First nine games????

[vinnie]

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

Just curious when you plan on starting to make room for Banner 18. I would say 2019-20 might be realistic, or at least the first time we have a real shot again at winning. This year is going to be another painful one.

[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.

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.

And now I'm kicking myself for forgetting that in addition to Philly, we started 10-12 and first place in the Atlantic last year.  So yeah, lots of unusual results to be found in the first quarter of the season.

[JBcat]

This is somewhat related to our start.  I just want go on record Indiana could have a very rough year, and have trouble making the playoffs.  They have Hibbert who was a little shaky last year, 2 PFs approaching their mid 30's, who exactly is going to start at SF right now? Chris Copeland, Solomon Hill? Lol and their guards rotation now with Hill, Stuckey, and Watson is just ok.  This team is going to have a very tough time scoring.

[Kadin]

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

Agreed.  Some of the "fans" floating around the internet who love nothing more than to watch this team lose make this place unbearable sometimes.

[tstorey_97]

It's a tough topic as we want our guys to win. Ainge is not in agreement with us is he? He will not put a center on the roster. He WILL give us a good back up center in Zeller.

Last year we did predictions and I guessed 30 - 33 wins. I suggest there is no useful comparison this year as the teams this year's team is up against are quite different than last year.

Crawford played so well last year Ainge traded him. Kind of "showing his hand" wasn't he?

I think this year's team is better. It will be a question of how well they come together as to how many wins they get. I do know this. Last year's team simply could NOT hit shots in the last 2 minutes of any game. Look it up....it was awful. I say 4 to 5 more wins if they had a "closer."

Last year's team played really hard every minute. Wallace called out anyone who was dogging and Stevens called every play to the end of each game.

The core issue this year is similar to last year, but, with adjustments. Team does not have a competitive front court. They will compete, but, they will frequently have bad match ups that opposing teams will exploit.

Celtics have a good back court and it is deep (subject to trades). Celtics have a better bench than last year. If they go around .500 against this first group of teams? I wouldn't be surprised. More importantly something I learned about the Brad Stevens coached Celtic's last year. They do not get blown out, they always fight.

They are absolutely NOTHING like shameless/d*&%less Philly or the Bux, and I will watch every game for that reason.

 

[D.o.s.]

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

Agreed.  Some of the "fans" floating around the internet who love nothing more than to watch this team lose make this place unbearable sometimes.

No one on here likes watching the Celtics lose. To suggest otherwise is insipid.

[fairweatherfan]

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

Agreed.  Some of the "fans" floating around the internet who love nothing more than to watch this team lose make this place unbearable sometimes.

No one on here likes watching the Celtics lose. To suggest otherwise is insipid.

Eh, I don't know if anyone likes actually watching it, but there was an awful lot of caterwauling about how terrible it was that we won 2 games toward the end of the season.  Watching, maybe not, but there's certainly been a lot of rooting for losses around here.

[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.

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.

Chambers what is the opposite of drinking the kool aid? Drinking the p---? Whatever it is, you got to back away from it.

I fail to see how you don't understanding Indiana being very significantly worse can impact our wins, even though we are still a worse team. I will spell it out for you though, instead of being a 50 win team that we are expected to go 0-4 against, we have a very reasonable chance of going 2-2 against them now.

As another poster has mentioned, without George and Stevenson and a 35 year old power forward and a center that had a mind blowing regression last year, they could be really pretty bad.

Similarly, Miami being worse means we have a better chance of stealing a game against them. To be fair, we now are clearly much less likely to get a win or two against the Cavs.

As  for our team, Rondo has been rumored to be on the block for what 5 years now? He is still here.  Unless Green or Bass is actually traded you have to count them trying to figure out when projecting our record in the East Next year.

Finally when thinking about losing players, what is to say we don't trade for a player? Say Atlanta really struggles to start the year or Horford gets injured again. Maybe they look to trade Milsap and rebuild? Maybe Smith is actually an even worse fit in Van Gundy's system than last year and they decide they have to move him.

Overall, all of your "realistic" prognostications are really worse case scenarios that fail to acknowledge any positive things breaking the celtics way. That is actually being pessimistic. Sorry.

[Neurotic Guy]

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

Agreed.  Some of the "fans" floating around the internet who love nothing more than to watch this team lose make this place unbearable sometimes.

No one on here likes watching the Celtics lose. To suggest otherwise is insipid.

Eh, I don't know if anyone likes actually watching it, but there was an awful lot of caterwauling about how terrible it was that we won 2 games toward the end of the season.  Watching, maybe not, but there's certainly been a lot of rooting for losses around here.

I find it strange that anyone who is a C's fan would not be looking forward to watching the C's this year.

I have looked forward to the Celtics season every year since I can remember, and that includes  the Wickes/Rowe era, and every year of the 22-year drought after 1986.    This year is no different, I can't wait.   I am not saying that I like watching the C's lose.  But I am saying that gearing up for each game and waiting for tip-off, watching player progress, and watching competetive games, is a good deal of fun for me.

I don't watch every play of every game, but I watch a lot -- and frankly, despite the poor W-L record last year (and my encouragement of tanking), there were many competitive games, and many moments that piqued my interest. 

My expectations are not for winning this year, but for having some fun watching.   There will be many sub-plots. Maybe most of the excitement will be regarding trade possibilities and talking about lottery position and possible draft targets. 

If it was only about winning, I would have lost interest long ago.   

[Snakehead]

I find it strange that anyone who is a C's fan would not be looking forward to watching the C's this year.
....

If it was only about winning, I would have lost interest long ago.

Totally agreed.

TP

[the_Bird]

It's not only about winning, per se, it's about the team being unwatchable when they don't seem to be TRYING to win. 

I loved that '06-'07 team that lost what, 18 games in a row.  Those guys were putting in the effort every night - Delonte, Perk, Big Al, young Rondo, those guys were playing hard and competitive. 

Last year's squad, just going through the motions most of the time.  When the front office isn't trying to win games, unless you've got a terrific coach that's going to filter through to the players. 

[hwangjini_1]

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

Agreed.  Some of the "fans" floating around the internet who love nothing more than to watch this team lose make this place unbearable sometimes.

No one on here likes watching the Celtics lose. To suggest otherwise is insipid.

Eh, I don't know if anyone likes actually watching it, but there was an awful lot of caterwauling about how terrible it was that we won 2 games toward the end of the season.  Watching, maybe not, but there's certainly been a lot of rooting for losses around here.

I find it strange that anyone who is a C's fan would not be looking forward to watching the C's this year.

I have looked forward to the Celtics season every year since I can remember, and that includes  the Wickes/Rowe era, and every year of the 22-year drought after 1986.    This year is no different, I can't wait.   I am not saying that I like watching the C's lose.  But I am saying that gearing up for each game and waiting for tip-off, watching player progress, and watching competetive games, is a good deal of fun for me.

I don't watch every play of every game, but I watch a lot -- and frankly, despite the poor W-L record last year (and my encouragement of tanking), there were many competitive games, and many moments that piqued my interest. 

My expectations are not for winning this year, but for having some fun watching.   There will be many sub-plots. Maybe most of the excitement will be regarding trade possibilities and talking about lottery position and possible draft targets. 

If it was only about winning, I would have lost interest long ago.

NG captures key points for me. i always cheer for the celtics and watch their games whenever i can, even when they put a poor team on the court.

what i liked most about last season was that for the first 1/2 season or so they played a number of close, competitive games. this team is rebuilding so i find joy and hope were i can.

i look forward to the upcoming season and will enjoy it. i won't fool myself into thinking the celtics are playoff bound, or that the kids will become exceptional players. i just expect the players to play hard each night. i will watch the team to see what the reality is and to cheer them on even when their w-l record is abysmal.

as hard as it is to do at times, i try not to confuse being a fan with being delusional. 

[DesertDweller]

This year, just like every other year, I am looking forward to watching my Celtics win just like I look forward to my Raiders and Yankees winning also (I'll bet I opened a can of worms by mentioning my favorite football and baseball teams on this site)  but the fact remains, no matter whom my team might be, at the beginning of the season I am rooting for them to win it all. no matter how unrealistically that goal may be, I am a fan and not some downer that is constantly posting about how inferior the Celtics are to everyone else.
I think there are quite a few of you that have underestimated how good the C's could be this year. instead of all the upsides we have you rather pick at every little flaw we possess to the point you start to sound like an analyst for one of our opposing teams.

This is your team for crap sakes, act like it!!!!

[vinnie]

This year, just like every other year, I am looking forward to watching my Celtics win just like I look forward to my Raiders and Yankees winning also (I'll bet I opened a can of worms by mentioning my favorite football and baseball teams on this site)  but the fact remains, no matter whom my team might be, at the beginning of the season I am rooting for them to win it all. no matter how unrealistically that goal may be, I am a fan and not some downer that is constantly posting about how inferior the Celtics are to everyone else.
I think there are quite a few of you that have underestimated how good the C's could be this year. instead of all the upsides we have you rather pick at every little flaw we possess to the point you start to sound like an analyst for one of our opposing teams.

This is your team for crap sakes, act like it!!!!

Man, you've been waiting a long time for the Raiders to win anything. This is my team, but it does not mean I have to run around wearing green glasses all the time. I watched most of the games last year and will watch most this year. That won't make this a good team. I just hope Ainge has a plan that pays off....

[D.o.s.]

I expect the Celtics to go 96-0 every season. My expectations are, clearly, untethered to reality.