I couldn’t be happier to see this team finally play together. What a giddy feeling to see my boy KG in a Celtics uniform. What a joy it was to see Ray Allen calmly hitting jumpers. What a privilege it is watch Paul Pierce still doing his thing like he always has. Oh yeah, and the supporting cast didn’t look bad either.
Because I can’t formulate coherent thoughts in paragraph form, you’re getting bullet points today.
- Gotta start with KG. I wrote before that he is the perfect player. I’m not backing down from that one iota. You couldn’t build a better player from scratch if you tried.
- Sometimes I forget just how effortless Paul makes it look sometimes. He just has a knack. When you take away option A, he takes option B and beats you with it. He can post up, he can come off curls, he can shoot from outside, and those lean and fade shots are just unblockable.
- So the first of the big three to take a deduction in point total is Ray Allen. No real surprise. He might just be the most mature player on the court. His shot was a little off, so instead of forcing it, he found other ways to make his team better.
- Perkins hasn’t missed a shot yet. Will he be the first player ever to shoot 100%? If he keeps finding open area for KG’s dishes and slamming it home, he’s got a shot. Ok, maybe he might miss an occasional jump hook.
- We found out who will come in when Perk picks up a few quick fouls. Powe got the early call today. I think that shows a lot of confidence in him by Doc.
- Rondo ran a solid offense. Six assists and one turnover. Doesn’t get much better than that. Ironically, the shots he made were (short) jumpers, and the shots he missed were layups. He’ll finish better as time goes on, but if he can keep hitting those mid-range jumpers, that’s all we need to keep defenses honest. That’s the thing that people sometimes miss. We don’t need him to be a deep threat. He just needs enough range to score in open areas of the court.
- Speaking of deep range, Eddie House is what he was advertised to be. If you give him a foot, he’s got a good chance of knocking it down. As a bonus, he helped bring the ball up and didn’t turn the ball over once. That doesn’t make him a "point guard" per-se, but it does make me feel better about not having a traditional backup.
- James Posey was underwhelming on offense, but you can already see him making opponents uncomfortable on defense.
- Tony Allen gave us a highlight dunk, and then promptly scared us all by showing some discomfort on that leg. Good to know the boy still has the hops. Let’s just hope he remembers to come down real nice and soft. We’ve been hearing about how he’s attacking the basket with aggression. That’s a great sign. That is what he struggled with the last time and maybe he’s learned how to trust his knee based on lessons learned. I’d like to tell him to take it easy, but I guess the whole thing is to not baby the leg and just go full out. Gotta trust the trainers and doctors that he’s good to go.
- I didn’t see Doc do anything wrong. I like that he played the starters a lot together, then pulled them for the 4th. I hope they’ll get a little more rest in the first 3 quarters when they are going to be finishing the games, but we’ll just assume that will be worked out by opening day.
- Big Baby had some nifty moves. Scal made some nice passes. We had a Gabe Pruitt sighting (who was promptly picked off bringing the ball up by Juan Dixon – lets hope we don’t see more of that). Brandon Wallace scored. …aaaaand looking at the box score, it looks like Jackie Manuel got a rebound!
- No Batista sightings. Hopefully we’ll see him next time.
- The Raptors look good. Talk about a deep team. They don’t lose anything when they sub in. And they can really stroke from outside. They’ll be a team to be reckoned with this year and probably for years to come.
- On a personal note, my lovely wife surprised me by giving me a Kevin Garnett jersey and a Red Auerbach t-shirt for today’s event. Bless her heart.
Just a great game to watch. A wonderful start to the year.