Jackie Mac
You think there was buzz surrounding the Celtics before? Clamp on your earmuffs.
The noise this team has made in the infancy of the NBA season was elevated to ear-splitting decibels last night during a raucous Garden gathering in which the Denver Nuggets graciously played the role of party piñata.
In what was billed as a classic East meets West shooters' showdown, there were five All-Stars on the court at tipoff - Boston's Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen, and Denver's Allen Iverson, and Carmelo Anthony, and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, the Nuggets' Marcus Camby.
The difference between the trios became obvious in a matter of minutes. While Denver's studs floundered about, squawking and groaning and missing jumpers and trying to conjure some (any?) chemistry, Boston's Ballyhooed Three systematically went about the business of shredding any chance the Nuggets had to win this game.
The Celtics' trio was the model of cohesion, while Denver's so-called Big Three was the model of confusion.
It has been a long, long, long, long (that's right, four of 'em) time since a Celtics team made the game look so incredibly easy. That sort of thing happens when you rack up 77 points in a half. It had to do with ball movement (a 19-8 advantage in assists at intermission and a 32-23 edge at game's end), spectacular shooting (how does 72.1 percent at halftime sound?), and an absolute pounding off the glass (a 38-27 advantage). It had to do with keeping teammates involved.
It also had to do with the Celtics making the commitment on the defensive end. None of the local veterans needs anyone to explain their legacies are on the line this season. Neither Pierce, Garnett, nor Allen was in the playoffs last year, and the three made a pact to dramatically change that. In other words, qualifying for the postseason won't be enough.
This club wants more, and it is playing like it.
The Celtics have already caught the attention of the rest of the country, and last night's thumping will only heighten their resurgence.
Providence Journal
Remember all those people around here the past few years who said they hated the NBA?
All those who said they didn’t watch it anymore?
Well, there are a lot less of them now.
Why?
Simple.
The Celtics are good.
Which is not to say that some of the NBA’s image problems still don’t persist as we enter another season. Some of this is generational, of course, the fallout from the fact that hip-hop culture now runs through the NBA like a fast break. There are still a generation of fans that cling to the Bird era as though it’s like the memory of childhood, something that never can be replicated, and see the contemporary NBA as basketball heresy, full of too many tattoos, too many thugs, a different game than the one they used to love.
But, truth be told, the main reason why people around here didn’t like the NBA was that the Celtics weren’t any good. Or how do you get them excited about Rajon Rondo and Leon Powe when they had seen Larry Bird and Kevin McHale ? Or how do you get them excited about rebuilding when they had seen titles being won and banners hoisted into the rafters?
That’s essentially been at the core of the Celtics’ problems for the past two decades, the fact that we were all spoiled. We had seen the best. We knew the history. This wasn’t Orlando or Sacramento, places where the NBA was still as new as first love, and where it was a big deal to even be in the playoffs. This was Boston, where the 16 championship banners all but stare down like accusers.
Is it any wonder why too many people didn’t seem to care a whole lot about the Celtics?
Well, they do now.
You’d have to have spent the summer on the dark side of the moon not to know that the Celtics are very different than they were a year ago, that the blockbuster moves made in the summer have the Celtics as one of the favorites to win the Eastern Conference and get to the NBA Finals. That’s what happens when you add Kevin Garnett, one of the true NBA superstars, and sweet-shooting all-star Ray Allen to go along with Paul Pierce.
For there’s no real mystery to this. The NBA is not about what kind of defense you play, or what your offensive philosophy is. It’s not really about who the coach is. It’s about talent, pure and simple. Good players win games. Mediocre players do not. And three great players transform you overnight.
Which certainly doesn’t mean all the questions are answered. Rondo is still a second-year point guard, as green as the away uniforms, and still can’t shoot. Kendrick Perkins is serviceable at best, a young center with few offensive skills. Can you be a great team with both a young point guard, and a young center? Can you be a great team with the two most important positions a question mark?
That’s the unanswered question.
Still, this team has been transformed in ways that are almost unimaginable from a year ago.
Remember last spring when the unofficial game plan was to lose games and get one of the first two picks in the draft? Remember the doom and gloom when the Celtics seemed buried forever, trapped on some interminable treadmill of rebuilding and young players that didn’t know how to win? Remember when this year figured to be the same as last year, another year off Pierce’s career, while the team went nowhere?
Remember last year when Danny Ainge was getting routinely crushed for the mess he had made of the Celtics, and Pierce was making public announcement that he wanted some veteran players around him, his fear being that by the time the Celtics’ young players were truly ready to win his career would be on fumes?
But thank the Hoop God for McHale, right?
Bob Ryan's Big Three: You Know Who, You Know Who, and You Know Who
I'm not concerned right now about what's going to happen in May and June. I just want to thank Danny Ainge for giving us back our winter. Danny Ainge has rescued us from being strictly a two-sport town.
For many years now - for the entire 21st century, actually - it's been Red Sox and Patriots, Patriots and Red Sox, Red Sox and Patriots, and, of course, Patriots and Red Sox. When, I'm sorry, if (don't want to rile up those Colts, you know) the Patriots win the Super Bowl Feb. 3, there will be about a two-week window before pitchers and catchers report and the Red Sox officially begin defense of their championship. In this century, it hasn't mattered much, frankly, that the Celtics have usually been unwatchable. We got along very well without them.
That has changed.
The Celtics are demanding our attention.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's only three games. But what three games! First, there was that rousing opener against Washington. Then they hung tough to pull out an OT road win against the defending Atlantic Division champion Raptors. And Wednesday night we bore witness to an utter destruction of what will surely prove to be a good NBA team. It was a show the likes of which we haven't seen around here since You Know Who, You Know Who, You Know Who, and all the auxiliary You Know Whos were brightening up our winters back in the '80s.
After watching the Celtics blast their way to a 77-38 halftime lead over the Nuggets, I happened to run into a pair of certified Celtic Legends in the press room. You might be interested in what they had to say.
"I haven't seen anything like this around here for 20 years," said Bob Cousy. "That kind of poise and confidence on offense . . . they make as many passes as necessary."
"They're playing like the teams I played on," declared Tom Heinsohn. "They always pass to the right man. It's tough to beat a team like that." 'Tis often said that passing is contagious. Want proof? Even Kendrick Perkins had two assists, and this is a young man who's averaged fewer than an assist a game in his first three seasons combined.
The starting five played a Bird-era shell game with the basketball against the Nuggets, demonstrating great patience and understanding of the shot clock while calmly making the extra pass and then the extra-extra pass. Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Rajon Rondo, and Perkins affixed 24 assists to their combined 38 baskets. All those You Know Whos would have been proud.
Understand, please, that they're not always going to shoot the way they did Wednesday night. Not until the score was 105-73 did they fall under 70 percent shooting for the game. Nobody's that good.
Nuggets coach George Karl, normally a bench wanderer, never moved from his seat, not once. He saw what was going on very early, and he decided to take his beating like a man."They came out with spirit and energy," he said, "and they took away our spirit and energy."
That's not all he said.
First of all, he certainly noticed the passing. "You saw three great players committed to playing with each other," he noted. "Each of them had as many great passes as great shots." But that wasn't the facet of the Celtics' game that impressed Karl the most. "I love them defensively more than offensively," he said. " They were not a good defensive team last year. But if we had made the commitment to defense they've made, we'd be a great team, too."
Karl had one more observation.
"The heart of the team is Garnett," he said. "He's got the heart. He's got the toughness. He's got the drive. And he's got the defensive commitment. He wants this. He wants to get to the playoffs and be successful. Not being in the past few years has been killing him."
What we now have is a reason to care.
Danny has restored the value of the regular season. I truly cannot identify the last time I awoke on a Celtics regular-season game day and spent all day thinking about that night's game, the way I did Wednesday. The athletic experience isn't just about the playoffs. Anything can happen in the playoffs. Somebody gets hurt, the other team gets insanely hot, and you're out in five, wondering what happened. You can't be worrying about the playoffs in November, December, January, February, and March.
That's Danny's job.
"I do think about the playoffs," acknowledged Mr. Ainge. "I can't help it. We need to get better."
We needn't go there. We're free to enjoy the here and now. It's pretty evident there will be more games reminiscent of the Denver destruction. We need to sit back and enjoy the ride.
How long, really, has it been since basketball fans went to the Garden to see the Celtics? For years it's been, "When's Shaq coming? When's Kobe coming? When's LeBron coming? When's AI coming?" That was the only motivation to go. The Celtics themselves were incidental.
If Games 1 and 2 are a gauge, we may be returning to the type of entertainment we knew with the You Know Whos. Remember 1985-86, when the Celtics were 40-1 at home and won their last 17 games by an average of 15 points? That was the team that rendered meaningless the concept of the meaningless game. Every game was a keeper. Every game was a joy. It didn't matter who was coming in. A good Lakers, Sixers, or Pistons game was a bonus. We all came to see the Celtics.
It's different now, and the general manager is not exactly in denial.
"It used to be I'd look at the schedule and say, 'There's 25 games we can't win,' " said Ainge. "Oh, sure, if something happened, we might. You know what I mean? But we'd be up by 15 at the half, and there was no guarantee we're going to win. Now, if we get down 15 at the half, there's no guarantee we're going to lose."
In order to have a proper fan experience, you need a regular season that keeps you fired up, that keeps you engaged. You need to worry that if you don't catch the game, you're going to miss something. I'm tellin' ya, if you missed Wednesday night's game, you missed something, all right. But don't worry. I have a feeling you might see it again.
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