzulla], how Brad [Stevens] works in the front office, and obviously the buy-in of the players. So, they're in a great spot as a franchise and it was fun to watch.”