Do You Still Believe?

As they wait for the real games to start, Rivers admits nobody is afraid of his team anymore. But like his galaxy of fading stars, he believes they can put it together in the playoffs.

And I’m still buying.

I don’t care if the Celtics are 2-9 against the Cavaliers, Magic, and Hawks. Seeing them lose at home to the New Jersey Nets doesn’t discourage me. Getting whupped by the Grizz by 20 at the Garden is OK. Sometimes you’ve just got to see the glass as half full. This is one of those times.

--Dan Shaughnessy

It’s a completely different team. All of them are different. They’re better, they’re healthier. They’re feeling better.

--Doc

That was a hell of a season. We ended up six wins short of where I said we'd end up. Not bad in light of other talk we heard about 70 wins and above.

At the end of the day, this team was, well, not a team. They were a collection of parts that never got assembled. Squisy did this and that. Nate Robinson did this and that. Pierce and KG were hurt. Sheed was fat. Doc got tuned out or something akin thereto.

Needless to say, I'm not optimistic about the playoffs. We might sneak out of the first round. And you can count on the locals to have their fists up for round two, should they make it that far. But to succeed in the playoffs you need to be able to dig deep, draw on past success, and the current group has not had much success as a group. They've had as much bad as they've had good. Strike that, I'm not sure the good rises to a high enough level to offset the bad.

So when push comes to shove at a critical juncture of the playoffs, the Celtics will be struggling with what to do as a team, and that doesn't bode well for the green.