Celtics ☘️ Sentinel

  Red Auerbach may be "dead-and-gone" but his undeniable mark remains . Danny Ainge learned much from the the Celtics Patriarch and used that knowledge and experience to  wheel-deal-and-construct Celtics teams that were almost always in the fight.  And now we have Brad Stevens at the helm . He is more subdued than either of his predecessors, but he is damn  clever - and outright smart. His present crew sits at 3-1 in the NBA Finals following a disastrous loss in Game-4 of the series . But Brad's team does not consist of robots. Their Game-4 performance versus Dallas made them look like an overmatched YMCA assemblage. They went from dominant to vulnerable. But don't be fooled. This current version of The Green was masterfully put together to win Banner 18. They are good - very good. And seasoned to withstand one lousy performance . Tomorrow night they will be back home at TD Garden and out to prove just how good they are. I refuse to use the metaphor of Red smiling d...

 There is only outer space beyond the exosphere , and that is where the expectations for the Boston Celtics reside this season. No excuses! No alibis! Anything less than Banner 18 for The Green is failure. But is that even fair. I admit to being disgusted by the 0-3 start for Boston - with home court - in last season's Eastern Finals versus Miami. It took a harsh scolding by owner, Wic Grousbeck, to even the series (barely) at 3-3 - with Boston losing Game 7. Boston sports fans are terrific, but they are also very demanding . They see 17 banners in TD Garden rafters and expect the next one very soon - probably this June. The last Title was in 2008 , so with 30 teams in the League, most fans around the League would be content with waiting until 2038. Not so in Beantown. We have been spoiled. Red and Russ got us 11 Titles. Then came another two in the 70's - three in the 80's - and the last one in 2008 . May I introduce the 10 present NBA teams that have ZERO Titles , gran...

Guest article by "The Sports Machine with Slim" If you are like me, you are a hard core, long time Celtics fan who is incredibly optimistic that this season is going to end in a NBA championship. We are definitely the most talented team in the league. Jayson Tatum is playing at an MVP level. Jaylen Brown has been incredible since the all-star break. Derrick White does everything great. Jrue competes on the defensive end and doesn’t turn the ball over. Porzingis is one of the best post up players in all of basketball. Heck, we even have Al Horford fresh, hungry, and happily coming off the bench. But yet I still worry. If you are like me, you worry too. The Celtics have let us down in recent years when the times got tough. *In 2018 (Tatum’s rookie year), the Celtics scored 79 points in a Game 7 Eastern Conference Finals loss vs Cleveland. *In 2020, the Miami Heat beat us in an Eastern Conference Finals (in the bubble) in which we were definitely the better team. *In 2022, we bl...

 After winning 11 games in a row - and destroying a Warriors team that was on a roll - Celtics fans may have seen the last of that "bad day at work" mindset we heard about after l osses versus weaker teams. During the winning streak, Jayson Tatum and company not only have not taken a single game off - they have appeared to not even have taken a single play off. The final score of 140-88 doesn't tell the whole story from Sunday's dissection of Steph Curry's Warriors. It started with the Celtics relentless defense . Golden State shot 39.1% from the field and 17.1% on 3-pointers. The Green gave "no quarter" to Steph and his crew. Conversely, Boston shot 55.2% on field goals and 51.0% from the hinterlands . The Green have shooters galore and defense that looks like it was programmed with a computer.   This is not the team we saw fall to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Finals last year - nor the Boston crew we saw lose in the 2022 Finals to the Warri...