First Week of the NBA Season for the Boston Celtics

With the 2012-13 NBA season beginning this past week, I thought I would share with you what I have been doing thus far for Celtic-Nation.com. I have written three posts about the Boston Celtics, including the “The Complete Guide to the Boston Celtics Milestones for the 2012-13 Season” (http://www.celtic-nation.com/blog/2012/10/30/the-complete-guide-to-the-boston-celtics-milestones-for-the-upcoming-2012-13-season/) that I discussed last week. In addition, I published two “Stat Packs” discussing the pertinent statistics for the last two Celtics game. The Celtics squared off with the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday, November 2^nd (a 99-88 Celtics loss – Link to Stat Pack: http://www.celtic-nation.com/blog/2012/11/02/11212-celtics-vs-bucks-stat-pack/) and the Washington Wizards (a 89-86 Celtics win – Link to Stat Pack: http://www.celtic-nation.com/blog/2012/11/03/11312-celtics-wizards-stat-pack/) on Saturday, November 3^rd.

The most important statistic that I discussed prior to the Bucks game was Rajon Rondo’s streak of double-digit assists. After Rondo accomplished the feat in each of the last two games, he has now dished out at least 10 assists in 27 consecutive regular season games, dating back to the 2011-12 season. This streak is currently tied for the fourth longest one in NBA history and I will continue to closely monitor it. Then before the Wizards game, I found two interesting reasons why I thought the Celtics would be victorious. The first was Boston’s recent success over Washington: before Saturday night, the Celtics had been 12-3 in the last 15 meetings between the two teams. The second reason was the experience of the Celtics’ players: coming into the 2012-13 season, the Celtics have 6 players with at least 9 years of NBA experience while the Wizards have none. The Celtics started the game against the Wizards on 17-2 run, making me think that they would run away with it. However, the Wizards unexpectedly got back into the game pretty easily and stayed in it until the end. The Celtics squeezed out the victory, pushing their record to 1-2, but made me think that this talented Celtics team will need a few more weeks to gel. The key takeaway from this game was Doc Rivers putting Jared Sullinger into the starting lineup. It was his first game starting in place of Brandon Bass and since the Celtics got off to such a fast start, Rivers should keep Sullinger starting. This should begin to help this team rebound from its poor start to the season.