Boston Celtics host Los Angeles Clippers - NBA Preview
The Eastern Conference leader Boston Celtics will take on the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night at TD Garden.
The surprising decision of the Celtics to trade Kendrick Perkins for Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic gave rise to many questions. However, the duo put a lid on all the questions originating from their arrival at the C's.
The Celtics have won five straight games of the current season since the arrival of their new additions.
Few hours after the trade, the C’s played their worst games of the season, losing 89-75 to the Denver Nuggets at Pepsi Center. The Celtics forward Kevin Garnett called the contest as "a tough day to play basketball."
Since then, they got the rhythm back as they will look to extend their winning streak to six games against the visiting Clippers.
Forward Paul Pierce said, "We got a nice little rhythm, truthfully. It really starts with our core group," "At the end of the day we're finding a way to win."
The Celtics have averaged 103.4 points and shot 42.2 percent from 3-point range during their winning streak. In their previous 12 contests of this season, they averaged 91.3 points.
Boston “the Green” had defeated the Milwaukee Bucks 89-83 in their previous match at the Bradley Center, playing in the presence of only nine players.
The Celtics are busy with some kind of experiments now days as they kept on making changes in the team. The 34-year-old Garnett admitted that bringing five new players to the squad in the last 11 days is of course a tough task.
"I won't sugar-coat it; this is very hard. But the guys are intellectually understanding what we do and they have a very high basketball IQ. You can see it in terms of when we need buckets when the execution comes in. It's a simple
play call but those guys are picking it up so fast," Garnett stated.
Pierce played one of his best games of the season as he averaged 22.2 points during the Celtic’s streak. In addition to that, forward Jeff Green’s minutes have gone up in the past two games. He has been fantastic as he improved
from an average of 6.0 in his first three contests to 16.0 points in the last two games.
On the other hand, the Clippers registered the third consecutive victory of the season with a 92-87 victory over the Charlotte Bobcats on Monday night at Time Warner Cable Arena.
Griffin scored team-high 17 points and grabbed 15 rebounds to lead five Los Angeles players in double figures. It was totally a Blake show as he registered his 54th double-double of the season.
The Clippers did not have their leading scorer Eric Gordon as he is under day-to-day observation. He missed six weeks with a right wrist fracture. He was injured in a 106-103 victory against the Houston Rockets on Wednesday night
at Staples Center.
The Clippers have been unable to extend their winning streak to four games since January 10, 2010. Would they be able to make it four in a row this time?
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