Celtics NBA Preview (2010-11 Season)

C’s improved their depth but will it be enough to keep Ray and PP fresh for another deep playoff run. I think part of Ray’s ineffectiveness in the finals was due to that knee he took but that doesn’t explain the missed layups. I think we’re going to see Ray become less effective this year and I’m not sure West and Wafer will be enough to make up the difference.

I think they’re going to coast again this year after the holidays—not as much as last year but they’ll lose games to teams they have no business losing to. Last year’s efforts have made me very hesitant to buy tickets for this season. After being there for both the Nets and Wizards games, I can’t see putting out more money for that kind of effort.

rondo is guna have 2 be the start this season but what he has is ALOT of very good role players
kg,ray,PP,shaq,J.O.,nate.big baby,wafer,west,perk when he comes back

hopefully we get to the line more as well we need easy points as much as we can get em this season

When listed as ‘key additions’ and ‘key losses’, it is a very successful offseason.

In the end, it is all about the how well KG, Pierce and Ray age.

its sad to see them still trying to win a title when they have no one that can give them 20 points no matter what yes that includes ginobli who’s going to carry us on offence ,i kno doc usually runs set plays but all in all KG has to go back to attacking the basket and posting up for his dreak shake and rondo has to become a beter free throw shooter

is the last line in section one. While it is obvious that you have to get 18 before you get 19, I may have said; “I’ll take another shot at banners 18 and 19.”

We’ve had real bad injury luck the past two years. We could have been looking to 4peat and #20, but luck and the timeliness of injuries plays such a big part in sports.

If Rondo could be an 80% free throw shooter and had a semi-consistent mid-range J, he would be in the top ten players in the NBA. He has the best game face of anybody and I just love his mentality. He’s got a PG mind and backs down to no one.

Skill is there, depth is there, attitude will be about winning not about ME, coaching not a weakness. All about health. You will even see promise in Bradley, Harangody and maybe Gaffney. (I’m skeptical on Wafer). And Erden did not look like a stiff against NBA ballers.

good write up. losing thibs was big but lawrence frank was a good pickup. losing clifford will hurt. baby is another key guy- no lateral progress- he has to move up a notch or two.. someone has to be an adequate sub for pp. and doc has to be in it.

Two comments:

Offense – I totally agree that it WAS a weakness. I disagree that this IS a weakness. This year’s team should be much better on offense than last year for the following reasons.

1) KG’s knee should be stronger – that had virtually no real impact on his defense (which remained elite), but he was missing his fadeaway jumper much of the year, which comes from the knees. I expect KG will be more effective on offense again.

2) While it is possible that Pierce and Ray will slip a little (Pierce set personal highs for shooting percentage and while Ray slipped a little in 3PT%, was above his career averages in every other shooting category), any slip in offensive production there should be compensated by

3) J’Oneal, while perhaps not quite as effective a post defender as Perkins, is nevertheless a much better offensive threat and

4) Rajon Rondo should continue to show improvement offensively.

5) Beyond the starting 5, most importantly, our bench should be MUCH MUCH better offensively than last year’s bench. Shaq, BBD, Daniels, Wafer/West & Nate —→ that is a very good offensive unit, with all the tools you need to have in order to spread defenses and attack the hoop.

Coasting – I’m sorry, I just don’t by the idea that the players ‘coasted’ or ‘paced themselves’ last year in order to ‘turn the switch on’ for the playoffs. I just don’t think it is in the DNA of KG, Pierce or Allen to be accepting of any loss.

In games where all three of KG, Pierce and Allen were healthy, our won-lost percentage was right up their with the elite teams of the NBA. With any of them out, our record was lame.

This tells me that the problem wasn’t ‘coasting’. It was a weak bench.

Lets face it – our bench was missing 3 significant contributors for loong stretches (BBD, Daniels and Tony). Of those guys, BBD took a while to get his game back and Daniels never seemed fully back in the swing ever. Further, our bench had no offensive balance. For the longest time, Eddie and then Nate were the only 3PT shooter off the bench until we added Finley. You can’t stretch a defense with just one outside shooter and a bunch of slashers. The result was, unless we kept Ray on the floor, most of the time the 2nd unit could not stretch the floor, period. Another problem with our bench was that while Rasheed Wallace was effective backing up Perk at the C and even playing against 2nd unit PFs off the bench, when KG was out, we expected Sheed to play the PF position as a starter, which put him against younger, more athletic PFs. That was what I like to call “Black January” of last year. Ugh. I loved ’Sheed overall, but that was not good.

And we had a lot of dead weight on the bench that, for good reason, the Celtics had zero hesitation in getting rid of.

So I guess I’m saying that our regular season record wasn’t so much a sign of ‘coasting’ as maybe it was simply a fair measure of just how good this team was as a regular season team, overall. We just didn’t have overall team depth to do any better. The difference with the playoffs was simply that our starters and our bench were all healthy up until we lost Perk – and we all know how that hurt.

I’d say Danny put a heavy emphasis this year on building up a much better bench than last year.