A Rebuttal: Why the C’s will go over 57 wins

The dust has settled a couple days after ESPN.com’s NBA experts came up with a prediction of 57 wins for the 2009-10 Boston Celtics. My esteemed colleague Zach Lowe posted a response yesterday agreeing with the ESPN experts on their win prediction and backing up his total with a convincing case.

Despite Zach’s caveats about this year, I still am of the mindset that barring an catastrophic injury or two, there is no way this team doesn’t go over 57 wins. In fact, while trading emails with Zach in going over our predictions for the season preview, I threw out 65 wins as my expectation for this team. Zach’s argument made me think long and hard if I was being a bit too optimistic with that number, yet the longer I think about it, the more confident I get the team will be able to break the 60 win plateau and go beyond it. A few arguments to support my case on this:

The Boston Celtics won 62 games last year. That number in itself obviously is extremely impressive, but looks even better given the myriad of health issues that challenged this team through the season’s last three months. The team went 18-8 once Kevin Garnett went down with his knee injury in February.

It’s easy to forgot that besides Kevin Garnett, many other C’s like Leon Powe, Glen Davis, Brian Scalabrine and Tony Allen were also out for an extended period of time during this stretch. Now it’s easy to point to names like TA and Scal saying their presence wouldn’t have made much of a difference anyway, but given the lack of depth on our bench last year, that argument just doesn’t carry weight. All of those guys were contributing members of the team’s bench rotation for the majority of last season and their absence further weakened what was all ready a depleted lineup without KG.

Due to this reality, the team’s bench for the final two months last year consisted of a regular rotation of Eddie House, Bill Walker, Stephon Marbury, and Mikki Moore. That may have been the worst bench of any team of the league at that juncture of the year. Only one of those guys (House) is even guaranteed to see regular minutes on a team next year, much less a 62 win team. So is there any doubt why stars like Paul Pierce and Ray Allen were worn down and injured at the end of last year? Those two had to come to play and carry the team every night in order just to keep the squad in the game.

Grant it, Rajon Rondo, Kendrick Perkins and a vastly improved Big Baby helped them with the load but the pressure was placed squarely on Pierce and Allen to play the most minutes and carry that 2nd team when they were in there. How that crew complied a 15-7 record with that sad excuse of a bench will never cease to amaze me. It’s also something I think a lot of non-Celtics fans tend to overlook when evaluating the team last season.

To his credit, Danny Ainge rectified his mistake and has created a bench for this year’s team that will be deeper than even the Championship team was 2 years ago. With Marquis Daniels, Eddie House, Glen Davis and Rasheed Wallace likely to be the main 2nd team off the bench, the team’s glaring weakness last year has now become a resounding strength.

Also keep in mind that the team’s one fatal flaw last year, before KG went down was their shoddy bench, even when it was healthy. House, TA, Davis and Leon Powe combined with Pierce or Ray Allen would routinely give up massive leads the starting five had built up in the early stages of the year before the starters came back in to close the door on their opponents.

This will not be the case with this year’s crew with the aforementioned four leading the way. Daniels, Davis and Wallace would be starting for a lot of other teams in the league this year so it’s reasonable to assume they will have their way with most other benches when they go head to head. The team’s depth this year is also shown with guys like Scalabrine, Shelden Williams, Tony Allen and Bill Walker rounding up the bottom of the team’s depth chart as opposed to being counted to be meaningful contributors as they were last year with Scal and TA.

This situation leads me to believe that the team will be able to withstand a minor injury or two to one of its stars and not suffer significantly in its overall performance. Daniels and Wallace are capable of covering all positions in the starting lineup between the two of them and there are guys below them on the depth chart who could adequately fill their roles. The one exception to this depth is at point guard, but that is still an area Ainge has time to address before the season begins.

With this new look bench, there will also be plenty of capable scorers abound reducing the pressure as well as minutes for Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett, hopefully limiting the significant injury risk one would expect for each of players that are on the wrong side of 30.

Finally looking around the league, it’s clear the rich got richer in Cleveland, Orlando and San Antonio but what about everyone else? The C’s were regularly blowing other talented squads out of the water in the first half of last year and the vast majority of these teams got worse this year. Sure a few mediocre East teams got better (Toronto, Washington, Atlanta) but so did the C’s. I wouldn’t take away more than 2-3 wins from the C’s win total on account of these rosters. The rest of the bottom half two-thirds of the East took a step back in the estimation of a lot of experts. That means more W’s and easier W’s for this Celtic team next year.

Finally, I see this squad coming out even more motivated, and rejuvenated than ever before. The Big Three and Rasheed Wallace know the clock on their window of opportunity is ticking, and this year may be their best chance they have left at it with lots of questions surrounding what the team will look like after next year. I think the C’s will get away with approaching the season with this kind of intensity and not get worn down, since they will have a capable bench to back them up and maintain the leads they build up, rather than squander them away like last year.

Also I just don’t think guys like KG are mentally capable of dialing it down a notch, even during the regular season. After his injury, the guy will be more fired up than ever and the only way I see him slowing down is if Doc Rivers keeps him on the bench more, again a scenario this year’s bench will make possible.

There will be a competitive race for the all valuable home court advantage in the East between Boston, Cleveland and likely Orlando. The C’s know the value of homecourt especially against a team like Cleveland and won’t be taking it easy until they have that top spot locked up.

Given all of these factors, 65 wins is the number I am pegging this team for. Our friends over at CelticsBlog just held a poll where 95% of the respondents voted the team would go over 57 wins, so I am unsurprisingly not in the minority on this. However, my expectations may be a bit high on this so I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on this. How many wins do you have penciled in for the C’s this season?

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