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Authored by Charlie Danoff - 7th January, 2008 - 2:35 pm
The Boston Celtics currently sit atop the league with the best record of 29-3. They are the toast of the NBA and seem to have squashed all the preseason skepticism analysts had earlier in 2007. Congratulations guys! 29-3; that’s awesome!
The fact is, while an excellent regular season record is nice, it is frankly meaningless with this team. The ONLY way they will be judged a success is if they win the NBA Finals. That is it. Plain and simple. Cut and dried.
I realize this definition of success is not fair. Unfortunately for Boston fans, the team is a victim of the insanely good off-season of GM Danny Ainge. When you add a perennial All-Star and one of the NBA’s top three players in the same off-season, standards get elevated exponentially. Obviously it is better that the Celtics are enjoying their current success. The alternative is almost too embarrassing to consider. Keeping in mind that a higher seed also makes it easier to get to the Finals, their record so far is definitely a plus.
All of that does not change the reality that nobody cares or remembers what teams do in the regular season. Remember when Dallas won 67 games last year? No, me neither. All I remember is them having the worst playoff collapse in NBA history losing to the Warriors in the first round.
Do not let my smoothly worded skepticism make you think I am not impressed with the team. I am, especially the fact they are leading the league in many NBA defensive categories. Clichés exist for a reason, especially the old 'defense wins championships' adage.
I am just unwilling to give undue accolades to a team that has only been together for 32 games and has not won ANY postseason contests as a group.
Now that I have put the Celtics in their place, I will look back in NBA history in an effort to more clearly guess what the future will hold for them. They are built on the three-star model that supposedly is the secret to NBA Championships. The formula worked for the ’04-’05 Spurs, ’95-’96 Bulls, ’88-’89 Pistons, and ’85-’86 Celtics, among others. Hopefully, comparing the current Boston stars to the trios on these historic greats will yield some illuminating insights.
’04 - ’05 Spurs
The three stars on this squad were Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili. Duncan and Garnett have been compared to one another throughout their careers. Duncan has always been on better teams while Garnett has better overall numbers. At the end of the day, Duncan is universally regarded as the superior player for he leads in the only statistical category that really matters 3 to 0. Three championships to none, that is.
Most people would probably put the duo of Pierce and Allen ahead of Parker and Ginobili, but that is dangerous at best. While the Boston pair has had more impressive individual careers, the San Antonio two have won more and learned how to play TEAM basketball successfully. Something neither Pierce nor Allen has proven capable of as yet.
Like Boston, San Antonio finished the regular season leading the league in points allowed. Spurs' opponents scored a measly 88.4 PPG. The Spurs have been one of the NBA’s best franchises for over a decade because of their efficient play on both ends of the court. They will shut opponents down defensively and then patiently wait for good shots on the other end.
’95 – ’96 Bulls
Arguably the best team in NBA history, the Bulls finished the regular season all time high 72 wins. In the extremely unlikely event the Celtics continue to win at their current pace, they will best the Bulls and finish with 74 wins.
Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman were the three stars on this squad. Just like the Celtics, their three stars played the 2, 3 and 4 positions. Unlike Allen and Pierce, Jordan and Pippen are two of the best to ever play their positions. Obviously Jordan is probably the best basketball player ever. Comparing Garnett and Rodman is not really appropriate. Garnett is the better all-around player, but he will never rebound or defend like Rodman. That year Rodman averaged 15 boards per game.
’88 – ’89 Pistons
The Bad Boys featured one of the deepest squads in NBA History winning the first of back to back titles in 1989. Their three stars were Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, and Mark Aguire. Thomas, one of the toughest point guards ever to play basketball, scored over 18 PPG and dished out over 8 APG. Given that he was a point guard, it is tough to compare him to any of the Celtics stars. Despite what people may now think of him due to the Knicks' debacle, as a player Thomas played bigger in more big games than the Celtics' trio put together.
As the third star, Dumars and Allen were similar. Dumars never had the individual numbers that Allen did, but he won much more. Aguire came over in a blockbuster midseason trade for Adrian Dantley. He is probably one of the most apt comparisons for the Celtics' new arrivals.
Before coming to a team full of stars, Aguire was a star in his own right in Dallas. He figured a way to channel his talent into his team and win a championship at the expense of his own statistics. If Boston is going to do what they need to do this year, Allen and Garnett should take a page out of Aguire’s book.
’85 – ’86 Celtics
If everything goes according to plan, this year’s Boston team will pick up where Bird and company left off. This team was the last Celtics' squad to win a title. Bird, obviously, is better than Garnett until Garnett wins a title or a few. Despite the accomplishments of Allen and Pierce, neither has had the Hall of Fame type of career that Kevin McHale did. The third star of that team is probably split between Robert Parish and Dennis Johnson. Both of them were extremely talented players who figured out ways, besides scoring, to help the Celtics appear in four straight NBA Finals, winning two of them.
So, then will this year’s Celtics win it all?
Comparing the current big three to historic championship big threes illustrates that the current group certainly has the talent to pull it off. Though not as great as Duncan, Jordan, or Bird, Garnett is individually better than anyone on that Pistons' team. Furthermore, the line dividing Garnett and Duncan would be nearly gray if Garnett had not spent nearly his entire career with one of the NBA’s worst franchises.
Pierce and Allen also can hold their own relative to these all-time great teams. They can probably do more than Parker and Ginobili or Dumars and Aguire. Though I would still take Pippen and Rodman or McHale and Parish/Johnson over them, on paper the ’07 – ’08 Celtics' second and third stars are good enough to win the title.
Unfortunately in life as in the NBA, true greatness is not earned on paper, it is earned with accomplishments. While their big three lines up reasonably well with past championship trios, there are still at least three reasons this team will not reach the Promised Land.
The first is their lack of talent behind their three All-Stars. The Spurs had one of the NBA’s best benches as well as one of its best all-time defenders in Bruce Bowen. The Bulls had that year’s Sixth Man Award winner Ton Kukoc, as well as the NBA’s best three point shooter ever Steve Kerr. The Pistons had Bill Lambeer, Vinnie “Microwave” Johnson, Rick Mahorn and someone I think I mentioned already, Dennis Rodman. The last Celtics' title team featured either Parish or Johnson, current GM Danny Ainge, and Bill Walton, before he became the NBA’s most annoying analyst.
Rajon Rondo, Kedrick Perkins, James Posey, Tony Allen, and Eddie House and change do not even begin to compare to the players these other teams had supporting their big three. Rondo and Perkins do have talent, but neither has even been a full-time starter over the course of a single NBA regular season. Not to even mention that neither has played beyond the first round of the playoffs.
That leads me into my second reason: this team’s lack of shared playoff experience. Each member of the big three has individually played in many postseason contests, but never together. Most of the rest of the roster was added this off-season, as well. This supporting caxt has never come back in from the brink of an elimination in a playoff series before. They have not seen how they will respond when faced with the strongest of adversity.
That is not to say it is impossible, therefore, for them to win. It is just unlikely. The Spurs' team that won in 2005 had already won a championship together in 2003. The ’96 Bulls' squad was led by players who already had one three-peat under their belts. The ’89 Pistons lost the year before in the Finals to the LA Lakers, and the Celtics were appearing in their third straight NBA Finals. These groups were as battle tested as they come both individually, and, more importantly, together. They knew how each other would respond with their backs against the wall. When all hope may have seemed gone, they knew it would be alright because they had been emerged victorious from such situations before. The current Celtics, on the other hand, are completely green.
On a similar note, the third reason to doubt a 2008 Championship is in this team’s future is their relatively novice coach. I am not saying Doc Rivers is bad, he has never really had good teams to work with. Coaches should be evaluated based on how much they get whatever players they are given to overachieve. By that metric, Rivers has done fine. He did more with less in Orlando and with his previous Celtics' team.
The problem with that is Rivers currently has been given a Championship caliber team. While he may call the right plays and massage the egos correctly enough to have success, it is tough to know because he has never done it before. Comparing him to Gregg Poppovich, Phil Jackson, Chuck Daly, or KC Jones (all coaches who won multiple titles) is almost laughable at this stage.
In many ways, they are an anomaly in NBA history. I cannot think of another time three players so individually accomplished who have never won a title have been paired together in their prime. It will be exciting to see if Ainge’s grand experiment works out.
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