I love all opening days, but Celtics' Opening Day is the best of them all. The energy of the building is always high, even for the beginning of a season where, deep down, we all knew the team was going to stink. Hope always springs eternal on Opening Day. Now the team is a legitimate title contender, so the crowd is even better. It's always just a ton of fun. Now, here are 3 quick thoughts on the season at hand:
-I say the team will win between 57-63 games. Frankly, it all depends on Garnett's knee. I hope Doc realises that he doesn't need to win a ton of regular season games because the rest of the teams in the Atlantic division are not as good as the Celtics, so they should have no problem clinching at least a 3 seed in the Eastern Conference. There is no need to run the veterans into the ground, let Orlando (who I think will have a monster regular season record) tire themselves out. This group can win on the road in the playoffs, they just need to be healthy when they get there.
-To that end, the Glen Davis injury is a real bad start. It means Garnett is going to have to play a ton of minutes early in the season, which is the exact opposite reason we kept Davis around. We wanted to ease KG slowly up to playing 35-40 minutes, not shorten the bench before the season even started. See, this is why we should have kept Leon Powe. At least going into the season we would have known he was going to miss some serious time. [Sidebar: when the news broke that Davis injured his thumb in a fight with a childhood friend, I was not exactly shocked. Davis lost a ton of weight this offseason, allegedly by taking up MMA training and he absolutely strikes me as the kind of guy who would tell his friend he wants to show him a move and then leave a choke hold on long enough to piss that friend off. Teaching Glen Davis fight moves was a recipe for disaster.]
-I love the fact that the Celtics are playing hardball with Rajon Rondo. I like the kid's game, but if you want to turn down $9 million annually and instead become a restricted free agent during a summer in which the salary cap is projected to go down as much as $6 million and the few teams that will actually have money will be going after the top-tier guys like James, Bosh and Wade, then be my guest. We'll get one year of Rondo in 'impending free-agency and pissed-off mode' and then probably get be able to resign him for less money than is offered now. Danny may have finally figured this whole G.M. thing out.
And on that note, Enjoy the Season.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment