Celtics add experience - and winners - with new players
Today is St. Patrick's Day, and the Celtics have the best record in the NBA. It's been a long time since anyone could write that sentence with a straight face.
With that being said, there have been doubters of the legitimacy of the Celtics' title aspirations since they dramatically reshaped their roster last offseason.
At first, skeptics pointed to their supposedly weak bench as their fatal flaw. The veteran play of Eddie House and James Posey, along with the emergence of Leon Powe, Glen Davis, and Tony Allen have quieted this point, and even turned the Boston bench into a strength.
This development, however, only silenced critics for a short period of time. Recently, the experience of starting point guard Rajon Rondo and center Kendrick Perkins have come into question. Can a team, even as great as these Celtics, win a championship with two fifths of the starting lineup having virtually no playoff experience?
The critique was valid. Then Celtics general manager Danny Ainge made two moves to further ensure his "NBA Executive of the Year Award." Enter point guard Sam Cassell and power forward P.J. Brown, both signed to a pro-rated portion of the league's veteran's minimum salary.
Instantly, a combined 28 years of experience was injected into the Celtics. Now in the playoffs, when the going gets tough and the young get rattled, Doc Rivers has two experienced veterans to relieve the youngsters and stabilize the game. Neither of these guys is as effective as they were in their respective primes.
Yet both guys, especially Cassell, who won two championships early in his career, know how to win playoff games.
As perfect as these two moves might look on paper, some still have their reservations. As you might imagine, there are some concerns about the Celtics adding two players midseason whose combined age is high enough to earn the senior citizen's discount at Circle Cinemas.
Making this work is going to lie mostly on the shoulders of Rivers. Doc needs to find a way to integrate these two veterans while not disturbing the remarkable chemistry that has been established here. He also needs to continue to develop his youngsters.
This is especially crucial with Rondo and Cassell, who have a bit of history after Sam Cassell was ejected from a Celtics-Los Angeles Clippers game this year for a hard foul to the head of Rondo. Rondo's confidence as a point guard is very important to the success of the Celtics this year and going forward. Rondo needs to know that this is his team to run.
So far, Cassell seems to have a grasp on the reality that his minutes will tend to be based on what he has said in interviews.
The Celtics have put themselves in a position where they can focus the rest of the season on working Brown and Cassell into their rotation and chemistry. If everything is clicking when the Celtics enter the playoffs, all questions of experience will be forgotten and this team could be the favorite to win the NBA championship.
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