Boston Celtics: Other NBA Teams Should Not Overlook the Celtics

The Boston Celtics are 0-2. 

No worries—it's a loaded draft in 2012. The lottery teams are going to be thrilled to be there, and plus the Celtics are old anyway. 0-2, 1-10, 5-23, whatever, it's not a big deal. We all knew this day was coming. 

Not so fast. 

Those 0-2 Celtics lost two games on the road to start the season. One was to a Knicks team playing with a chip on their shoulder, and it was a two-point loss. A loss is a loss to a certain extent, but a two-point game probably could have gone either way.

Plus, weren't the Celtics down by 17 points in that game? Didn't they come out looking flat, old, tired, even disinterested? 

Didn't they come storming all the way back also? Wasn't that Rajon Rondo making basically every player on the floor feel as though they just ate and finished Christmas Dinner? 

Was that new acquisition Brandon Bass playing like a guy who has been wearing Celtics Green for years? 

The Celtics lost on Christmas Day and for now the Knicks and their fans can claim to be the better team if they'd like. They can talk all they want about how when Baron Davis gets healthy and is on the team the Knicks will be unbeatable. 

Of course, that would deny the reality that Baron Davis was last healthy for a full season in the 2007-2008 season. He's going to be coming back from surgery, and he's going to be inserted into a system that is up-tempo and in the midst of one of the most hectic and condensed seasons in league history. 

It also denies the reality that Paul Pierce wasn't playing on Christmas Day. He also wasn't playing on Tuesday night in Miami, when the Celtics stormed back from being down by as much as 20 points on the road in the second half to cut the lead to three in the final minutes before losing another tough game on the road to what is arguably the best team in all of the NBA. 

This is a Celtics team that has their backs against the wall.

Every player young and old knows that their window on winning a title is closing after this season. The old guys are only getting older, and the young guys aren't good enough to make a deep playoff run on their own. 

Then there's Rajon Rondo, who has played like a man possessed so far this season. With the possible exception of Russell Westbrook, no one in the NBA is as fast with the ball as Rondo. He routinely makes other ostensibly fast NBA players look like they're standing in cement as he shuffles past them or throws a pass right by their outstretched arms. 

The Celtics have lost two games to two of the league's better teams on the road. In both games, the Celtics came back from being down more than 15 points. Both games were played without the Celtics best pure scorer, Paul Pierce.

Pierce isn't just a "good" scorer. He's a first ballot Hall of Fame scorer. He will get to Springfield, Massachusetts based on the fact that the guy can score points.

He's been doing that with efficiency for what is now his 14th NBA season. He can shoot from anywhere on the floor, he hits over 80 percent on free throws for his career and shoots a respectable percentage from three-point range as well.

Paul Pierce is the 30th-leading scorer in NBA history and is the sixth-leading scorer among active players. The five players ahead of him all have more seasons of NBA basketball on their resumes. 

Don't forget the head coach, either. Doc Rivers clearly keeps his team focused throughout the entire game.

Both losses could easily have been by more than 20 points. Instead, the Celtics battled, they fought. It got them back into both games, and while winning would have been far preferable to the losing results, the ability to hang tough and keep games close will pay dividends as the season progresses. 

Last night in Miami, Rivers also made a calculated decision to play a zone defense. It worked to an extent. Considering that the Boston zone wasn't even that tough a zone defense, its impact and effectiveness were quite encouraging.

The Celtics barely play any zone. This is obviously a season in which incorporating new defensive schemes will have to be done by basically using game time as practice time. 

The zone defense that Boston went to last night will have to get better, but it probably will as the season progresses. A skilled veteran team can learn these things and make adjustments especially with a solid veteran coach leading them.

This is a Celtics team that might not be among the top teams in the East when the playoff seeds are announced, but to write the team off would be foolish. If there's one thing both fans and haters of the Celtics can agree on, it's that the Celtics are 0-2 but they could easily be 2-0.

Getting Paul Pierce healthy is going to make a difference, and teams that think they can run the old guys off the court this season may find themselves absorbing a loss along the way.