Rajon Rondo may no longer be with the squad, but that doesn’t mean CelticsHub won’t be keeping an eye on Team USA as they try to bring home their first World Championship since 1994. The National “B” Team opened up in pool play this afternoon against Croatia on the slow side, only leading by two after the first frame.
Luckily, Coach K’s squad used their defense and athleticism to break things wide open in the second period, holding Croatia to just 6 points, while opening up a 22 point halftime lead they never looked back from on their way to a 106-78 victory.
Kevin Durant led the scoring with 14 points, but it was a couple NBA sophomore stars that stole the show with Eric Gordon (13 points) and Kevin Love (10 rebounds) serving as terrific sparkplugs off the bench in the balanced effort.
Everyone on the team scored at least 4 points, and 9 of the team’s 12 players made a 3, as Coach K put a premium on shooting by going with a small lineup with 3 guards (Rose, Curry, Billups) to start. I am curious to see if they will stick with this lineup heading into tomorrow’s game against Slovenia (9:30 a.m. ESPN2)
In honor of the win against Croatia, naturally we had to bust out some highlights from the greatest Croatian Celtic of all-time, the one and only Dino Radja. Incredibly, someone made a mix tape on Youtube, combining both Dino Radja and Eric Montross highlights, which will make any 90′s Celtics fans weekends.Enjoy the goodness.
A look at how the C’s newest European import Semi Erden fared in his FIBA debut, after the jump » More: FIBA Watch: Durant leads way against Croatia

I Want to Party Like It’s 2001
August 6th, 2010If you’re a “what if” guy and a Celtics fan like I am, then you love this question. What if this were 2001 and the same cast of characters were on this Celtics squad. Fred Toucher posed this question to no one in particular so I pretended it was posed to me and decided to find out what this Celtics team would look like if the year was 2001.
I initially wanted to use the same extrapolative math John Hollinger used to estimate how many games this new-look Miami Heat team would win this season but unfortunately he didn’t explicitly state how he arrived at his conclusions. I am not a math guy- hell, I’m not even a stats guy- so I decided to simply look at every one’s player efficiency ratings and draw meaningless, and probably merit-less, conclusions.
» More: I Want to Party Like It’s 2001
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Posted in Commentary, Lazy weekend post