As Noah wrote to me today about his feeling about the Celtics, I'm also perhaps foolishly on the side of hope.


I think the game on Sunday against Cleveland was more of a positive than the doomsayers took it to be. Watching the it people may have missed  that the bench (or Doc) kind of blew the game. Take a look at these plus or minuses for our bench and Cleveland's.  The starters left with 3 something minutes to go in the third with the game close and then came back in with 8 something minutes left in the fourth down 15 or so. Doc put them in after watching this unit for 7 minutes-including going scoreless for 4 minutes to start the fourth, almost like, "Alright now let's see if you can get us out of this." Stupid, I think. If the starters are playing them even then they deserve the chance to win it. That Doc stuck to this bench squad idea so rigidly for so long is something I have a beef with. Can't you try to win big games now? (And you would have been justified in missing this from the commentary since Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy were  more interested in talking about themselves and any random all-time list they could come up with than to point it out about the game at hand. Hubie or Doug Collins would have noticed.)

I've been to nationally televised games at the Garden before and the amount of time between action is ridiculous. 6 minute timeouts, 20 minute halftime. The idea that the starters need rest in these settings feels silly when you're there. That aside, I hope like crazy that when the playoffs come this whole bench squad idea will be a thing of the past, at least for long crucial stretches. It's too much pressure on people that haven't played together that much, but could play better in units integrated with starters.

And I think the starters need to be empowered that it's their's to lose.