Portuguese international Nehemiah Queta begins its sixth season in the NBA in 2026/27, with the expectation of confirmation after a season featured in 2025/26.
© Lusa
18/10/2026
by
Lusa
Nehemiah Queta
O portuguese international pole Nehemiah Queta holds in 2026/27 her sixth season in the U.S. League of Basketball (NBA), in what will be her confirmation season, after having asserted, and with high score, in 2025/26.
At the age of 27, completed on July 13, Nehemiah concluded the ‘regular season’ of last season in the Boston Celtics with averages of 10.2 points and 8.4 points, in 25.3 minutes, with 65.3% in field launches (326 in 499) and 70.3% in free throws (123 in 175).
Nehemiah held 75 of the 76 games he played at the regular time, helping the Celtics achieve the second best East record, with 56 wins and 26 losses.
What progressed in relation to 2024/25, where he was an alternate and rarely entered the rotation – as in 2023/24, the opening season in the Celtics, after two in the Sacrament Kings – was ‘mirrored’ in the fourth place in the ‘Most Improved Player’ prize.
In the NBA statistical rankings, Nehemiah was third in the percentage of field launches, beaten only by French Rudy Gobert (Minnesota Timberwolves) and Deandre Ayton (Los Angeles Lakers), ninth in the offensives (3.0 of average per game), 18th in the caveats and 27th in the defensive objections (5,3).
After asserting himself as a titular of the Celtics, a statute that he did not lose when, in the middle of the season, Montenegrin Nikola Vucevic was hired, Portuguese is a clear bet of the 18 times NBA champions, who, in the summer, ‘held him’ a contract of four years and 56 million dollars (about 49 million euros).
The ’88’ now has Mitchell Robinson’s competition in the set directed by Joe Mazzulla, who, in the betting houses, is appointed as the fifth most quoted to reach the title, despite Jaylen Brown’s departure, in a defense where Paul George and Mike Conley also arrived.
Without Brown, who closed the regular season of 2025/26 with averages of 28.7 points and 6.9 points, Nehemiah may even have more ‘space’ to grow his influence and numbers, although it is almost certain that the Celtics continue to bet almost everything on the outer shot, looking little inward.
Portuguese will thus probably have to continue to ‘live’ above all than to conquer, particularly in the offensive table, if it were not for him, in this field, a top 10 NBA.
More than in the attack, Nehemiah is an essential element in defense, for his innate ability to disarm launches and, even when he cannot, to hinder it, to negatively influence the ‘shoots’ of those who dare to throw ahead of him.
The Portuguese international has much to go on and, if it does, will certainly enter the top 100 for points and minutes, which did not happen in the regular phase of 2025/26, in which 123 and 114 respectively.
For this, Nehemiah will also have to risk more, trying to launch more often: at the last time, he made 499 field shots, an average of 6.6 per game – eighth of the team.
As for his individual records, he will need great exhibitions, as he already raised them in 2026, when, on March 1, he scored 27 points to the Philadelphia 76ers, after, on January 7, he captured 20 against the Denver Nuggets.
Further down, in the six, are the assists and launch disarms, and it never added more than three ball robberies and, as for throws, scored a maximum of eight free throws and 11 field shots.
On the edge of the numbers, Nehemiah will certainly continue to delight, to add ‘highlights’, to the explosiveness, to another launching disarm right up there, to a large ‘sink’ or an ‘alley-oop’ – it is difficult not to see it.
As for restraint, only in the absences, to avoid the excuses, because it will certainly not change the way to play, to lose the aggressiveness it imposes to defend.
In collective terms, it will be very difficult to repeat 2023/24, when the Celtics reached the 18th title, with a 4-1 in the finals to the Dallas Mavericks, then Luka Doncic, but the play-offs will certainly not be at stake.
A This, the New York Knicks champions and the very strong Philadelphia 76ers, with Brown and LeBron James, go on top and, ‘below’, you have to count on the Toronto Raptors, the returnee Kahwi Leonard, the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Detroit Pistons or the Indiana Pacers, again with Tyrese Haliburton.