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16 hours ago

Jason Terry’s 2012-13 Final Grade

  Acquiring any player, whether it’s via trade, free agency, or the draft, comes with an air of uncertainty. The NBA has no guaranteed covenant and all sales are final, no matter how talented, proven, or productive the player may have been in year’s past. But these memories—especially recent ones—often clouds the judgment of a [...]

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9 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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10 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
11 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 [...]

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12 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 [...]

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15 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 [...]

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Making Their Own History: Game 1 Open Thread

I love Game 1, because the speculation stops. No more lists of the Five Keys to the Finals. No more wondering how often Kobe will guard Rajon Rondo, or how the Garnett-Gasol match-up looks two years later, or how the Celtics will defend Bryant. 

We get to see it all, starting tonight. Much of it will unfold as we suspect, but there will be surprises—a wrinkle in defensive positioning, a match-up that gets more time than we’d expect, a role player who triples his scoring average. 

A guy I’m watching tonight: Kendrick Perkins. Reading Kevin Arnovitz’s TrueHoop post today about re-watching the ’08 Finals reminded me how openly the Lakers helped off of Perkins in that series. Things are different with Andrew Bynum healthy, but if the Lakers stick someone other than Bynum on Perk thinking they can give that person a rest for a possession or two, Perk can go into his back-down game. If the Lakers help off of him too aggressively in the screen/roll, Perk has improved his ability to score on the move enough to punish the Lakers. 

He’s not going to score 20. But he could score 12. And that could be huge. 

Consider this your Game 1 open thread. After three days of build-up, tell us what you’re seeing—what’s going well, what strategic move surprises you, what player is giving his team an unexpected boost. 

And, as always: Go Celtics.

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