After 126 days of no NBA basketball, the Boston Celtics are again on Opening Night time to host the New York Knicks. Not solely is it a fantastic day that basketball is again, but it surely’s ring ceremony evening for the Celtics after they defeated the Dallas Mavericks in 5 video games again in June.
Now all eyes are again on Boston to see if they will repeat. However, it’s an extended season with each staff resetting their wins and loss columns to zero.
Listed below are three questions main into tonight’s matchup.
The primary query is likely to be the obvious…
Will the Celtics have a championship hangover?
After continuous partying after the ultimate buzzer of Recreation 5, how will Boston take care of the feelings of receiving their rings after which getting straight into the season in opposition to a staff that has been constructed to take them down?
The excellent news, the final three NBA Champions have gained their season opener. Final yr, Denver beat the Lakers 119-107, the yr prior the Warriors additionally defeated the Lakers 121-104. The Bucks beat the Brooklyn Nets 127-104.
The final championship staff to lose was the Lakers once they misplaced to the Clippers 109-116.
There’s little question that the Celtics at the moment are the hunted, and if there’s any coach who can rally his staff to be aggressive and make a run again to the Finals, it’s Joe Mazzulla. I imply, to him, he needs to be hunted.
“Individuals are gonna say the targets on our again however I hope it’s proper on our brow between our eyes. I hope I can see the pink dot,” Mazzulla mentioned on the Locked On Celtics podcast.
How will the Celtics deal with the Knicks?
As soon as the New York Knicks made the commerce to accumulate Mikal Bridges from the Brooklyn Nets, all of the media headlines have been about how that was the transfer that would derail Boston’s path to a second consecutive championship.
Effectively since then, the Knicks upgraded once more by buying and selling for all-star middle Karl-Anthony Cities from the Timberwolves and are actual threats within the East.
Final season, the Celtics hunted mismatches and used their versatility to assault the weaker defender. With out Kristaps Porzingis it is going to be more durable for Boston to rely solely on attacking mismatches.
Towards the Knicks, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, and Bridges will likely be their main perimeter defenders which means the mismatch Boston will look to assault will likely be KAT and/or Jalen Brunson.
It’ll be attention-grabbing to see if Tom Thibodeau chooses to change every little thing or have his gamers combat by means of screens.
It’ll be a fantastic chess match between Mazzulla’s offense consisting of taking pictures a ton of threes in opposition to Thibodeau’s defensive schemes.
How will Al Horford look?
Huge Al is coming into his 18th season within the league and continues to be enjoying at a really excessive stage. After capturing his first championship, Al dismissed any retirement discuss and got here again for his age-38 season.
With that mentioned, when the preseason began the Celtics traveled to Abu Dhabi for 2 video games in opposition to the Denver Nuggets. Al Horford made the journey, however didn’t play in both sport. When Boston returned state-side, the previous Gator didn’t go well with up till the ultimate preseason sport in opposition to the Toronto Raptors.
Towards the Raptors, Horford had a tough evening. Horford performed 23 minutes taking pictures 1-of-6 from the ground together with 0-for-4 from three. Al performed prefer it was his first sport again since June as he had the worst plus/minus within the sport with a -29.
The excellent news, it was simply preseason and when the lights are the brightest, Al is somebody Boston can all the time depend on. Some gamers take a number of video games to get their shot again from the offseason, particularly if they seem in a single preseason sport.
It wouldn’t shock me if Mazzulla and the teaching workers restrict the quantity of minutes Horford performs, particularly within the first few weeks of the season as they should preserve him wholesome since Porzingis is out till a minimum of December.
I don’t have a tendency to fret about Horford and I nonetheless suppose he’ll discover a method to make an affect tonight, it simply won’t be along with his scoring.
There will likely be many questions that Boston might want to reply all through the season, however the street to Banner 19 begins tonight.
