"I thought, really, the story of the night was our defensive struggles," Pierce said. "That's not who we are. The way we defended tonight, we're not going to be a team that's going to give up 120 points. We gave up 30 points pretty much each and every quarter.
"We have to establish our identity, who we're going to be, make a decision on the season. Because that's who we are – we're going to be a defensive team, we're going to stop teams from scoring, we're going to keep them out of transition. We've got to be a team that's the enforcer out there. Tonight we were pretty much on our heels the whole night."
"We have a lot of new guys trying to understand our philosophy defensively," Pierce said. "We also had a lot of breakdowns. I thought we just didn't communicate – our defense is all about communicating and we didn't do a good job talking to each other, rotations and things of that nature.
"But we'll get it together. Tonight was a good measuring stick for us – we played against the best team in the NBA, the champs, and we've got a lot of work to do. This is Game 1. We're not the same team we are going to be as the season goes on. And understand it's a work in progress."
The Boston Celtics play 15 games in November (schedule after the jump), including games against Philly, San Antonio, and OKC. Twice the Celtics will play back-to-back. This ought to provide the Celtics with a good opportunity to start ramping up their overall play, and give the newbies a chance to better understand their roles and responsibilities. Last night's loss pretty much issued the team's marching orders for the next 30 days.
Does 10-5 sound about right?
6 comments:
I'll go with 10-5. Some struggles early are to be expected with so many new guys. And then maybe a few more when Avery comes back. But by the playoffs they are going to be beasting!!! But Doc can't play Pierce 40 minutes. He'll be worn down by the All Star break.
The announcers were surprised at how much better BOTH teams were. The C's are gonna be even better as the season unfolds
I'll say 11-4 although 9-6 is a much more reasonable estimate of this "growing pains" month.
Lex,
I find the green on dark grey quite hard to read. I've taken to doing a Select All on these articles to make them easier to read. Perhaps a light grey background please.
lee
Hey Lee,
How about this color?
I kind of like . . .
I kind of like it. But then again, I kind of liked the other color too. I'm easy to get along with :)
I always liked that about you
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