Reality Bites

Now that the Sox have advanced in epic fashion, I feel its time to bring up two points that I’ve been pondering for a couple of weeks.

1. We are not as good as our highest hopes would suggest

2. Nobody is going to notice

For stretches (perhaps only for a game or two) we are going to see it all come together. Gary and Paul will be deadly from outside. Raef will be passing from the high post. Mark will be banging from the low post. Ricky will be dunking on fast breaks. The kids will play with poise. The world will be beautiful. But it’s not going to happen all the time and it definitely won’t last the whole season. And when it’s not all coming together, that’s when you separate the wheat from the chaff.

Good teams like the Pistons and Spurs will go through stretches where nothing is clicking, yet they still win. How do they do it? They do all the little things well and put themselves in a position to win. That means good coaching, good defense, and minimizing mistakes.

The Celtics have at least gotten themselves a coach that should at least be on the same page as their GM. As a result, his personnel are in line with his coaching philosophy.

However, the old adage "Defense wins Championships" never rang as true as it did this last year. Not to mention the Bulls, Lakers, Spurs, and others before. All were very good, if not superior, defensive squads. At least one scout has mentioned that Doc’s teams do not play very physical. That concerns me a bit, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that this is a new team that can be molded to play defense. I just haven’t seen it stressed all that much. There’s a lot of talk of the new offensive system, and that’s great, because it was needed. But they are likely going to be playing a different defensive style to what they learned last year too (well, at least the players that were on the team). I’m as happy as anyone that we won’t have to see Mark Blount trapping the point guard at mid court, but for all his faults on offense, O’Brien did produce good defensive results.

As for minimizing mistakes, just look at how heavily we will have to lean on rookies and young players. Banks, Perkins, and Al Jefferson will be racking up fouls and TOs this year. Jiri and Delonte both look fundamentally solid, but they too are young and have plenty of room for growth. Even vets like Paul and Ricky are not exactly known for mistake-free ball. This is a concern that will not go away quickly. Teams that cut down on errors do so by playing together for a good amount of time and learning to gel together on the court. This team is largely a group of casual acquaintances that need to form into a team. Can that be accomplished in a year? Sure. But it’s more likely to take more than a year. Again, look at the Pistons who built up their reputation for defense over a couple of years. Same with the Spurs. Personally, I think its going to take the Celts some time to gel correctly. In my mind the best bet we have for this year is getting it together for the stretch run just in time for the playoffs. I think we make the playoffs in the second tier of teams. What we do when we get there, is up to that gel factor.

Of course, through most of the season, nobody is going to notice. Either way the Sox go this week, will be talked about for months on end. The Pats haven’t slowed up yet, and will dominate the Hub’s media for as long as they play. The Celts have what, one game on national TV? Nobody cares about this team except you, me, and the rest of the die-hards that hold tight to our memories of Larry, Hondo, or even Russell. The only thing we have going for us is the preview articles calling us the most "interesting" team this year. That’s code for "we have no idea where to rank this team and really it could go in any of 7 directions."

So we fly under the radar. We’ll have great moments, we’ll have low moments. But for the first time in a while, I feel like we are really building towards something special that can be sustained over a long period of time. If things go right, we could be one of those teams that falls into the top teams discussion at this time next year.