17 and 2 at this point - tops in the NBA at this point in the season. The naysayers say that they have not played anybody. What do they mean by that? The NBA changes and some teams improve and others decline. True, we have not had any Western road swings but who says the West is a stronger conference this year. Hasn't Orlando done well out West? Detriot? I'm a bit skeptical of the overall strength in the WC. Dallas and Phoenix are in decline. Minnesota is horrible but they compete most nights (reminds you of a local NBA team last year, huh?).
The Celtics lead the league in Point Differential and in FG% and FGA%. It is not rocket science why they have the best record in the NBA. I had them pegged at 14 and 6. They will be at least 3 and probably 4 games better than that. The Celtics won games in Charlotte, Chicago, Miami, and an extra game against Toronto that I predicted were losses. The Celtics lost in OT in Cleveland after Ray Allen missed to FT to give Boston a lead with seconds left in Regulation. The Celtics lost by two in Orlando but had some looks at a potential game winning 3 in the closing minute.
Why are the Celtics so much better? Simple answer - Better talent. They finally traded for Superstars! That does not happen often. They were able to acquire key role players through free agency like Posey. Perkins and Rondo are maturing. Pierce is relaxing, finally. Doc Rivers has some coaching ability and better assistents. Ainge is a resident genious GM (while finally he got some breaks with McHale and the Seattle GM). One of the most important factors is the patience of the ownership group and their visible support at the games. That was definitely missing with the prior ownership who traded FOR Vin Baker.
Finally, the City of Boston is the hub of the Sports World - featuring FIVE Championships this decade already (We expect the Patriots to add to the total and quite possibly the Red Sox, also). The energy of the Boston fans is tremendous based on my personal observations in S Florida at Dolphin Stadium. There are also plenty of Boston sport shirts, coats, and hats worn at every airport hub. So I suspect this energy will carry over to NBA arenas as the Celtics fans come out of the woodwork and give the Celtics support on the road.
Future posts will get into detailed discussions about matchups, statistics, game tape analysis, coaching decision 2nd guessing, the blogger notes, CSL....... I should focus my thoughts more on this website....
Ron (Q)
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I like the effort, but it was too light on analysis. While the Eastern Conference is much improved, the combined record in the east is 152 wins versus 159 losses, 7 games under .500. The Western Conference boasts a 161wins and 154 losses, 7 games up. The west has 9 teams at or above .500, the east a mere 5. The West is still clearly better than the east at this point in the season. Orlando has had success against the west, though against the elite teams they didn't manage a win (San Antonio and Phoenix). Against pedestrian or bad teams in the west they dominated (Seattle, Minnesota, Golden State, Lakers......). I agree that the Celtics have exceeded expectations, but they have only played 6 teams with winning records to date. I expected Chicago, New Jersey and Miami to be better and in the cases of Chicago and Miami I expected them to be much better. Looking at the first 20 games I thought 15W 5L was reasonable but maybe too lofty. At worst Boston will be 17W 3L after 20 games which is great, but after a closer look at the teams they actually played versus how we expected their opposition to play it's hardly unexpected.
--Fin
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