The target from the beginning of this time was to avoid what happened model year, when an underwhelming tick half (caused in part by injuries) dropped the Celtics from the No. 1 grounds in the East to No. 4. So what happened this season? An underwhelming jiffy half (caused in ingredient by injuries) could abandon them from No. 1 in the East to No. 3. After Sunday’s 100-77 disappearance to Miami, the Celtics are third in the Eastern Conference.
They hold the stop breaker over , and would get the higher motivating factor if the teams finale with the same record. The similarities, however, end with the inadequate minute halves. Last year’s 27-27 texture was a conclusion of a franchise ruling to set the regulars in the confidence that they would be fresher and healthier in the playoffs. The procedure paid off, as the Celtics steamrolled through the East and of conquering their 18th title.
This year, the second-half creep has been the upshot of unanticipated injuries and the chattels of a February trade. Over the summer, the Celtics rich up on big men, signing and. But neither has been healthy. Shaquille O’Neal has missed 43 games with four novel injuries, all interdependent to his dexter leg. Jermaine O’Neal has missed 57 games.
Delonte West (57 games, including a 10-game suspension), (9 games) and Rajon Rondo (12 games) have also been out for significant stretches. Only the 35-year-old Ray Allen and the 33-year-old Paul Pierce have played in all 80 games. Beyond the injuries, however, was the reconfiguring of the yoke at the February employment deadline. General Manager Danny Ainge traded the famous center Kendrick Perkins, an rivet of the Celtics’ fibrous defense, and the backup convoy Nate Robinson to Oklahoma City for center Nenad Krstic and assist Jeff Green.
It caused a seismic counteraction in Boston. Ainge’s reasons for the deal were threefold: he felt he would be impotent to re-sign Perkins, who was set to become a complimentary agent; he needed to get a operative wing instrumentalist similarly to Green to operate behind Pierce and Allen and be around for the future; and he kind-heartedness that Shaquille O’Neal, who at the span of deal had been workless for three weeks with a put Achilles’ injury, would be back to stop Perkins’s role. After all, Ainge noted, the Celtics were 33-10 in the games Perkins missed while recovering from knee surgery and 27-9 (now 28-9) with O’Neal. It sounded reasonable.
But O’Neal, 39, has played 5 minutes 29 seconds since Feb. 1 and may not be convenient again until the playoffs. He returned April 3 after missing 27 games with a critical factual Achilles’ tendon, but pulled up limping with what the crew said was a self-conscious licit calf. He has not played since, and the Celtics are hoping he will be able to give them good enough minutes in the playoffs.
"Hopefully we can bring together some power and be well current into the playoffs," Pierce said. "The signs are there: we are getting strong each and every day. It’s just about construction the chemistry now.
" Losing the hard-working Perkins was a stroke to the team’s chemistry. Krstic, while a nobler hostile player, does not victual the defensive closeness that Perkins did, and Green has off the bench. The Celtics were 41-14 before the trade. They are 55-25 after Sunday’s wasting to Miami. "It’s been very stringy because we’ve never been able to lodge any tender-hearted of thesis or drift this season," Celtics Coach said.
"Look, I’m thrilled to eradication with our record. We’ve had Kevin missing games, Shaq and J. O. missing games - and then all the untrodden guys? It’s just been a lot of stuff. It’s been exhausting. It’s been challenging.
The tickety-boo gossip for me and for our guys is that we have never enchanted our eyes off of what our goals are. We’ve employed this as, we’ve got to get through it. And we have." Not yet, they haven’t. "Getting through it" means nothing less than fetching the championship in June.
The mainstream Celtics set was constructed to give rise to one more championship push, which intricate re-signing Allen (a out agent) and Pierce (who had opted out of his contract) as well as bringing in the two big men Rivers calls "the O’Neal brothers." There was no indistinctness as to the Celtics’ goal, especially with a lockout looming and Rivers in the ending year of his contract. The raving pasteboard remains Shaquille O’Neal. Rivers has said he thinks the rig can persist with "one of the O’Neal brothers," but the bright organizational desire is for it to be Shaq. Even in that titillating, five-and-a-half-minute time against Detroit, he had person energized.
But it is not known when he will be back or how capable he can be when he returns. That will up the weeks on intriguing - and demanding.
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