How Deep can the Boston Celtics go in the 2011 NBA Playoffs?
Unlike a lot of other pretenders trying to ride in on the super-team wagon, the Boston Celtics did it first and have been rolling ever since. Not for nothing, but take a few blatantly bad foul calls away in 2010 and bring back KG in 09, you might be looking at threepeaters going for quad championships.
Oh, you don’t like speculation and what-ifs in your basketball articles? Well, that’s exactly what this is – a speculation piece, weighing the Celtics’ odds of rolling through the Eastern Conference come playoff time and winning another Championship.
Currently 3 games out in front of the East with a record of 46-15, with only a handful of games left to play, the only squad in the league doing better is San Antonio, boasting an impressive 51-12 record. But in terms of Boston’s championship chances, the close and heated competition in the West is moot – the C’s have to stress their in-conference rivals first and foremost.
On paper, Boston has leaped Miami as the NBA’s Easter Conference favorite. Before The Heatles ever even suited up in black and red to play, most odds-makers had them as even money to win the championship. Insane. Now, however, even sports books and online casinos in Canada are switching sides, realizing just how impressive the Celtics are when firing on all cylinders.
For Double-P, KG, Mr. Shuttlesworth and Rondo, the chemistry is undeniable and, when performing as even average players, this quad-core basketball processing unit not only defeats teams, but you can see the scenes of scorched earth in the background – they blaze the place up.
The fear comes from the extra pieces. According to Boston, they lost a family member when Perk was shipped out in place of Green; and while Davis is always all-heart out there on the court, having to rely on older, injury-prone big men like the two O’Neal’s is certainly risky business.
This, for most teams, would create instability at the core, something of which few clubs would ever recover from. Emotional scarring and unhealthy, undersized competition: the death of most contenders.
But this isn’t the case for Boston. The unselfishness and the will to win displayed on the court by team leaders resonates with every man to throw on the green and white. While they’re on the court, every player buys into Doc Rivers’ ideals of team basketball, and the end result is a team playing its best b-ball of the season as we draw closer to crunch time.
If the season ended today, the C’s road to the Finals is, at least on paper, easier than the previous three. They’d catch the Pacers and wouldn’t have to battle in the first round. They’ve owned Miami this season—every winning team has—and there’s no reason to think that either Florida team, Miami Thrice of the heavily three-point-reliant Supermice of Orlando, would last past 6.
Betting on a sport like basketball isn’t like throwing your money down on online slot machines. Even though it’s all technically a prediction, there’s a body of work past and present to look at and plenty of quantifiable statistics.
We can see the cohesiveness of this basketball unit, even when injury yanks the proverbial rug out and even when upper management decides to throw a monkey wrench in the Cleavers’ picture of happy family dynamics. Through it all, the Celtics persevere and just win, baby.
That’s far from a fluke, especially when you consider that this is their fourth year doing it through the weathered face of adversity. They’re a squad that scores in the top percentile of all championship teams. They’re talented, team-oriented, play hard D, put their hearts into the effort, and they want to win due to competitiveness and not to land ESPN spots or GQ covers.
In short, the Celtics are 5:3 to roll through the East, with Chicago being the only legitimate worry. Sure, odds are only odds, the games still have to be played, but it is what it is, and Boston has earned the right to stand out as heavy favorites in the Eastern Conference this season.
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