NEW YORK — Having a Merry Christmas will entail a relatively brief exercise for the Celtics [team stats] today. The questions will be short and pointed as they meet the Knicks in a game for which neither team is truly prepared.
When trying to figure whether the Bostonian basketeers will have a happy new year, however, the issues are deeper. The questions are many.
Are the Celtics tall enough? Can Jermaine O’Neal hold up for a full season? Can Brandon Bass and Chris Wilcox, eight NBA stops between them, step into critical roles off the bench? Is Keyon Dooling, now with his sixth team, the answer behind Rajon Rondo [stats]? Will the C’s miss Jeff Green more than people think?
All valid queries, but forgive Danny Ainge if he believes they miss a larger point that could render most of them fairly moot. The director of basketball operations wants to know if his stars will provide enough light.
“I like our team, but I think a lot of it depends on how our four All-Stars play,” Ainge said, referencing Paul Pierce [stats], Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Rondo. “I’ve been saying that for the last four years. That’s a key element to it.”
To those who believe the complementary players hold the keys, Ainge said, “I’m not diminishing what those guys are able to do, and I think those guys can help us obviously, and they are keys. But I still think in order to win you have to have special performances, not just contributions from different people here and there. I think we have a lot of guys who can contribute. But I think our All-Stars have to play like All-Stars.”
And while criticism of the Kendrick Perkins [stats] trade may be perfectly valid in light of Shaquille O’Neal’s inability to be Shaquille O’Neal last year down the stretch, the Celtics might have gotten past Miami if their stars played to their resumes. The Game 3 humbling of the Heat was a paint-by-numbers masterpiece that seemed amazing only in their inability to reproduce it.
Getting the Celtics stars to align and execute wasn’t the given it should have been.
“No, it wasn’t,” said Ainge. “And the year we won it, those guys played at a very, very high level.”
Allen is well aware his team didn’t play to its capabilities enough last season, and he’s not deflecting the burden now.
“It’s up to us as players to make our coaches and the front office look good,” he said. “We have to go out there and perform, and we still have guys that know exactly what they’re doing, and regardless of what the rest of the league looks like, we still believe that we’re head and shoulders above everybody else talent-wise. We just have to put our working hats on and redevelop our chemistry and bring the new guys along.”
Allen understands, as well, that there is a reason stars get paid more money. There is a reason teams will surrender multiple assets to acquire a magnetic talent.
“Sometimes you get sidetracked or fooled by the accessories that you’ve added to the team, the outskirt players that complement the core players on the team,” Allen said. “Those guys win games for you throughout the course of the year, and they win certain possessions. There’s a five- or six-minute stretch where a guy carries you.
“But between myself, Paul, Rondo and Kevin, we still have to play at a high level. We can’t just put it off on everybody else. We have to play some of our best basketball. And if you think about last year, the games that we didn’t start well and the games that we didn’t finish well, that’s on us. We can talk about who was on our bench and who wasn’t, but that was us out on the floor.”
And while the Celtics were still working on Christmas Eve to improve the talent around them, it is the stars who will have to deliver today and for the rest of the season.
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