Boston's Bettah – A Boston Sports blog from guys that love Boston sports a little too much

Paul Pierce played wicked nice last night

One of the biggest debates going on with my roommates is how successful the Miami Heat will be this season. Half the room (Ryan Sullivan and myself) are on the side that the Heat will not be the best team in the NBA while another roommate (Dylan Hallsmith) has been quoted as saying “if you don’t think the Heat are wining seventy games this season, you’re stupid.”

The Celtics probably shut up those people last night. Using the Celtics style game of defensive stops and deadly runs, the Celtics were able to defeat the Miami Heat on opening night at the Garden by the score of 88-80.

Some of the notes from the game:

• It was obvious from the get go that the Celtics wanted to get Shaq involved in the game. I’m not going to lie, he didn’t look bad. Sure, he missed a couple of open looks, but he got some boards and put up 9 points including a couple of (gasp) athletic dives into the lane. He only played 18 minutes, but it was a good start for his Celtics career.
• Ray Allen may get the glory for his 20 points including the dagger 3-pointer with under a minute to go, and Rajon Rondo may get glory for his 17 assists (!!), but Paul Pierce may have been the most important Celtic on the floor last night. He held Lebron James in check for most of the game with his defense and filled the stat sheet with 19 points, 9 rebounds and 3 assists. He even had one of the defining plays of the game when he hustled back on defense, got in front of Lebron James and took the full brunt of a Lebron James drive. Sure, Pierce may have picked up a blocking foul but it showed one thing. This Celtics team, as usual, isn’t backing down from anyone.
• Glen Davis proved once again that we can count on him to play major minutes. Against a smaller team like the Heat, Glen Davis was a part of the crunch time five. He was high energy throughout his 29 minutes and finished with 13 points and 7 boards.
• The scariest part about the Celtics last night has to be the fact that they still can’t close out games. Their biggest issue last year was that the Celtics got out to fast starts but failed to play all 48 minutes. While they fixed this by playoff time, the main issue was that this issue came up when Celtics fans least wanted it to (Game 7 of the NBA Finals). It would be nice if in the regular season they played all 48 minutes just to prove that they can do it.
• It’s great that they won on opening night and set the tone for the rest of the season, but we must remember that it’s only opening night. It’s a long season and the players need to stay healthy and get a nice seed for the play-offs. It’s hard to gauge anything from game 1.
• Having said that, it was nice to start the season the way we did. The Eastern Conference still goes through us as far as I’m concerned and it remains that way until proven otherwise.

~Benti