Boston Celtics: Will Not Benefit from a Lockout-Shortened NBA Season

The NBA lockout has reached a potential turning point with league commissioner David Stern declaring that there are, "enormous consequences at play," regarding the still feasible possibility that the regular season starts on time.

If this crucial weekend of labor talks comes and goes without a new collective bargaining agreement, the likelihood of the season both starting on schedule and including the usual 82-game slate will really appear doubtful. At that point, a discussion regarding how a shortened season will affect the Celtics becomes a great deal more than just speculation.

It's been written in this space before that an abbreviated 2011-2012 slate would benefit the Celts given their collective age, the fact that they were clearly worn down in the later stages of last season as well as the playoffs, and that they produced a 41-14 mark through their first 55 games in 2010-2011. But there are factors surrounding a shortened season that would affect them adversely as well.

Let's say for argument's sake that the season gets underway in January, 2012. Like the lockout shortened 1998-1999 season, the schedule contains only 50 games for each team. In this scenario, there will be several more back-to-back nights on which the Celts play than in a normal 82-game season. There will likely even be a handful of occasions when they will have to play three games in three nights.

In 1999, the regular season began in early February and ended in mid-April. The Celtics finished 19-31 that year and not only played on back-to-back nights 12 times, they played on three consecutive nights three times. It's not likely that the C's would get all that much out of their aging core playing that many back-to-backs, and if there are cases of three games in three nights, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce may find themselves getting some time off altogether.

If the season does in fact wind-up shortened, the key for the Celtics will lie in how condensed the schedule is. Fewer games could and should benefit an older team such as the C's, but if a lesser total of games in sandwiched into just two and a half months, as in 1999, their chances of being able to consistently run all of their horses at full strength will diminish quite a bit.