The Sports Guy put out a column recently about the sad state of the Eastern Conference.
The money quote for the column, in my view, was the following:
That's what happens when 15 flawed teams spend 60 percent of the time playing each other. SOMEBODY HAS TO WIN. Those artificially inflated win totals end up obscuring real problems.
Artificially inflated win totals obscuring real problems. That's a very succinct summation of what bothers me about the Celtics' 10-12 record.
Simmons wasn't sure what will happen with the Celtics over the rest of the season:
Prognosis: As soon as the Knicks and/or Nets get healthy and start making a run in the Shatlantic, I could see the Celtics shelving Rondo for the season, making a self-sabotage trade and careering toward the lottery. I could also see Stevens single-handedly foiling those plans by going Norm Dale circa 1952 on us, whether Rondo is part of it or not. In other words, I don't know. I'm glad I'm here.
As Simmons notes, the Good News:
Stevens is the real deal. He's already proven to be a great choice for head coach, getting a lot more out of a flawed, mismatched group of players than many -- certainly including myself -- expected him to.
The Bad News:
The way things are going, it doesn't look like the Celtics are going to be in the running for a top 5 pick. They may not be bad enough to get even a top 10 pick. They could even end up outside of the lottery. That would be fine, except for the "artificially inflated win total" problem combined with the prospect of winning a historically crappy division.
The Celtics have been surprisingly competent so far this season. The players appear to have bought in under Stevens. That's a really pleasing development, regardless of the context. But this team still has real problems. There's still a lack of high end talent here, and while the wins-by-committee thing is kind of fascinating to watch, it's harder to build up from there, because most of the key cogs are established veterans who already cost a lot of money for what they do. A high draft pick would have been a great way to add an injection of talent and upside to this group without impacting the cap situation at all.
Unless the Nets continue to be this horrible for the next 5 years (some people think that's plausible; I don't) and provide the Celtics with some top lottery picks, the path to transforming this team from a plucky underdog story into a true contender -- or at least a dark horse -- is unclear. Danny has his work cut out for him.
That, by the way, is what made the idea that the Celtics could bottom out this year and get a top pick in a loaded draft so appealing -- one year of hardship to get a transcendent player that the team could build around for the next decade plus. It's a simple, relatively easy solution.
Of course, as many have pointed out, there was always a chance that even with a top pick the Celtics might not have ended up with a truly great player, or even a particularly good one. The draft is far from a sure thing. But building from the middle, with second-tier players, is even less certain to result in success, unless your goal is simply to win 45-50 games and make it to the second round.
Topic: Simmons on the Eastern Conference / Celtics (Read 19266 times)