Here Come the Champs ...

Tomorrow night the reigning NBA champs, the Boston Celtics, come to town for their one and only appearance in Oklahoma City (unless, of course, the Thunder meet them in the NBA finals which is still statistically although not logically possible). The green ones are currently 3-1 after winning a close, hard-fought game against the Rockets tonight.

I had actually started to write this entry before the Celtics-Rockets game, and pretty much everything I had written was invalided by the game. Tonight's game, by far, was the strongest showing by the Celtics this season and should go a long way towards silencing their critics.

Unfortunately for us OKC fans, there wasn't much in tonight's game to give us hope for the Thunder stealing a victory tomorrow. Our best hope comes from the fact that tonight's game should have taken some of the steam out of the Boston players. The starters played 75% of the minutes, and Paul Pierce nearly played the full game (spending a meager 3:32 on the bench).

The Thunder have yet to show an ability to put massive points on the board, so they're going to have to find a way to contain the Celtics. The Celtics shot 52% against the Rockets, and all of the starting five were in double digits. If OKC can keep the Celtics to around 45% from the field, they may have a shot at this game.

For those of you who noticed that we're posted the game preview a day earlier, I'll note that gforce had internet issues today and so we flipped his story for today with my preview for tomorrow. Tune in tomorrow for a more in-depth look at what the Thunder did well against the T-Wolves and how they'll need to use that in the future. Or at least that's what I think he's going to write about.