Gino's Jungle

Over the past week the Boston Celtics have gone from the championship favorite to a team that can't buy a win against their stronger opponents. All around the Boston Celtics internet world people have been pointing fingers at certain players, areas of play, and even coaches. Instead of putting you to sleep with article after article about whats wrong with the Celtics I'm going to give you a quick recipe for the Celtics future success. If they can follow this recipe for the rest of the year, which I think they can, they will be successful in raising banner 18.

Boston Celtics Recipe For Success

•  Start with 82 games of great defense. It all starts with defense, if we are going to go deep into the playoffs we are going to need to play good defense. The players and coaches on the team pride themselves in being a great defensive team and need to prove it. Lately the Celtics have had a very weak perimiter defense, this again showed last night against Orlando. After the first part of the season I didn't think this would be a problem, check out an earlier article on the C's defense here. Lately they have become lazy on the defensive end and started to rely to much on help defense.
• Make sure not to add to many three point attempts. The Celtics need to stop shooting so many damn three pointers, we can't spend the entire season living and dying by the three. This has been one problem that has been talked about over and over. At first I didn't buy into the talk but after the recent struggles I have become more irratated by it. Gary Washburn, a writer for the Boston Globe, recently pointed out in an article that the Celtics are 10 for 64 behind the three point line in their four losses. We can't let games be decided by whether or not we are hot from behind the arc or not.
• Mix in a completely healthy team. We all know what happened last year when one of our key assets went down. This year we haven't had to deal with any significant injuries, YET. This past week Paul Pierce has really made me nervous. After tweaking his knee in the game against Atlanta he hasn't seemed to have the fire power he had to start the year. He has been getting burned on defense and hasn't been as efficent offensively. I'm hoping he is just in a small slump and the injury is not still nagging him.
• Add a point guard in Rajon Rondo who comes to play every minute of every quarter, every game. Rajon Rondo is the Celtics guy, we now have him for five more seasons and we all want to see him turn into a great point guard. The thing that is holding him back right now is consistency. When Rondo comes out to play and is running up and down the floor getting steals on defense, and creating points on offense, he is priceless. However, we have yet to see this consistently from him. If Rondo can start to give his all at all times it will only increase our chances of winning games.
• Limit the amount of three point attempts by Sheed. In our 2009-1010 preview we mentioned how Rasheed stretching the floor and being at the three point line is great for the team. One thing I was worried about, and do have a problem with is him forcing up shots every time he gets the ball out there, espically if he is not making them. In the Celtics four losses this year Rasheed is 1-21 from three point land, yes that is 4.7%. Rasheed says he is just in a slump right now, slump or not I would rather have Sheed mix it up and be more phsyical down low.
• Add some more production from the bench. Coming into this year everyone was talking about how great our bench was going to be and the difference it would make in games. Don't get me wrong the bench is good, and has the potential to be great, but really they haven't played up to expectations yet. Guys like Marquis Daniels, Shelden Williams, and Rasheed Wallace are still trying to learn the system. Eddie House has also yet to be as effective as we know he can be and we are still without Glen Davis. As they year goes on the bench production needs, and should, increase.

As Doc said in his post game press conference following last nights game, the Celtics will continue to win games playing the type of basketball they are playing right now. What they won't do is win the big games and demolish opponents that we know they should be destroying. We will not see a perfect Celtics team every single night but what I would like to see is more consitency on both ends of the floor. Each player needs to look at how they are hurting the team right now and work on that in practice to become the razor sharp team we now they can be out on the hardwood.