Boston Celtics: Glass Half Full for Paul Pierce and Celtics Despite Mini-Crisis

It's been tough to watch what many consider a championship contender struggle as much as the Boston Celtics have to start the 2011-2012 NBA season.

Without arguably their best player in Paul Pierce, the Celtics have had its fair share of inconsistencies offensively as well as a defense repeatedly missing assignments.

Yet, despite the 0-3 start, the Celtics are in a position to change things around and have the players to do it.

The 2011 NBA lockout is a major reason why this team has failed to gel together and understand their roles.

With a veteran ball-club like the Celtics have and many new pieces to fit together, it takes time and patience to develop a chemistry and cohesiveness as a team.

Time and time again coaches and players with experience in the league seem to be stressing the importance of going through a regular routine of an offseason: the NBA draft, training camp, summer league, conditioning, work-outs and the preseason.

With no more than a month to practice and gain chemistry this offseason, the Celtics are one of the team's that have been hit the hardest.

The other key factors that has hurt the team have been the injuries to solid players in the rotation. Chris Wilcox, Jeff Green and Pierce are all out due to injury.

To make matters worse, Green will be out for the entire season.

Yet, taking into consideration the lack of offseason work with this new-look team, injuries to key players (including their best player in Pierce) and the fact that they started the season with three straight road games, it becomes clear that this team has plenty of promise going forward.

In games against the Knicks and Heat, both games went down to the wire despite a poor first three quarters from the Celtics in each one.

Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo have been contributing in a big way on both ends, and as a result they had the Celtics within striking distance of winning the first two games despite a mediocre effort for the majority of them.

If anything, the 0-3 start is a promising thing for a team like the Celtics, who would prefer to have a mini-crisis like this one sooner rather than later. With 63 games remaining in the schedule, there is a good amount of time to make adjustments and develop chemistry in the rotation.

The team is helped as well, as nine of the team's next 11 games will be played at home against beatable teams including the Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons and Phoenix Suns.

The Celtics are a team with four All-Stars on the roster and one of them coming back in the coming days. Expect the Celtics to begin to gel as a team and win games soon enough.