14 Reasons Not to Count the C’s Out

Posted by Craig in Celtics on November 25th, 2009 | one response

FOURTEEN GAMES.

The Celtics have played 14 games so far this season and are currently sitting on a 10-4 record atop the Atlantic Conference with a 3.5 game lead on the Toronto Raptors already. They are tied with the Cleveland Lebrontourage for the 2ndbest record in the East behind the 11-3 Magic and Hawks who should grind at each other in the Southeast Division. In the West, the Lakers and Suns are tied with a 11-3 record followed by the Dallas Mavericks and Denver Nuggets with 10-4 records.

So then why is Boston buzzing about how we make a move right now to better this team?

Basketball is unlike any of the other major 3 sports. Baseball is a long and grinding season played every day for 162 games and trades are held off until the trade deadline. Hockey has such little money put into it that moves are made anytime throughout the season and often with little fanfare. In Football we almost never see a trade at all during the season unless you are the NY Jets andCleveland Browns and you have to hurry Braylon Edwards toward another dropped ball.

Basketball is a relaxed paced season with breaks between games that go from 18 hours to 3-4 days. This is a major factor into the thought process of the deal-makers since rest is a factor in the sport that has the most constant moving (besides soccer… sorry soccer fans, no “5 Sport Boston” in the works).

Just this week alone, a lot of speculation has gotten started.

Already the Celtics have had “internal conversations” about the possibility of making moves for Allen Iverson, the possibility of trading Ray Allen, and many other questions.

There are also numerous people that are just plain old getting sick of talking about it this soon in the season too and I agree.

Coming into this season, we had a 4SB Podcast in which Patrick and I discussed the Celtics’ schedule and how we thought they would fare on the season. We took a look at the ‘Sheed suggestion that the Celtics would put a good fight in to beat the Bulls amazing 72-10 record season. At the time, I didn’t think it would happen but I figured that being close was certainly an option predicting 70 wins. Now 4 losses in the allowed 12, it can still be done but not without this team coming out of this funk.

Certainly, the bench has fallen off of the amazing production they gave through the first 2 weeks but you know what? That is why they are the bench. They are not the starters on this team because there are guys better than them on the team and they are meant to fill a whole and we as fans seem to have become accustomed to expecting every player on the team to play like an All-Star. Granted our bench could be a starting 5 in many other locations in the NBA, they are the bench here and should be regarded as so.

Either way, ‘Sheed has seen a lot of criticism recently which seems somewhat justified to an extent but once again, so much of the argument is writer bias that it sways you into thinking what he wants anyway… garbage. Yes, ‘Sheed’s numbers are down from last year and you know why? His minutes are down so he isn’t going to have the same numbers as previous years and he is not old but he is getting there and generally those kinds of players, especially coming off the bench, see themselves warm up and find their shot deeper into the season. I certainly would not get concerned with the play of a veteran like ‘Sheed after just 14 games (most of which he was actually playing well) due to a small 0-11 three-point shooting stretch over 2 games.

These types of nit-picky issues remind me so much of Ray Allen. Over past years, Jesus Shuttlesworth has had his slumps in which the media jumped all over him and he always came out of it with a game where he put up over 40 points and hit just about every shot he took. I highly expect ‘Sheed to have a night like this within the next week with fairly calm matches against the likes of Philadelphia (5-9 record, home game), Toronto (7-8 record, home game), Miami (8-5, away game), and Charlotte (4-9, away game). The next opponent that SHOULD be able to give them a hard time is the Spurs on the road on December 3rd.

If your biggest issue of concern to the media is the play of your bench then you don’t have an area of concern. If we were talking about KG or Pierce shooting 0-11 from anywhere on the floor, we may have a talking point but not this time Boston.

Doc has openly stated during his pregame talks with CSN that he thinks the team seems to be getting a little too relaxed in where they are but think about how that mentality would effect a team that just kept winning. Knowing this team, they are a very hungry bunch but they have also already tasted the victory as well. A couple of times, going back to the ‘07-08 season, we have seen the C’s go on long runs of wins and seem to get a little lax about it all but seeing them have this success in the NBA’s version of the AFC East and still being challenged night in and night out will not only make for a team willing to work hard but it makes for much better basketball in the long run.

Subscribe to this author's posts feed via RSS