First nine games????

[celticsclay]

It's quite feasible that we go 1-14 for our first 15 games.

LoL......that's sorta what I expect .......for the Celtics to start off an amazing tanking year.

They will be upbeat and play hard .  I just don't think they can will themselves past teams with superior talent on a nightly basis.

I predict Celtics will be a hard out ,  but will rarely win.

I don't understand why you people want to tank..

First, we all know the Celtics have horrible luck with the lottery. If we tank, we'll most likely end up with a pick in the range of the 6 that we got this year. That would be epic fail.

Second, tanking means that NONE of our young guys are panning out, at all! If we end up with just as bad a record this year as last, that tells me that NONE of our projects, NONE of our new players, nobody at all has improved, and we are royally ****ed long-term.

That's not the kind of future i want for this team.. I want to see progress and growth and improvement. Why don't you?

Yea I agree. If we are worse this year than last year it means KO and Sully have regressed or stagnated, or some of our players have had really serious injuries (plus smart would probably be having a poor season as well). The second season of a rebuild really shouldn't be worse than the first without these kind of bad developments.

[SHAQATTACK]

I didn't say we should tank....they should go hard and see what happens at first....I just think we won't win enough games to matter to a hill of beans......

If they play hard and still can't win ....don't do like last year and screw up the draft pick position by playing for that 26 th win or 30 th win .......a meaning less win .....when a loss is a asset for draft position.

Drop back .....get a good lottery pick .

[Kadin]

I didn't say we should tank....they should go hard and see what happens at first....I just think we won't win enough games to matter to a hill of beans......

If they play hard and still can't win ....don't do like last year and screw up the draft pick position by playing for that 26 th win or 30 th win .......a meaning less win .....when a loss is a asset for draft position.

Drop back .....get a good lottery pick .

You're missing the point.

If our team is just as bad, or worse, than last year, we might as well pack it up and ship everybody out for draft picks. It would mean our young players are trash and are not improving. It would be a complete and utter disaster.

[chambers]

I didn't say we should tank....they should go hard and see what happens at first....I just think we won't win enough games to matter to a hill of beans......

If they play hard and still can't win ....don't do like last year and screw up the draft pick position by playing for that 26 th win or 30 th win .......a meaning less win .....when a loss is a asset for draft position.

Drop back .....get a good lottery pick .

You're missing the point.

If our team is just as bad, or worse, than last year, we might as well pack it up and ship everybody out for draft picks. It would mean our young players are trash and are not improving. It would be a complete and utter disaster.

We've lost Humphries, Lee and Ainge is trying to trade Bass and Green. Turner sucks, Thornton is a chucker too, Zeller is a big body but again he's young. Smart and Young are babies.
I don't think people realize that this is potentially a more serious 'development' year than last season. The East has gotten stronger, the West is still just as strong.
There's nothing unrealistic about saying this team could go 1 win and 14 losses quite easily given their make up- and if you read the rest of the quote, I said it's likely we get 3 or 4 wins but 1 win is feasible too.
Hopefully the young guys step up but this team is very young and the rest of the league has gotten stronger while our interior situation hasn't gotten any better than last year.
This years Lee and Crawford are Thornton and Turner.
Looking at how tough those first 9 games are (and after the 10th game vs Philly), then 11th to 15th games are going to be very tough too.
There's negativity and then there's realism. Don't confuse the two.

[Smokeeye123]

2-7

[Fred Roberts]

First 9 games will be fun to watch. Can't wait!

Good competition. Awesome chance for the rest of the league to test themselves against the best.

[celticsclay]

I didn't say we should tank....they should go hard and see what happens at first....I just think we won't win enough games to matter to a hill of beans......

If they play hard and still can't win ....don't do like last year and screw up the draft pick position by playing for that 26 th win or 30 th win .......a meaning less win .....when a loss is a asset for draft position.

Drop back .....get a good lottery pick .

You're missing the point.

If our team is just as bad, or worse, than last year, we might as well pack it up and ship everybody out for draft picks. It would mean our young players are trash and are not improving. It would be a complete and utter disaster.

We've lost Humphries, Lee and Ainge is trying to trade Bass and Green. Turner sucks, Thornton is a chucker too, Zeller is a big body but again he's young. Smart and Young are babies.
I don't think people realize that this is potentially a more serious 'development' year than last season. The East has gotten stronger, the West is still just as strong.
There's nothing unrealistic about saying this team could go 1 win and 14 losses quite easily given their make up- and if you read the rest of the quote, I said it's likely we get 3 or 4 wins but 1 win is feasible too.
Hopefully the young guys step up but this team is very young and the rest of the league has gotten stronger while our interior situation hasn't gotten any better than last year.
This years Lee and Crawford are Thornton and Turner.
Looking at how tough those first 9 games are (and after the 10th game vs Philly), then 11th to 15th games are going to be very tough too.
There's negativity and then there's realism. Don't confuse the two.

Interesting debate of pessimism versus realism. You have chosen to mention the loss of two average veterans, one of whom we only had for the first 30 games of the season. You are then speculating on the loss of another two veterans (of which we haven't really heard a serious rumor) while choosing not to mention the fact that we have young players like KO, Sullinger, Bradley that should all improve. How about Smart being our highest drafted rookie in a decade?

Also how has the East gotten so strong? The players just switched teams within the East. Charlotte is better with Stephenson, but Indiana is worse. Cleveland is better, but the Heat are worse. The east also lost one of its five best players for the year in Paul George.

[chambers]

I didn't say we should tank....they should go hard and see what happens at first....I just think we won't win enough games to matter to a hill of beans......

If they play hard and still can't win ....don't do like last year and screw up the draft pick position by playing for that 26 th win or 30 th win .......a meaning less win .....when a loss is a asset for draft position.

Drop back .....get a good lottery pick .

You're missing the point.

If our team is just as bad, or worse, than last year, we might as well pack it up and ship everybody out for draft picks. It would mean our young players are trash and are not improving. It would be a complete and utter disaster.

We've lost Humphries, Lee and Ainge is trying to trade Bass and Green. Turner sucks, Thornton is a chucker too, Zeller is a big body but again he's young. Smart and Young are babies.
I don't think people realize that this is potentially a more serious 'development' year than last season. The East has gotten stronger, the West is still just as strong.
There's nothing unrealistic about saying this team could go 1 win and 14 losses quite easily given their make up- and if you read the rest of the quote, I said it's likely we get 3 or 4 wins but 1 win is feasible too.
Hopefully the young guys step up but this team is very young and the rest of the league has gotten stronger while our interior situation hasn't gotten any better than last year.
This years Lee and Crawford are Thornton and Turner.
Looking at how tough those first 9 games are (and after the 10th game vs Philly), then 11th to 15th games are going to be very tough too.
There's negativity and then there's realism. Don't confuse the two.

Interesting debate of pessimism versus realism. You have chosen to mention the loss of two average veterans, one of whom we only had for the first 30 games of the season. You are then speculating on the loss of another two veterans (of which we haven't really heard a serious rumor) while choosing not to mention the fact that we have young players like KO, Sullinger, Bradley that should all improve. How about Smart being our highest drafted rookie in a decade?

Also how has the East gotten so strong? The players just switched teams within the East. Charlotte is better with Stephenson, but Indiana is worse. Cleveland is better, but the Heat are worse. The east also lost one of its five best players for the year in Paul George.

Aging veteran who was our best big man last year- being our best big man defender and arguably best overall big, yet and still a bench/role player on any other NBA team. Yes, he's gone.
  There have been MULTIPLE rumors about Ainge trying to move Green and Bass, Danny tried to trade Bass to the Warriors for a trade exception and Green has been 'shopped HARD' more than once in the last 6 months. This is reasonably common knowledge, just because you don't know about it doesn't make it my mere personal speculation.

  All those teams in the East you mention are STILL BETTER than our team. The Heat are better, the Pacers are still better, the Cavs are better. You seem to be have this false premise that our team has moved up the ranks in the East...or that if Lebron leaves a team with 2 All Stars, that somehow that makes the conference easier for the Celtics? That's false logic. We haven't moved anywhere because even though Lebron left the Heat, they are still a way better team. The Pacers are still a better team without Paul George- all of those things have nothing to do with our team and the fact that we have a terrible defensive line up of big men and our best big man defender is on the trade block.
   Sullinger is a 3rd year player, Olynyk is a second year player- they're not putting up 20 points 10 rebounds yet. Hopefully Sully becomes a 16 point 10 rebound guy but he's still got loads of work to do on defense and post moves. Olynyk's meaningful play all occurred against 2nd units towards the end of the season and while promising, doesn't mean we're suddenly going to beat the Heat or the Pacers.
There are 3 teams worse than us this year in the East.
Magic
Bucks
Philly.

After that it's between us and the Knicks. The Pistons got a good coach and kept the same team whilst improving the roster. They are a better team than the Celtics. So are the Wizards, Atlanta, Charlotte too.

It's great that Smart is our highest drafted rookie in 10 years, it doesn't change the fact that he's a rookie and he'll probably see 15 minutes a night and have a relatively small impact on the court this season, the same goes for his co-rookie Mr Young.

Think about who guards Tim Duncan, who guards Serge Ibaka, Brook Lopez, Kevin Garnett, nene, Gortat, Bosh, Verajao, Gasol sr, Gasol Jr, Randolph, Nowitzki, Howard, Bosh, Love...just off the top of my head.
   Just like last year, we have been designed to have a glaring weakness inside, and just like last year, we've signed runner/gunner wings with incredibly high usage rates, taking away good shots from guys like Olynyk and Green-who might get hot once every 5 games and look better than they really are if we give them some minutes- maybe we'll get a 2nd rounder for these chuckers again like last year. The added bonus is that this season these chuckers have to share time with our two promising rookies in their first season.

  We're a poor three point shooting team AGAIN. Green and Bradley are our only 2 decent shooters and even they are patchy. I'm not sure how we are going to score in the paint, just like last year. We lost Humphries, we may lose Bass. Zeller is a great prospect but he's not as good as Humphries was for us last season. Brandon Bass is our best big man defender at 6 ' 8" tall. That sums our roster up perfectly.

So no, it's not pessimism, it's called being realistic. I'll repeat, this team may win 3 or 4 of the first 15 games, but it's very feasible that they only win 1 game of the first 15 games given the difficulty of the schedule and the youth, lack of depth on our roster at key positions in the NBA.

The only significant addition to our team is Rondo's Health, and the fact that Sully can now play power forward full time. Rondo still doesn't have any decent players to pass to, and given our lack of big men with post game, we'll be a jumpshooting team that is poor at making jumpshots- just like last year.

[D.o.s.]

I agree with Chambers. TP for the post (even though it actually kind of sucks for the C's)

[cb8883]

It's quite feasible that we go 1-14 for our first 15 games.

Depends how in shape we are, and out of shape some of those older veteran teams are.
We'll likely get hot for 2 or 3 games out of those first 15 and pull out 3 or 4 wins.

I don't understand why people feel the need to be really unrealistic to make a point. The 1996-97 team, the worst in celtics history, won 4 out of their first 15 games. Why do we think it is feasible we will set the franchise record for futility and be significantly worse than a team led by ML Carr and Antoine Walker?

I think 2-13 is attainable and should be the goal through the first 15 games. The NBA is finally trying to help the Celtics and I think Ainge should let them. Hopefully Rondo can actually play at an above average level for 10 games so the Celtics can get some type of asset for him. The tank needs to be strong otherwise it will land this franchise in the same spot it was during the 90's. Too bad that Ainge screwed up the draft this year though. One more loss and we could have had Exum. Randle will be a better pro than Marcus Banks version 2.0 also.

[DesertDweller]

Hey, if you think your team sucks, you need to get over to this board as quick as you can. I promise you will never feel bad about your team again once you listen to this bunch of whining, dismal, woo is me, sissies!!!

I think I said, we had a tough nine opening games, not that the sky was falling.  the closer to the start of the season we get the more the team is looking like "the picture of Dorian Gray"

Although, it will be a lot of fun listening to you rambling on about trading Rondo at the same time we're making room for banner #18

[Celtics4ever]

Unless Ainge can pull off a deal, the order of the day will be tanking.  It is looking like a good deal won't happen.  So we play hard, see what happens and develop our assets either to keep or make them more attractive.

Trade deadline might be interesting this year.

[GreenWarrior]

I don't see why losing is looked as such a bad thing. in this league it can get you better, or at least better players.

and it's better than what we're going for right now. which is mediocrity, and in this league that equals no-man's land. and is worse than what philly is doing. at least they've decided on a path. we're still debating weather we want to be a playoff team or a rebuilding team.

one common denominator in either path is we have no superstar.

if we continue on this path I seriously hope it's because we think we have a real shot at Kevin Durant. otherwise this current path we're on is a waste of time. 

[fairweatherfan]

So no, it's not pessimism, it's called being realistic. I'll repeat, this team may win 3 or 4 of the first 15 games, but it's very feasible that they only win 1 game of the first 15 games given the difficulty of the schedule and the youth, lack of depth on our roster at key positions in the NBA.

Realistically, though, veteran/established teams often start the season off slowly, while young teams tend to take some games they shouldn't on paper.  Remember, Philly started last season by beating 3 straight playoff teams, including taking down the Heat in the first game.  Just because a team's clearly better on paper doesn't mean they'll definitely beat us in November.

[D.o.s.]

So no, it's not pessimism, it's called being realistic. I'll repeat, this team may win 3 or 4 of the first 15 games, but it's very feasible that they only win 1 game of the first 15 games given the difficulty of the schedule and the youth, lack of depth on our roster at key positions in the NBA.

Realistically, though, veteran/established teams often start the season off slowly, while young teams tend to take some games they shouldn't on paper.  Remember, Philly started last season by beating 3 straight playoff teams, including taking down the Heat in the first game.  Just because a team's clearly better on paper doesn't mean they'll definitely beat us in November.

I'm so ready for the new batch of "we're over .500! we're clearly not tanking, and everyone who thought we were bad is dumb!" threads.