Celtics new players were head Turners, Boston beats Sixers 98-78

It took a while for the Celtics to shake off the rust, but eventually they remembered that they were playing the Sixers.

The first quarter was a whole lot of Avery Bradley and not a lot of points.  I like the aggressive attitude but he started out 1-7.  Not his best look, especially when one of his few buckets was a bank-in 3 pointer.  Still, I think he was just looking for his shot and it just wasn't falling today.  It is important not to overreact too much to the first game of the preseason.

With that said, the first preseason game is always about first impressions of the new guys.  So let's go through some of them and totally overract and jump to conclusions!

Marcus Smart is going to get me excited about defense again, I can just feel it. He just gets to the right spot consistently and makes the ball handler work really hard.  He also does a nice job of pushing the ball up the court.  His jumper was as advertised but he might as well keep shooting them, in particular in the preseason.

Evan Turner stole the show tonight.  He just makes things happen by driving and forcing the defense to react.  Get used to seeing him aggressively attacking the rim, floating in the air, creating contact, and squeezing the ball up through the defender's arms to the hoop.  He also handled the ball capably and seemed comfortable initiating the offense.  In short, he was the star of the game.

Tyler Zeller was much less impressive.  In one sequence he threw the ball away with a sloppy turnover and followed it up by committing a blocking foul.  Later he missed grabbing a rebound as it bounced off his head out of bounds.  Hopefully it was just a bad game.

James Young impressed me in limited minutes.  His shooting stroke looks smooth enough to me and he showed some hustle and poise as well.

Marcus Thornton can shoot, can't he? I can definitely see him being one of those guys that comes up with a big 3 pointer to kill the other team's momentum (like Eddie House).  Tonight it got to the point that it was surprising when he missed.

We had a couple of Dwight Powell sightings, but I'm not sure if you can make much of them.

The returning Celtics were pretty much what we've come to expect.  Sully did Sully things.  Pressey was plucky.  Olynyk was crafty.  Etc.

Game one is done and we got a win.