Boston Celtics: 2 Moves That Could Improve the C’s Midseason

 Boston  No Responses »
Nov 282012
 

Fifteen games in, the Boston Celtics are still struggling to find their season’s identity. However, some roster moves could be the key to unlocking a tremendous midseason run.

This isn’t the news that newly appointed President of Basketball Operations Danny Ainge wanted to hear, especially following an offseason that was full of moves.

Although the Celtics lost Ray Allen in free agency, the team was able to resign some valuable assets—Kevin Garnett, Jeff Green, Brandon Bass and Chris Wilcox. Add in the acquisitions of Courtney Lee, Jason Terry and Leandro Barbosa, and Boston looked like a team that was built for a run to the postseason.

However, Lee—who was slotted to fill in the temporary vacancy at shooting guard—has struggled to find his rhythm. The former Houston Rocket has only averaged 5.2 points per game. After starting the first five games of the season, Lee hasn’t started since.

Throw in the inconsistent play of the entire Celtics bench and Boston is beginning to look like a puzzle that is missing a couple of pieces.

Here are two midseason moves that would prove beneficial for the Celtics.

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6 Reasons Boston Celtics Need to Get Leandro Barbosa More Run

 Boston  No Responses »
Nov 152012
 

Run is the operative word here.

The speedy Leandro Barbosa brings a lot of special elements to the Boston Celtics‘ second unit.

Prior to Wednesday night, Barbosa had been averaging just 11 minutes per game. He got extra run against the Utah Jazz after Rajon Rondo’s injury but has been minimally used in most games thus far.

The Celtics have been playing like they started the season trudging through mud. The bench players stumbled out of the gate and have been struggling to find their rhythm. Even Paul Pierce is shooting at the lowest percentage of his career.

Barbosa is the most recent addition to the Celtics roster and hasn’t had as much time to assimilate into the system. Therefore it makes sense to use him sparingly this early in the season.

However, with everything he has shown and everything the team around him has shown, it is time to get the reserve guard in there for more minutes.

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Leandro Barbosa, Jeff Green and the Bench Lead the Celtics to Victory over Utah

 Boston  No Responses »
Nov 142012
 

After seven games of the Celtics bench underachieving and the starters carrying the team to get a win, the bench players decided to turn the tide by leading the starters to victory for a change. 

The bench we saw during tonight’s 98-93 win over the Utah Jazz was the bench we were hoping for all offseason—one that could literally change games and sway them in the Celtics’ favor. It’s this simple: When the reserve players combine for a season-high 47 points (nearly half of the team’s total points), the Celtics win. 

The bench players not only put up 47 points, but they did it efficiently. Every player coming off the pine shot over 50 percent en route to a combined field goal percentage of 66.7 percent. Leading this efficient scoring and the reserve dominance were Leandro Barbosa and Jeff Green. 

Barbosa’s performance tonight was eerily similar to his play in the first game of the season. Tonight, like in the first game, he finished with 16 points on six-of-eight shooting. Although, Barbosa’s impact was felt throughout the entire game tonight as opposed to the opening game when he made his mark solely in the fourth quarter.

Perhaps the best indication of how well Barbosa was playing was that Rondo left the game with an ankle injury and no one seemed to notice or get too worked up about it because Barbosa was playing so well in his place. 

However, it wasn’t just the Brazilian Blur distracting us from Rondo’s injury. Jeff Green’s jaw-dropping dunk helped in that department as well. For that play, Green took the advice KG gave him to heart.

The ferocious dunk and the “taunt” (if looking at someone is taunting now) were fantastic to see out of a guy whom Kevin Garnett dubbed, too nice. 

Even better is that this one play triggered many more like them for Green. Like Barbosa, he too finished with 16 points on just five-for-nine shooting. 

Behind Green and Barbosa’s 16 points, the bench had its best game of the year. And behind the bench’s best game of the year, the Celtics won. 

It’s always great to win a game and be able to credit it to the reserve players. It truly speaks volumes to this type of team when the starters can all play around 30 minutes or less (which I have still not seen), combine for 51 points and still win.

This could, and hopefully will, be the first of many wins like this. It’s hard to beat a team when you don’t know who to worry about more—the starters or the bench. And that is exactly the kind of team the Celtics have the potential to become, especially after tonight. 

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Boston Celtics Limiting Kevin Garnett’s Minutes Crucial to Sustained Success

 Boston  No Responses »
Nov 072012
 

Kevin Garnett is averaging just 28.7 minutes per game this season. If you’re a Celtics fan that is hoping to see that number go up, you’re going to be disappointed—although you shouldn’t be. 

According to Frank Dell’Apa of the Boston Globe, Celtics coach Doc Rivers said, 

But if we can’t win with [Garnett] off the floor, we just won’t win. And I told our bench that. We’re going to play the minutes that I’m giving them, and the bench is going to play the minutes they should get. And they’ve got to do something or we won’t win — it will be that simple.

That’s not the tone of someone who is open to discussion, and in this matter, he shouldn’t be. If we’ve learned anything about the Celtics in the last few years, it’s that it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. Last year, they started awful and finished in the Eastern Conference Finals, coming just a game away from the NBA Finals. 

Over the last five years, the Celtics have won more games than any team in the East. Only the Spurs and Lakers have more wins in the NBA. So you’ll have to forgive Rivers if he’s not rushing to beat on the proverbial panic button after a mediocre start. 

The team has thrown in a lot of new cogs into the machinery, and it’s handing the on-court reigns to Rajon Rondo to continue his gradual ascent from role player, to star, to being a part of the “Big Four” and a leader of the team, to being the leader of the team. 

The Celtics added Courtney Lee, Jason Terry and Leandro Barbosa through free agency. They’ve added Jared Sullinger and Kris Joseph (as well as Fab Melo, who is playing in the D-League right now) through the draft. It takes a bit of time for a team to work all of that out. 

It also takes some sense to figure out why they made all those moves, namely to get younger. They were getting so old, the Knicks were making jokes about them. 

That youth is going to take time to develop and coalesce and not just time in terms of days and weeks passing; they need time in terms of actual minutes playing on the court. 

Certainly, the team would be better now if Kevin Garnett were on the court more. The Celtics outscore their opponents by 7.7 points per 100 possessions while he’s on the court as opposed to being outscored by 26 while he’s on the bench. 

But now is not the goal for the Celtics. Their top concern is later, in the postseason.

The Celtics’ success then isn’t going to be determined just by how Garnett and Paul Pierce do, but also by how all of the new players do.  

There’s also the fact that Garnett still isn’t getting younger. In fact, he’s even older, 36, than he was last year, when he was only 35. A career-low in minutes is a good thing for a player who is a career-high in age. Sorry for the repetition, but some points need to be belabored. 

No matter how big of a Celtics fan you are, you can’t ignore that Old Man Time is undefeated. Even Bill Russell got too old to play. 

Garnett’s not there yet, but you’d rather get the best of his minutes in the postseason than right now.

The C’s might not be rolling yet, but history shows they will eventually, and they’ll be better off for it. 

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Boston Celtics: Reaction to Their 1-2 Start to the Season

 Boston  No Responses »
Nov 062012
 

I initially signed on to write an article that I would title “Who’s Hot and Who’s Not for the Boston Celtics.” Then I started re-looking at the statistics from the first three games, and I realized that not one player on the Celtics could be considered “hot.”

Paul Pierce had big games against the Miami Heat and the Washington Wizards, but a poor performance against the Milwaukee Bucks with just 11 points on 3-11 shooting. With those three games, Pierce was the second closest to being considered “hot.”

The only player ahead of him was Rajon Rondo, who is essentially playing to expectations (albeit, high expectations) with double-digit scoring on high percentage shooting, double-digit assists and around five rebounds every game. 

Just about every other player on the team is playing under expectations. The JET, Jason Terry, has yet to truly take off. On the other hand, Leandro Barbosa started out strong with a great performance against the Heat, but since then he has been a non-factor.

Beyond all of the stats and the individual performances, though, the Celtics simply aren’t playing well as a team. For a team that has prided themselves on defense for the past five years, allowing over 100 points a game is simply unacceptable. Meanwhile, their team assist numbers are down as well.

Beyond that, the Celtics still remain in the bottom half of the league in scoring and rebounding, though they have made minute improvements in both categories.

Despite all of this, there is no cause for worry. It’s been three games which approximates to about 3.66 percent of the season.

There are 79 more games, in which the Celtics (who are still trying to figure themselves out) can build chemistry and improve. 

I’ve learned in the past five years, that it is foolish to ever worry about the Celtics. In 2010, they finished the season horribly and still came within one game of banner No. 18. Last year, the Celtics started the season 0-3 which, last time I checked, is even worse than 1-2. Even by the All-Star break, the Celtics were still under .500. 

So I’ll have none of this worrying for three games. Yes, they have played worse than we expected, but these games don’t win championships. At the end of the day, that is what the Celtics are after: a championship. Games in early November mean little to nothing. Call me when they are losing in April, May and June, then I might get worried. 

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Larry Bird Isn’t Walking Through the Door: Learning to Love THESE Celtics

 Boston  No Responses »
Oct 312012
 

It’s basketball time again, Celtics fans.

The leaves of autumn have fallen, and so have the Red Sox of summer. The sometimes mighty, sometimes mighty-frustrating Patriots are doing their thing in Foxborough.

The Bruins are literally and figuratively hibernating.

And then there are the Celtics, the new-old Celtics. You remember the Celtics, with future Hall of Famers Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce getting a bit long in the tooth, but who are still exciting and productive players.

Add Rajon Rondo, now in his seventh year, who has ascended into the vacated spot in “the Big Three.” If you want a pass-first point guard, there’s hardly anyone his equal in the NBA (take that, Steve Nash).

Then there’s household names like Courtney Lee, Darko Milicic, Leandro Barbosa, Jared Sullinger, Jason Collins, Kris Joseph, Chris Wilcox and Fab Melo. These stalwart fellows are known as “depth,” which boils down to a nice mixture of “has been’s” or never was’s” or “will they ever be’s.”

So the Celtics are trying to keep with the old ways—Doc Rivers is a great coach who provides continuity and marvelous guidance—while infusing new talent into the system.

Brandon Bass, Jason Terry and Jeff Green round out the roster and actually have some game. They could make this version of the Celtics somewhere between competitive and very good.

So I watched last night’s game, or at least parts of it, and I learned a few things about the Celts:

- They are good enough to compete with the best teams like the Heat.

- They are not likely to beat the Heat when it comes to crunch time.

- They probably will learn to play better defense once everyone gets on the same page later in the season.

- And Paul Pierce better stay healthy!!

I also learned why it’s easy to love KG and why it’s easy to begin not loving Ray Allen.

Ray gets on the floor and starts hugging everyone in green in sight. If the Stanford mascot had been in town, my guess is that Ray would have given him (her? it?) a gigantic smack on the lips.

So why did Kevin let his body language say, “No thanks.”

I may not be a certified mind reader, but if I were, I bet this is what I would have heard him saying:

“Man, what are you doing? It’s not just that you left the team, but how and why you did it. It’s not as if you haven’t been saying annoying and insulting stuff in the media. It’s not as if you talked to me before or after you left to make things square.”

“And now you walk on the court and pull this public relations stunt by hugging people. Are you kidding? This is a basketball game, Ray. This ain’t no love fest. I don’t kiss and hug in the middle of basketball games, and I certainly don’t do it with members of the other team.”

“So, let’s forget about public shows of affection when there’s basketball to be played. Game on, man, and stay out of my way if I’m coming down the lane.”

Well, maybe there are a lot of new faces on the new-old Celtics. And maybe they’ll turn out to be winners. Well, maybe, maybe not.

But as long as they are the Celtics of KG, I still think I can get excited about these guys.

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Boston Celtics: Where Will They Finish This Season?

 Boston  No Responses »
Oct 242012
 

Anyone on the Internet who predicts the Boston Celtics will reach the NBA Finals this season should lose his writing privileges, right?

I sure hope not. 

Many facets of the the Celtics’ upcoming season have been under the scrutiny of fans and experts alike. After being ousted by the NBA champion Miami Heat in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals less than a year ago, the C’s have much to look forward to in 2012-13. 

Size and athleticism were among the main differences between the winners and losers in 2012. With a few new-look teams around the NBA (think Brooklyn and a revamped Lakers squad), the Celtics will be forced to fight to remain in NBA Finals conversation. 

Offseason acquisitions such as Jason Terry and Leandro Barbosa aren’t exactly on par with blockbuster signings of Dwight Howard or Joe Johnson, but their integration into the C’s lineup could prove equally as influential.

Let’s take a look at what kinds of thoughts are swirling around the web regarding Boston’s upcoming campaign just before the season’s opening tip. 

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Former Indiana Pacers Guard Leandro Barbosa Signs with Boston Celtics: Fan Reaction (Yahoo! Contributor Network)

 Toronto  No Responses »
Oct 182012
 

Remember when Leandro Barbosa was all the rage in Indianapolis? Well, OK, maybe he wasn’t all the rage, but the veteran guard was the man of the hour at the 2012 NBA trade deadline when the Indiana Pacers traded their second round draft pick to acquire him from the Toronto Raptors. The Pacers had plenty of cap room to work with and needed to beef up their scoring and their box office appeal, and Barbosa supposedly met both of those criteria. …

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Leandro Barbosa to Celtics Further Muddles Team’s Backcourt Plans for 2012-13

 Boston  No Responses »
Oct 182012
 

The wait is finally over. After months of anticipation, the NBA world has finally witnessed Brazilian shooting guard Leandro Barbosa find a new NBA home.

The team he signed with just so happens to be the least likely of candidates.

According to Adrjian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports, the Brazilian star has reached an agreement with the Boston Celtics on a one-year deal. This comes on the heels of an offseason in which the Celtics signed both Courtney Lee and Jason Terry.

Free agent guard Leandro Barbosa has reached agreement on a one-year deal with the Boston Celtics, league sources tell Yahoo! Sports.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) October 17, 2012

One can only feel good for Barbosa, who had approached unemployment after nine quality seasons in the league. Despite winning the 2007 Sixth Man of the Year award, it appeared as if his demand had hit a steep decline.

Fortunately for Barbosa, the Celtics appear inclined to take a chance on his ball-handling and three-point shooting abilities. The question is, where exactly does Barbosa fit into their game plan and rotation?

With those questions unanswered, this signing simply muddles the team’s backcourt plans for 2012-13.

 

Where Does He Fit?

The Boston Celtics are currently set to put forth a shooting guard tandem of Jason Terry and Courtney Lee. One of those players will start, while the other will receive a high volume of minutes and likely play the role of sixth man.

Once defensive standout Avery Bradley recovers from shoulder surgery, he too will step in and compete for major minutes.

With all of this being known, where exactly do the Celtics plan to play Barbosa? He could spend time on the floor with Jason Terry as the two juggle the ball-handling duties while Rajon Rondo rests, but when else?

Playing 10 minutes a night may not be a quality enough role for Barbosa to maintain positive morale. After all, he has averaged at least 20.0 minutes a night in every season since 2006.

Preparing for injuries is a great approach to take. Sometimes egos can take precedence, however, which would leave the Celtics in shambles.

 

Celtics Lacked Inconsistency Until Now

One of the best things about the Celtics’ perimeter players is that they are some of the most consistent shooters in the game. Although Barbosa shot 38.2 percent from beyond the arc for the year, he made just 42.5 percent of his total field goals.

During the postseason, those numbers took a significant hit. Barbosa’s slash line sat at .370/.150/.500.

For this reason, it is difficult to comprehend why the Celtics went ahead and brought Barbosa in. Although his energy and quickness would benefit any team he plays for, he is only going to see minor minutes and has proven to be inconsistent while receiving them.

Unless he turns his postseason failure around, this was a deal that may harm the Celtics more than it helps them.

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