After 126 days of no NBA basketball, the Boston Celtics are back on Opening Night to host the New York Knicks. Not only is it a great day that basketball is back, but it’s ring ceremony night for the Celtics after they defeated the Dallas Mavericks in 5 games back in June.
Now all eyes are back on Boston to see if they can repeat. But, it’s a long season with every team resetting their wins and loss columns to zero.
Here are three questions leading into tonight’s matchup.
The first question might be the most obvious…
Will the Celtics have a championship hangover?
After non-stop partying after the final buzzer of Game 5, how will Boston deal with the emotions of receiving their rings and then getting straight into the season against a team that has been built to take them down?
The good news, the last three NBA Champions have won their season opener. Last year, Denver beat the Lakers 119-107, the year prior the Warriors also defeated the Lakers 121-104. The Bucks beat the Brooklyn Nets 127-104.
The last championship team to lose was the Lakers when they lost to the Clippers 109-116.
There’s no doubt that the Celtics are now the hunted, and if there’s any coach who can rally his team to be competitive and make a run back to the Finals, it’s Joe Mazzulla. I mean, to him, he wants to be hunted.
“People are gonna say the targets on our back but I hope it’s right on our forehead between our eyes. I hope I can see the red dot,” Mazzulla said on the Locked On Celtics podcast.
How will the Celtics handle the Knicks?
Once the New York Knicks made the trade to acquire Mikal Bridges from the Brooklyn Nets, all the media headlines were about how that was the move that could derail Boston’s path to a second consecutive championship.
Well since then, the Knicks upgraded again by trading for all-star center Karl-Anthony Towns from the Timberwolves and are real threats in the East.
Last season, the Celtics hunted mismatches and used their versatility to attack the weaker defender. Without Kristaps Porzingis it will be harder for Boston to rely solely on attacking mismatches.
Against the Knicks, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, and Bridges will be their primary perimeter defenders meaning the mismatch Boston will look to attack will be KAT and/or Jalen Brunson.
It’ll be interesting to see if Tom Thibodeau chooses to switch everything or have his players fight through screens.
It’ll be a great chess match between Mazzulla’s offense consisting of shooting a ton of threes against Thibodeau’s defensive schemes.
How will Al Horford look?
Big Al is entering his 18th season in the league and is still playing at a very high level. After capturing his first championship, Al dismissed any retirement talk and came back for his age-38 season.
With that said, when the preseason started the Celtics traveled to Abu Dhabi for two games against the Denver Nuggets. Al Horford made the trip, but didn’t play in either game. When Boston returned state-side, the former Gator didn’t suit up until the final preseason game against the Toronto Raptors.
Against the Raptors, Horford had a rough night. Horford played 23 minutes shooting 1-of-6 from the floor including 0-for-4 from three. Al played like it was his first game back since June as he had the worst plus/minus in the game with a -29.
The good news, it was just preseason and when the lights are the brightest, Al is someone Boston can always rely on. Some players take a few games to get their shot back from the offseason, especially if they appear in one preseason game.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Mazzulla and the coaching staff limit the amount of minutes Horford plays, especially in the first few weeks of the season as they need to keep him healthy since Porzingis is out until at least December.
I don’t tend to worry about Horford and I still think he’ll find a way to make an impact tonight, it just might not be with his scoring.
There will be many questions that Boston will need to answer throughout the season, but the road to Banner 19 begins tonight.
