I know we are only a few games into the 2011-12 NBA regular season but since it's shortened, I feel like I'm more justified in making knee-jerk reactions about the Boston Celtics. After all, that is what being a fan is all about.
Write this down in stone: barring things like back-to-backs or the end of long road trips, the Celts will pile up wins against bad teams and in the Eastern Conference particularly, there are plenty of those.
Tonight, Boston (2-3) won its first road game of the season by beating the Washington Wizards (0-4) 94-86 at the Verizon Center.
If you're ever played basketball at a YMCA or in a park, this was the classic old man team beating the younger one. The Celts used veteran intelligence to beat the much more athletic and quicker Wizards.
It also helped that Boston had the two best players on the court: Rajon Rondo recorded his first triple-double of the season (14th of his career) with 18 points, 14 assists and 11 rebounds while Kevin Garnett had a breakout performance with 24 points and nine rebounds. KG was extra motivated since for whatever reason, he hates Washington's Andray Blatche (10 points).
John Wall (19 points, 8 assists, 7 rebounds) is the franchise player for the Wizards which is fine and dandy but they're screwed as long as Flip Saunders-a supreme bozo-is the head coach and knuckleheads like Blatche, Nick Young (18 points) and JaVale McGee (16 points, 14 rebounds, 5 blocks) are the best players around Wall.
Boston built up a nice lead with a solid first half. They were up 28-17 after the first quarter and 51-34 at halftime. Washington rallied in the third (26-22) and fourth (26-21) but the terrible first 24 minutes killed them.
Ray Allen scored 13 points for the Celts, Paul Pierce had nine points while Jermaine O'Neal and Brandon Bass (off the bench) notched eight points apiece.
For the game, the Celts shot nine percent better (50-41), hit three more 3-pointers (5-2), grabbed two more rebounds (41-39) and handed out 11 more assists (26-15) thanks to Rondo. The Wizards hit five more free throws (20-15), had two more steals (7-5), three more blocks (8-5) and eight more fast break points (19-11).
Boston's bench outscored Washington's by a 22-15 margin. I noted that because these same teams play tomorrow night at TD Garden. Just a beautiful scheduling move by David Stern (I know he isn't in charge of every schedule, humor me). The Celtics bench is deeper and better so they'll need it to play well again if they want to sweep this mini-series with the Wizards and keep Washington winless.
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