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5 days ago

Painful Reminders (Part I): The Celtics Drafted JaJuan Johnson Instead of Jimmy Butler

On June 23rd, 2011, Brian Robb and I stood around a high top bar table in Tommy Doyle’s in Kendall Square.  Before us lay one of the biggest mounds of buffalo chicken wings I had ever endeavor to make disappear.  These 25 cent flappers- one of the few indulgences afforded to the participants of our [...]

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6 days ago

Chris Wilcox: 2012-13 Final Grade

There are a number of contextually-appropriate ways to craft this post. One would be to forgo words entirely, and represent Chris Wilcox’s entire season with a series of videos. That would involve one part of this: For every eight parts of this: Note the headline on that second clip. Someone was so amused/enraged by Wilcox’s [...]

12
7 days ago

Rajon Rondo’s 2012-13 Final Grade

Here’s a sweeping general statement involving super specific statistics that may or may not mean anything: In the 1423 minutes Rajon Rondo played this season, the Boston Celtics were outscored by 1.3 points per 100 possessions. When he sat (including all contests after he tore his ACL), Boston was better than their opponents by 1.8 [...]

92
8 days ago

Avery Bradley Elected to NBA All-Defense Second Team

Avery Bradley has been a standout defender for the past couple seasons…in the regular season anyway. Now he has a trophy to prove it. The NBA announced this afternoon that the third-year guard has been elected by coaches around the league to the second-team all-NBA defensive team for the first time in his career. Bradley [...]

13
11 days ago

Paul Pierce’s Contract: Dispelling The Myths and Stating The Facts

The first domino to fall this offseason is Paul Pierce’s contract. Until Danny Ainge figures out what he’s doing there, little else matters. As we wait for this decision, we also must face the rest of the offseason, which means it is also rumor season. With that time of year, comes plenty of information floating [...]

42
11 days ago

Final Grade: Avery Bradley (C+)

In his third year in the league, in which promising players often make brash leaps from benchwarmer to starter, from starter to star, Avery Bradley took a big step back. But his regression might be deceptive. When he returned to the Celtics’ lineup on January the 2nd after two in-season months recovering from offseason shoulder [...]

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Finding Positives in Despair

Matt Moore, Hardwood Paroxysm, 1/30/10:

“There will not be a Big Ol’ Honkin’ LA-Boston post when LA creams them tomorrow…I doubt it will be competitive.”

Well, Matt was wrong. I don’t mean to pick on Matt; he’s one of the best hoops bloggers writers alive, and he knows the game as well as anyone writing about it. And this game doesn’t necessarily disprove his central contention—that the Celtics are too old to be competitive this season, and that they are not a championship-caliber team. After all, the Lakers beat the Celtics on what was, for LA, the 7th game of an eight-game road trip. 

But this game, this crushing Sunday afternoon loss, proved  two (positive) things. (Brian Robb will have more in a full post-game bullets post):

1) The Celtic defense from 2008 still exists. Whether it will exist often enough or long enough for the team to win a title remains unknown or perhaps even unlikely. But in this loss, the defense was absolutely spectacular. The fact that the Lakers shot 48 percent is a tribute to how freaking good that team is, as epitomized by Kobe’s game-winner. The C’s decision to overplay on Bryant and sometimes double him forced Boston’s defenders to cover even more of the court than usual on rotations, and they were up to it. Really, really up to it. 

The evidence: 16 LA turnovers for a team that takes care of the ball almost as well as any team in the league. Many came on tough cross-court or interior passes as the Lakers tried and failed to beat Boston’s rotations with quick passes. 

Again: The defense was spectacular. Do not lose sight of this when you see that LA shot 48 percent. 

2) This team, right now, is fatally flawed, and if it doesn’t correct this one flaw or at least mitigate it, they will not win the championship or the Eastern Conference. The flaw: Turnovers. They committed 18 more tonight, many of them inexcusably sloppy. The Lakers are a great defensive team, and they forced a few of those 18 turnovers. But too many came on careless passes. 

You could correctly point out that the Celtics won the championship ranking next-to-last in turnover rate in 2008, and they have the same ranking right now. 

But this Celtic team isn’t quite as good, athletic, healthy or consistent as that team. 

They need to clean this problem up if they want to win against the elite. 

Lots more tonight and tomorrow.

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