Tag Archives: nba

Celtics Clinch a Playoff Spot

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Boston Celtics F Paul Pierce looking for an open man against the Pistons
Picture Courtesy of csnne.com

Seventh Heaven: Following a 98-93 win over the Detroit Pistons Wednesday (April 3rd), the Boston Celtics secured a playoff spot and will likely be the seventh seed in this year’s NBA playoffs.

Despite an up and down month of March in which the C’s went 8-8 (including a six game losing streak, and losing Kevin Garnett for a few weeks), Boston has managed to will their way into the post-season once again.

Playoff Picture: With the NBA playoffs taking shape, here’s a look at what the Eastern Conference playoff seeding would look like if the season ended today (April 4th):

1) Miami Heat vs. 8) Milwaukee Bucks

4) Brooklyn Nets vs. 5) Atlanta Hawks

3) Indiana Pacers vs. 6) Chicago Bulls

2) New York Knicks vs. 7) Boston Celtics

Pierce guarding New York Knicks F Carmelo Anthony at TD Garden
Picture Courtesy of zimbio.com

The C’s would draw the Knicks as shown directly above and would undoubtedly have their work cut out for them. Boston has only played New York a total of three times this season going 1-2 for the season series.

In their win against the Knicks, Paul Pierce posted 23 points with six assists, three rebounds, and one steal, while Kevin Garnett added a double-double with 19 points and 10 rebounds. The C’s held Carmelo Anthony to 20 points (which was solid considering he averages 28 points per game) and caused the Knicks to only shoot 40 percent from the field.

In their two losses to New York, Boston allowed Anthony to score a combined 57 points while letting J.R. Smith drop 32 points coming off the Knicks bench. Granted, in both losses the Celtics had multiple players score in double digit figures, however, the scoring combination of Anthony and Smith proved too much in those two loses.

Celtics C Kevin Garnett fading away agains New York Knicks C Tyson Chandler at TD Garden
Picture Courtesy of celticshub.com

Keys to Playoff Success: Defense will ultimately decide the outcome of Boston’s potential opening round series with the Knicks. If Paul Pierce and company can contain Anthony, who by the way dropped a combined 90 points in his last two games (April 2nd and 3rd against Miami (50) and Atlanta (40)), and hold the Knicks to a low shooting percentage while contesting shots and controlling the boards, the Celtics will have a chance against New York.

If they can’t…it will likely be curtains for the Celtics who will see an early exit if they fail to contain Anthony and the Knicks.

Final Thoughts: In what has been a brutal season for Boston, the Celtics have found a way to overcome injuries and losing streaks to give themselves a chance at a championship. Though it may be a long shot with the Heat, Knicks, and Pacers all looking like NBA Finals champions, the Celtics are in it to win it like everybody else. And when your Boston, you’re never counted out. How do you feel the C’s will fair in the playoffs? Leave a comment below.

Celtics new additions

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In case you missed it over the weekend, the Celtics made a couple of new acquisitions in order to add more depth to their bench. First, they added 6’9djwhite” Power Forward DJ White. White has played with both the Thunder and the Bobcats during his 4 years in the League. He was formally a 1st round pick out of Indiana and averages 6.8 PPG and 3.6 RPG during his career. He played the first part of this season in China where he averaged 21.6 PPG and 9.7 RPG on the season for the Shanghai Sharks. He has signed with the C’s for a 10 day contract.

Next, they went out and signed 6’10” Shavlik Randolph who shavlikplayed for Duke 5 years ago. I’m guessing we signed him to this 10 day contract strictly for his size. He has only averaged 2.4 PPG and 2.4 RPG over his career and has never racked up many minutes no matter where he has played. At least he can add some size to the line up after we traded Collins last week for Crawford. We don’t need him to score, just to clog up the middle a bit and maybe grab some boards in the mean time.

Most importantly, the Celtics offered hardworking guard/forward Terrence Williams to a multi-year contract. T-Will was on a 10-day contract with the Celts but will now be here to stay. Good for him! Even though he has only averaged 3.3 PPG, 2.3 RPG, and 1.5 APG, Terrence gives us a spark off the bench and has proven that he can score when he needs to. The Celtics will travel to Philly on Tuesday to take on the 76ers.twill

C’s make trade at deadline

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The Celtics made a deal right before the deadline for Washington Wizards Guard Jordan Crawford. In return, the Wizards will get injured Guard Leandro Barbosa and Center Jason Collins. I like this trade. I feel bad that we traded another injured player who was actually playing well for us before the injury, like we did with Marquis DanNBA: Atlanta Hawks at Washington Wizardsiels a few years back, but Danny Ainge knows that this could be our last shot at a title. At least we didn’t end up trading Garnett or Pierce! They deserve to retire in Boston, especially Paul.

Crawford, a 6’4” 2nd year player out of Xavier (27th overall pick in 2010), was starting for Washington while John Wall was injured, but his minutes were minimized once their star returned. This season, Crawford is averaging 13.2 PPG, 3.7 APG, and 3.1 RPG. Those are great numbers, but he will be coming off the bench, so the numbers are sure to drop a little bit. Hopefully, he can provide the same kind of spark that Barbosa did off the bench. On a side note, now that we don’t have a Center behind Garnett, the Celtics could bring up Fab Melo and give him some light minutes against the other big Centers in the league. Do you like this trade?

Possible Celtics Trade?

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With the trade deadline looming (Thursday afternoon), all Celtics fans have the right to be worried. If it wasn’t for Danny Ainge trusting in Shaq’s deteriorating health and trading Kendrick Perkins a few years back for Jeff Green, the Celtics would have won another championship. At least that’s what most think. We needed a big guy to clog up the middle, and no one was afraid to run through Nenad Krstic, like they always were with Perk or Shaq in the paint.

However, this year, it is possible that we could lose the anchor of our team, who has been with the Green and White since we drafted him with the 10th pick in the 1998 Draft. I know all about how theimages league is a business, but sometimes I think you should stick with your own. And it’s not like Pierce is just some player who we can’t use and that just takes up Cap Space, he is still a solid contributor. Paul is averaging 18.5 PPG and grabbing 6.4 Boards (up from 5.2 last season). And with Rondo going down, he is the only one who is generating some assists lately.

Supposedly, they are in preliminary talks with the Hawks about bringing Josh Smith (6’9” Forward) to Boston in exchange for Pierce, and probably something else. Smith is averaging about the same assists as Paul (just over 4) but is averaging 8.6 RPG. He also drops about 17.4 PPG and has over 2 Blocks per Game over his career. He is younger and more of a “future” player for the franchise, so I can understand it. But to send away a guy who stuck with us when we were one of the worst teams year in and year out. I say keep him and let them make one more run. What do you think?

Beating the Odds: C’s Avoid Anticipated Collapse

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Celtics Competing:  I’ll admit I was one of the many who threw their hands up and said, “What are we going to do now?” when I heard Rajon Rondo was out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL. Well, since then the Celtics have responded to everyone’s questions the old fashioned way…by simply winning.

The Celtics have won eight of their last nine games with impressive victories over the Miami Heat, Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, Denver Nuggets, and Chicago Bulls . More importantly, and surprisingly, the C’s have done so without the likes of Rondo, Jared Sullinger, and more recently Leandro Barbosa (all out for the remainder of the season due to injury).

Winning Ways: With the loss of Rondo and Co., Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Jeff Green have led the team on the floor along with assistance from Jason Terry. Here are their numbers for the month of February:

Pierce: 17.1 PPG with 8.9 RPG and 7.3 APG

Garnett: 16.6 PPG with 10.3 RPG and 1.4 SPG

Green: 14.4 PPG with 4 RPG and 1.7 BPG

Terry: 13.1 PPG with 3.7 APG

Avery Bradley, Courtney Lee, and Brandon Bass have also contributed, each averaging 8 PPG.

The Celtics have used a no “pure point guard” philosophy in their 8-1 stretch without Rondo, and so far it has worked well.

Playoff Probability: Although Boston is finding ways to win without a true point guard, they will have to add depth to their roster if they want to have a sure shot at the post-season. According to ESPNBoston’ Chris Forsberg, Coach Doc Rivers recently released his “shopping list” of what he felt the team needed to compete down the stretch:

“Well, I would say a ball-handling guard. It’s no longer a point guard, it’s just a guard. A guard that, if I had my perfect guard for this group right now, it would be a guard that can play multiple positions, that can shoot, and has some toughness. Then we need a big. You’re not going to find a center, so a 4. Obviously a 5 would be great, but a 4 that can stretch the floor, or a 4 that can rebound — just a great rebounding 4 that has skill. That’s the list.”

We’ll have to wait and see what kind of deals Doc and Danny Ainge can whip up in the weeks to come. As of today (February 15th) the Celtics are 28-24 overall and hold the seventh playoff spot/seed of the available eight in the Eastern Conference. Moreover, if the season ended today the C’s would make the playoffs. Of course, the season still has about 30 games to go and as we all know with any sport “anything can happen”.

Nevertheless, I whole heartedly believe Boston can continue their winning ways and place themselves somewhere between a fifth to seventh seed at seasons end. Honestly, at the rate the C’s are playing, they could even lobby for a fourth seed. We’ll just have to watch and see what happens.

Final Thoughts: With roughly 30 games left and only 10 healthy players on a 13 man roster, the C’s have their work cut out for them as they head down the final stretch. Will the Celtics make the post-season? If so, what playoff seed will they earn? Leave a comment below.

Celtics Win Triple OT Thriller

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The Celtics were up by as many as 10 during tonight’s game against the Denver Nuggets. However, the Nuggets, who were on a 9-game winning streak coming into tonight’s game, made it a game late in the 4th quarter. The Celtics seemed to have the game wrapped up when they got robbed by a call. At least that’s how it looked on every spierce-nuggets-20130210-440x352ingle replay that they showed. It looked like two Denver players clearly knocked the ball out of bounds. This would all be okay If they didn’t review it. But they did. They spent two minutes looking at a play from every angle and it still seemed like they got the call wrong. Denver then tied it up with 0.8 seconds left on an easy layup.

In the first overtime, the Nuggets got off to an early lead. However, Jeff Green made a clutch 3-pointer from the corner to tie it up at 99 a piece with one minute remaining, eventually forcing a second overtime. Pierce made an unbelievable 3-pointer with 5.2 seconds left in the 2nd OT to tie it up yet again. However, it was really close as the officials reviewed where his foot was, and it was about a centimeter from the line, thankfully. Eventually, the Celtics were able to win the game 118-114 and extend their win streak to 7 games. They are now 27-23 on the year.

Pierce led the C’s with 27 points, but also was only 7-of-20 shooting from the field.. He was also able to add 13 rebounds and 8 assists. The bench played huge for us. Jeff Green gty-154249437-3_4_r536_c534scored 17 points and played amazing all around. Jason Terry has stepped it up as of late, putting in 26 of his own. JET made five 3-pointers in the contest. He also had 15 against the Lakers the other night. Avery Bradley played great defense as usual and scored 13. Garnett was off early, but really stepped it up in overtime adding 20 points and 16 rebounds.

The Celtics now have only two games until the All-Star break next weekend. They will travel to Charlotte tomorrow to take on the league’s worst team—the Bobcats. The Bobcats are 11-39 this season and allow 103.0 points per game. On Wednesday, the C’s will take on the Bulls who are 30-20 (4th place in the East) even without their MVP Derrick Rose. With Rajon Rondo injured, Kevin Garnett will be the only Celtic player represented at the ASG next Sunday.

Rivers Wins 400th with Celtics

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Doc Rivers is one of three Celtics coaches who have reached the 400-win plateau. He is third behind Tommy Heinsohn (427 wins), who is now the very colorful commentator for Celtics games. In first place is the greatest coach of all-time, Red Auerbach. Red’s record won’t get touched seeing as he has 795 wins, and could have probably reached 1000 if he didn’t decide to step down as coach and move into the front office. Still, he is responsible for bringing Parish, Bird, and Mchale imagestogether after he was done coaching, so he should get credit for those years as well!

Doc is 400-288 with the Celtics over the 9 years he has been in Beantown. He won 171 games as a coach of his hometown Orlando Magic. Doc was also an NBA player beforehand, and is regarded as one of the best, if not the best players’ coach. He was also voted as one of the best coaches at designing set plays from out of bounds. That was from a poll taken before every season. The Celtics have now won 5 straight games.

Garnett Going Away?

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There is a rumor going around that the Los Angeles Clippers are very interested in obtaining Kevin Garnett to help them in a playoff run. With KG’s experience, tenacity, and outside jumpers, who wouldn’t want him on their team? He is still a solid player, even if he is just a fraction of his former self. It is great that Garnett always says he wants to retire aindex Celtic, and I think he should too, but if it is between trading him or Pierce, I’m letting go of Garnett. Pierce got stabbed a bunch of times, had to play alongside some of the worst Celtics ever (i.e. Antoine Walker after his “prime”), and stuck with the team throughout their down years. He holds many records in this storied franchise and I think he deserves to stay. But I digress..

It’s hard to keep Garnett with the season we are having. Yes, we have been playing a lot better since Rondo went down, but before that, it hardly seemed worth the two year, $23.5 million deal that he still has after this season. However, for what they are offering, at least what is rumored, is to trade him for Caron Butler (10 year veteran with 15.7 PPG in his career, most of which occurred a few years back), and 2nd year point guard Eric Bledsoe, who the Clippers are very high on, it is not worth it. Bledsoe is averaging just over 9 points a game this season, playing behind Chris Paul when he was healthy.

Danny Ainge went on the record saying that he really hasn’t talked about moves, but will take a wait-and-see mentality before the trade deadline on February 21. Anyways, KG has a no-trade clause in his new contract, and can veto any trade that we try to do. That being said, do you think he would go? In my mind, the Clippers have a lot better of a chance of winning than we do. However, he has been the harshest since the Ray Allen-to-Miami signing. Would it make him a hypocrite? What do you think?

Sullinger Out For Season

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Well… so much for wearing my Sullinger shirt all season. The breaking news is that Rookie Jared Sullinger will be out for the rest of the season after re-injuring his back. The reason why he fell so far in the draft was because teahi-res-158984834_crop_exactms didn’t think that he could get past his injury. I guess they were right. Apparently, he will be perfectly fine after he rehabs, but you never know. This happens less than a week after we found out that Rajon Rondo would miss the rest of the season as well.

Sullinger has proven himself to be one of the better rookies in the league, and by far the best one the Celtic’s have brought on board in years. Jared averaged 6 points and 5.9 rebounds in just under 20 minutes per game. These aren’t outstanding numbers, but as of late, he has been on of our most solid contributors. The Celtic’s have called up Fab Melo from the Development League, and he may see some time.