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The Celtics are playing a lot better now that former head coach Rick Pitino has stepped down, but whether or not they can get into the playoffs remains to be seen. Boston Celtics interim coach, Jim O’Brien has sounded nothing but optimistic as far as the chances of his team making it to the playoffs and has stressed the importance of the fans when the team is at home. “Our fans help us. It’s nice after you go on a little road trip . We’re going to have to beat some mighty, mighty good basketball teams on this floor. I can’t emphasize enough how important our fans are,” O’Brien said.
Just as important is the play of Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker. Walker has very much vocalized his teammates happiness in basketball after Pitino. “Because of the way things were, very negative, the first two months of the season, the focus wasn’t on us. It was obviously on Coach Pitino and whatever he was going to do with his career. Now the focus is on us and the guys are just going out there and playing hard and giving it everything we got,” Walker said.
Walker, who has been averaging just over 23 points and just under 10 rebounds a game has shown improvement since Pitino’s departure and it looks to have rubbed off on his teammates.
Paul Pierce, who has played as many games as anyone on the team this year (59), also leads the team in steals with 99 and is right ahead of Antoine Walker in points per game with an average of 24.3. So if there is anybody who has been holding the team back as far as overall production is concerned, it’s point guard Kenny Anderson.
Anderson, who joined the Celtics in 1998 hasn’t done much to show that he has what it takes to be a starting point guard in the NBA and there is a good chance that the last good years of his career were spent both in New Jersey and Portland where he still was never considered one of the best at his position. If he wasn’t good enough to get the job done in the beginning of his career than the fact that he isn’t getting any younger doesn’t help his case.
Anderson is posting the worst numbers since his rookie season and appears to be the only Celtic who hasn’t taken Pitino’s leaving as a source of inspiration to give the extra effort needed to help propel the Celtics to where they have to be if they want a trip to the playoffs in 2001. Anderson was temporarily placed on the injured list last Monday due to a sprained ankle and is being replaced by Randy Brown for the time being.
Boston is coming off a rough road trip where in which they lost five of seven games, but they’ve won two of their last three and play their next four games at home which from they need as many wins as they can get if they are going to take hold of the eighth spot in the east, which is currently being held by the Indiana Pacers.
“We’re still very happy about our situation now,” Antoine walker said to the Boston Globe. “We feel like we survived a very difficult road trip. We got a couple of wins. We would have liked three wins, but we came up with two.”
They lost to the Knicks in New York on Thursday, but beat the Utah Jazz in Boston by four points on Friday.
