How Does Our Bench Measure up Now?

You wouldn't have believed it by listening to ESPN, TNT, and ABC pundits, but the Original 2007-08 Boston Celtics Bench wasn’t too bad.

Since the beginning of 2008, Doc has been regularly playing four to five guys guys off the bench for more than 80 minutes a game, often using multiple second-unit members to help close out close games. Not only that, two of them, Leon Powe and Glen Davis, played pivotal roles in closing out crucial games against the Pistons on the road and the Spurs at home.

But then you add this guy and that guy into the mix, and, whoah, Nellie, now you’ve got yourself a bench!

Don’t get me wrong.

I’m not ready to compare the 2008 Boston Celtics bench to the 1986 Boston Celtics bench. I’ve droned on in post after post at how good Wedman, Walton, and Sichting were that year. Throw in Rick Carlile, David Thirdkill, and Sam Vincent, and you go eight deep with high-quality players and three-more deep with quality role players.

Going eight deep with players that talented was something that hadn’t been done since the 1960s, and maybe not even then. The Lakers tried to emulate the Celtics in 1987, when they had Mychal Thompson, Michael Cooper, and Kurt Rambis coming off the bench. Good, but no Sixth Man of the Year (Walton), nobody shooting .924 from the stripe and .570 from the field (Sichting), and nobody that could fill in for McHale while he missed 14 games and kick-start a winning streak on his own (Wedman).

However, I do want to compare the 2008 Boston Celtics to the 1989 and 1990 Detroit Pistons.

I’ll let you decide who had the better bench, and, while the information is handy, who had the better team (on paper, of course) .

See the next two posts.