Exploring Celtics’ best games on 2025-26 schedule – NBC Sports Boston

Our favorite NBA Draft actually occurs in August.

Right after the league releases the schedule for the upcoming campaign, season ticket holders often huddle to divide packages split among friends and family. And the proceedings can be electric.

We’ve heard from multiple ticket-holders how much time and energy goes into plotting their draft strategy. Is opening night a first-round pick that year? (It certainly was last year.) How long will the lone Lakers visit stay on the board? Which opposing players are must-see when they come to Boston?

For Day 10 of our Ramp to Camp series, we asked our panel to pick one Celtics game in the 2025-26 season that they’d target. But we also instituted a few rules:

1. You can’t pick a tribute game. As we documented in Day 9 of the series, there likely will be four games this season in which a core member of the 2024 title team returns to the Garden and be honored for their time here. Those games will come off the board early. 

2. You can’t pick Cooper Flagg’s first visit to Boston on March 6. Oh, you want to see the New England-bred rookie? Yeah, you and the rest of Maine. Get in line, buddy. 

3. There were no restrictions on picking a road game. And, if we’re being honest, we encourage every Celtics fan to make a trek. If nothing else, it will make you appreciate TD Garden that much more.

We’re clearly making our panel work a bit here. Help me find some hidden gems. Give me a game with a storyline that isn’t so obvious. We probably should have told our panel no Lakers games either, especially with Marcus Smart now donning the purple and gold. But we don’t blame those who leaned that way. It’d be near the top of our list, too.

Here are five other home games we would target once the more obvious dates went off the board:

1. November 26 vs. Detroit. Not only are Cade Cunningham and the Pistons one of our favorite young teams to watch, but we get a 5 p.m. ET tip on…