An ESPN article this morning explains why it isn't time to panic if you're the Boston Celtics. Thanks for enlightening me, but does anyone actually think it's close to panic time? In my opinion, it couldn't be further from it. We're talking about the NBA here, folks. Regular season wins don't matter. Period. Bold statement, yes. Irrational, maybe slightly. But true, in my opinion. I've grown less and less interested with the regular season endeavors of the Boston Celtics because I have grown aware of how meaningless those endeavors are in today's NBA. There is, for all intents and purposes, a 0% chance the Celtics don't make the playoffs, and arguably the same percentage they don't finish in the top 4 seeds. They showed last year that home court advantage is rather overrated (which I've always believed it is in the sport of basketball). They finished fourth last season and had mighty struggles most of the regular season. Why, then, would anyone panic after a 6-point loss to the Lakers and a rough little skid this past week? Did we learn nothing from last year? Are we blind to the way the NBA is constituted? If you love the game more than anything else and you love watching it night in and night out, maybe you disagree. But I'm just shooting out the facts. The regular season in the NBA is a mere warm-up. We know what's going to happen, to quite an extent, in the postseason (let's not even get into the rigged conspiracy theories; I'm just basing that statement on sheer talent). It's not like hockey, football, or baseball where you might have a stud arise from the minors and put the team on his back or a team of relative no-names bond together as a unit and shock the world. Sorry folks, but it doesn't happen in the NBA. It's a star-driven league, and in the end, there are maybe five teams that will compete for the title. The Celtics and Lakers are two of those five teams. Last night's loss was as significant to Boston's season as the brand of cereal I ate for breakfast this morning.
Maybe it's a cynical approach, but I've felt this way about the NBA for the past few years. I personally don't like the direction it is headed in. I like the regular season to mean something. I like the uncertainty that comes with the NHL or the NFL, leagues where you truly cannot know if your team will even make the postseason. Now we're talking about sending Carmelo to Hollywood? Whatever. I know it's all about the money and the ratings, but as a fan of integrity and parity, I like having a little uncertainty when it comes to crowning a champion in the preseason.
You're looking past what actually happened in the game. In one sense you're absolutely right. It's just one loss so no big deal. The problem lies within our rotations. If you go on SI.com right now one of the main pictures is Kobe getting to the rim with Von Wafer being the person Kobe had just passed. At no point in time, even if it is the regular season, should Von Wafer or goddamn AVERY BRADLEY be put on the court against the Lakers. They were even put on defending Kobe. Doc is gunna have to think long and hard about who he puts in to guard whom because some of the rotations he put out there last night was embarrassing for all associated with Boston sports.
ReplyDeleteThe reason they were in the game in the first place is that the bench was decimated, especially once Nate went out. After Nate went out they had 9 guys, so Wafer had to get a good amount of minutes. Clearly they aren't ready to defend Kobe and I'm not saying they should've been on him, but they had to be on the court since Doc had no other options. Wafer hasn't played poorly either, he just doesn't have the experience to be guarding someone like Kobe
ReplyDeleteYeah, I understand that stuff. I guess it was significant in that regard, but I'm pretty confident the C's will get healthy again by playoff time. It's why Doc didn't even hesitate to keep Delonte out of that game and the one before it. Sure Delonte could've helped them take down the Lakers last night as some added depth. But Doc knows it's all about the long-term health over the course of the season. So when I say the game was insignificant, I do so with the assumption that the C's will get healthy again.
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