Gino's Jungle

Subtly, ooooh so very quietly, the Celtics still play some of the best defense in the league. Sure, it isnt the 90 points they held opponents to in 2007-08, but hey, no other team does that this year either. Coming into tonights game with the New Jersey Nets the Celtics rank 2nd in the league in points allowed. They stand 0.15 points behind the Cavs for first in the league. Cleveland gives up 93.68 points per game and Boston gives up 93.83.

BUT.. BUT...BUT.. but that's almost 94 points a game, a full 4 points more than the Celtics were looking at 2 years ago. Does it matter? Now sure, I wouldn't doubt that if the C's gave up 4 points less per game they would have a much better winning percentage. We need to stop for a second and think, though, about all of the injuries that have occured on this team........
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An extreme amount, correct? Only the Portland Trailblazers can fathom the injuries Boston has had to deal with thus far in this season. During those times we had Shelden Williams playing quite a few minutes. When he was signed this offseason, did you really expect him to see any more than Patty O'Bryant type minutes? The C's had no choice. They also had no choice but to start JR Giddens. If I told you the Celtics had to start Giddens for so much as ONE game, you would tell me, "Well there is always next year".

The point is to take a breather. Every Celtics fan needs one, I need one. We aren't doing THAT bad. Afterall, there are other factors beside injuries that go into points allowed. I don't think it is simply by chance that the entire league averge of points allowed per game has gone up. Maybe games are getting called differently by the refs, or maybe the league has more scorers? There will always be an extraenous variables (I learned that in my AP stats class. Big P is the man).