The Celtics led by coach Ty Lue had a bright start going 4-1 in the Orlando summer league, losing only to Detroit and beating up on the Magic, Pacers, Nets and Thunder respectively.

Suprises in Orlando

Kris Joseph

Showed great length and wingspan (6-11), was flying all over the court. While Joseph had up and down shooting games, he found ways to make his mark by defending and hitting the glass. His shooting will improve, he has good form and is very confident on midrange jumpers, it just doesn’t extend to the three-point line yet.

Dionte Christmas

Got better and better as the week went along, finishing with his best game against the Magic with 21 points, including 19 in the first half where he had a stretch of 11 in a row. The surprise about Christmas was that he showed an all-around game. Known at Temple as a scorer and mainly a shooter, Christmas played tough defense (3 steals) and hit the boards throughout the week.

Jared Sullinger’s Passing Ability

Everyone knew Sully could play. If his back holds up and he adjusts to the size of the NBA everyone believes that he will be a steal. What we didn’t know about was his ability to pass. Faced with constant double teams, Sullinger looked and found the open man and made it easier on the guards as the Celtics looked to run their offense through him more and more throughout the week. He won’t see those double teams in the NBA, but the vision and ability to pass is only another positive to take from the first round pick.

Up and Down

E’Twaun Moore

In the one loss of the week, Moore was clearly outplayed Pistons guard Brandon Knight, seemingly struggling with the quickness. For a guy who is described as cool as extremely calm, Moore was frazzled from the start. The rest of the week Moore shined and showed his ability to run the point. He made good decisions on pick and rolls and had a great assist to turnover ratio. In the final game, he got into a little scoring battle with Christmas as they poured it on against the Magic.

Jujuan Johnson

Johnson showed that he could shoot over most players, but not much else. He hasn’t added much if any weight to his frame from his rookie season and was having a tough time on the blocks going against other players. He rebounded well during the week but was sometimes a little slow on his rotations. I’m holding Johnson to a higher standard because I expected big things from the former Big Ten Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year.

Fab Melo

Melo truly had an up and down week, shocking everyone in the gym one game with a dribble drive and dish on one play and then throwing an outlet pass to Kris Joseph while he was sitting on the bench. He had some great blocks and showed good defensive ability, but didn’t have much of an idea on how to play defense against the pick and roll. It seems that he is going to need a full year under Doc to understand the complex Boston defense and figure out the rotations.