30 teams in 30 days - Celtics

[John Lyell]

Does anyone think we could see a starting lineup of :
   
  Telfair
  West
  Gomes
  Pierce
  Perkins
   
  Gomes has shown more development than Jefferson
   
   
   
  

BDodgers at aol.com wrote:
  30 teams in 30 days - Celtics

Tim Chisholm
TSN.ca basketball columnist Tim Chisholm is looking at one NBA team each day 
for the month of September. 
Season Previews
Boston Celtics 
Paul Pierce is in for one wacky season. 
The Boston Celtics have more or less overhauled their entire rotation since 
the start of last season, leaving Pierce as the only firm anchor from year to 
year. As it stands today, this roster probably has too much youth and too few 
basketball minds to really compete this season, but it'll be very interesting 
to see how this roster dictates the future of the NBA's most storied franchise. 
A lot of that future will lie in what direction this team ultimately goes in 
with regards to its point guard slot. As it stands right now, ex-Blazer 
Sebastian Telfair looks like a lock to get the starting spot on November 1st, but 
anything after that he'll have to earn. Right now, the team has four small 
guards who will be vying for minutes at the one, and the Celtics anticipate giving 
each and every one a chance to take control of the position. All are guards 
who expect to get regular minutes this year, especially last year's starter 
Delonte West, who had such a solid year last season that he might force Wally 
Szczerbiak out of the starting lineup so he can play the big-guard position 
alongside Telfair. 
So that leaves rookies Allan Ray and Rajon Rondo to essentially make the most 
of their backup minutes this year and prove they belong in an NBA rotation. 
Rondo is a guy the Celtics fell in love with leading up the draft, so much so 
the bypassed Marcus Williams to nab him. Ray was a late addition to the team, 
but nonetheless factors into their plans going forward. Neither one is a 
natural playmaker, and neither is West for that matter, meaning that as it stands 
Telfair is the only guard who looks to have an early edge at running the team's 
offence for the foreseeable future. The catch is that Telfair has a tendency 
to operate outside of the system, opting to make unnecessary passes for the 
sake of flash rather than simple fundamental passes that demonstrate an ability 
to read the whole game, not just the play at hand. He has trouble effectively 
running an offense for long stretches, which may force the team to go in 
another direction as the season progresses if Telfair can't keep the team motoring 
along. 
The point guard battle is so central to the success of this team because 
right now the only player on the floor who can create his own shot is Paul Pierce, 
and while Pierce can often keep you in a game with his effort alone, last 
year proved you cannot win that way. Pierce is at his best when he has effective 
playmakers running the show for him like Kenny Anderson or Gary Payton. The 
responsibility is taken off of his shoulders to set the team's offense and he 
can freely operate within the Celtics game plan rather than having to operate it 
himself. Pierce, for all his talent, isn't always the best decision maker 
with the ball in his hands, which isn't really a knock against him, it just means 
that the team needs a steady floor general out on the court to maximize 
Pierce's talents. With that said, one of these guards is going to have to pick up 
that slack to make sure Pierce's prime isn't put to waste. 
The next factor that this team has to balance is how to mix the young guys on 
the team with the veterans. Players like Kendrick Perkins and Al Jefferson 
will no doubt be given every chance in the starting frontcourt with Pierce, but 
both desperately need to display some measure of consistency that they lacked 
last year in order to stay there. If they can't, Theo Ratliff and Brian 
Scalabrine will be forced into playing increasingly heavier minutes as the season 
wears on. Now, if this were a playoff-bound team that wouldn't be such a problem 
because you'd already know which young guys can be counted on and where their 
games would need to be augmented by veterans, but when you are in the early 
stages of rebuilding, you want to make sure the young guys get a chance to show 
you what they can do, while at the same time throwing vets out there to grab 
a couple of wins so that the team doesn't get too used to losing. 
“Yes, we're too young right now, and there are going to be winners and losers 
when it's time for minutes,” acknowledged the Celtics director of basketball 
operations, Danny Ainge. “To find appealing veteran players is hard, But I 
don't want veterans just because they're veterans,” he said. “Right now, I like 
my players.” 
What the Celtics want to avoid is what happens to a lot of bad teams, who 
live and die by their youth. They insist they have to develop them for the 
future, but often they do so without providing them any veteran leadership along the 
way. The key is in using the vets as augmentation to your youth, though, not 
as a replacement when they don't cut it. If your youth can't learn to win 
games on their own, then they aren't the future of your team, and shouldn't be 
kept around just for the sake of trying to prove your detractors wrong. There are 
already many critics out there who say that Ainge is overvaluing his young 
personnel, so how quickly the young guys can come on and prove that they can 
lead the team to some victories is paramount for the future of this organization, 
both on the court and off. If it turns out the only way these guys can get 
wins is to ride Pierce, Szczerbiak and Ratliff into the ground, then the future 
of this team (and its management) will be short lived indeed. 
The Celtics have definitely given themselves options for the future, and the 
question now is which of these options make themselves valuable enough to keep 
around to help reconstruct this once proud franchise back to supremacy. 
PROBABLE STARTING FIVE 
PG – Sebastian Telfair 
It says a lot about this guy that the Blazers, after anointing him the future 
and savior of their team two years ago, have since traded him away for draft 
picks and Raef Lafrentz. He was never able to grasp how to run an offense 
effectively, and couldn't stay consistent enough to keep a starting position in 
his two years in Portland. This year, though, Telfair has a clean slate. His 
roster is far less dysfunctional and self-obsessed, and he has a coach that, 
while no where near as good as Nate McMillan, will allow him a bit more time to 
find himself than he was afforded in Oregon. Now it's up to him. Telfair is in 
complete control of his destiny, and if he wants to make the most of that, he's 
going to have to grow up a lot and realize that representing the streets may 
be what got him here, but it sure isn't what's going to keep him here. If he 
can start to apply some of his talents to fundamental basketball, he'll be in 
good shape. 
SG – Delonte West 
After last season, I think he easily deserves this spot over Wally 
Szczerbiak. He showed an ability to score the ball and keep his level of play high with 
increased minutes He's not a pure point guard, though, and sliding over to the 
two-guard spot should help him immensely since he won't have to worry about 
dictating the team's offense. The great thing about a guy like West is his 
adaptability. He doesn't need to be fed to impact a game, and he doesn't seem to 
feel as though he deserves more than he's getting. If he can beef up his 
defense and learn to get off his shot over taller defenders, he could make himself a 
very valuable role player for this team, be it starting or coming off of the 
bench. 
SF – Paul Pierce 
I find it hard to believe that last year was a career season for Pierce when 
he didn't even make the playoffs. I know that statistically he was out of 
sight, but with an increased role in the offense that's what should be expected of 
someone with his talents. I highly doubt that when his career is done, Pierce 
will look back at last season and call it a marquee year, no matter how many 
times other people insist it was. However, I'm not saying that Pierce took any 
kind of a step backward last year. He showed resilience last year that sets 
him apart from many in his generation, because when the going got tough, he 
worked harder and did whatever he could to keep his team in games. Last year's 
Celtics were a terrible team, and the only thing that kept that afloat was 
Pierce. While your Carters and McGradys of the world demand trades in these 
scenarios, Pierce demanded an extension on his contract, to make sure that he'd be 
there to turn this thing around. That kind of dedication deserves to be matched 
by management, who now has the task of putting the pieces around Pierce to 
help him win games. And hopefully that happens sooner rather than later. 
PF – Al Jefferson 
I really want to like Al Jefferson. He's a great rebounder and an active body 
in the paint that has all the makings of a solid forward in this league. 
However, last year was a major step back for him as he couldn't seem to keep 
himself healthy and in the lineup, and then this summer he looked to be absolutely 
unimproved over his rookie season two years ago. Now, I'll be the first to 
admit that Summer League demonstrates very little about a player, but to watch 
Jefferson's teammates coalesce and play off of each other and improve each 
other's game and then see Jefferson holding them back, it was upsetting to see him 
unable to match their level of play. This is pretty much a make or break year 
for Jefferson. Presumably he's going to be healthy coming into camp after 
successful ankle surgery, and he has to remind people why he was supposed to be 
the future of the Celtics frontcourt. Sure, Antoine Walker's second stint in 
Boston might have set Jefferson back a tad, but his decline since then is 
completely his own doing. 
C – Kendrick Perkins 
A very pleasant surprise last year, Perkins was absolutely destroying at the 
centre position before he got injured midway through the season. He was able 
to come back and still be effective, and this year he has to show that he can 
be depended on game-in and game-out to provide the kind of effort it will take 
to prove that the team has its centre position locked up for the foreseeable 
future. Perkins has a great mentor on the team now in Ratliff, who can really 
help him with his footwork and defense, two areas where he could use the most 
improvement. As far as upping his per game stats, that's just got to come from 
him working more consistently each and every game. He showed the team last 
year what his potential is, now it's up to him to live up to it. 
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