Celtics expect terrific Heat

It’s still early in the NBA season,
but the Miami Heat (5-3) have a small shot at redemption Thursday when they try
for a home win against the Boston Celtics on TNT’s 8pm(ET) broadcast.

The Celtics embarrassed the Heat in
the season opener when they held the powerful trio of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade
and Chris Bosh and the rest of the Miami squad to just nine first quarter
points.

In all fairness, the Heat stars
were still getting acquainted to each other in their first full-speed, regular
season game.

In the preseason, the three
All-stars only spent roughly three minutes of on court action together after
Dwyane Wade went down with a hamstring injury.

After the rough start, Miami went
on to win four straight including a home blowout against the Orlando Magic, one
of their Eastern rivals. The Heat lost Tuesday night in a brawl against Utah.

Wade has been impressive early in
the season, with averages of 26 points per game, 6 rebounds and 3 assists.

James is adjusting to more of a
point-forward role, leading the team in assists with over 8 per contest, while
still averaging slightly over 20 points.

It’s Bosh that has had the biggest
dip in production. For a player who has career averages of 20 points and 9
rebounds, he’s down at 15 and only 6.

He’s turned into a 18-foot jump
shooter who only occasionally gets the ball, instead of the main attraction and
dominant scorer like he was in Toronto.

On the other hand, Boston sits near
the top of the East standings with an impressive 6-2 start.

With all eyes on Boston’s ‘big
three’ of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, it’s Rajon Rondo who has
emerged as the team’s best player.  He
leads the league in assists with just under 15 per game.

In fact, if Rondo averages 15
assists per game or more for the remainder of the season, he’ll accomplish what
no other point guard in league history – including Oscar Robertson, Magic
Johnson and John Stockton – could do.

Rondo has positioned himself as one
of the league’s premier threats, using a combination of quickness,
lightning-fast speed, incredible court vision and unorthodox moves to stun
opponents.

The Miami crowd will be excited and
eager to see the visiting Celtics fall to their home team. Look for the Heat to
come alive and put together their best performance of the season so far to win
by around 15 points.

The game immediately following the
Heat-Celtics tussle pits the visiting undefeated Los Angeles Lakers against the
veteran Denver Nuggets (4-4). Although Kobe Bryant is still a league superstar,
his over 45,000 career minutes played (regular season and playoffs) is
affecting his day-to-day contributions. He’s shooting only 44 per cent from the
field, his lowest percentage since the 04-05 season.

It’s the younger workhorses of Pau
Gasol and Lamar Odom that have the Lakers running at full-steam, along with
stellar early bench play and defensive contributions from Ron Artest.

It seems as if Lakers coach Phil
Jackson is taking extra precautions as he attempts to complete his fourth
three-peat this season. Another championship would give him 12 total and he
needs one of the game’s best closers to get him there.

Kobe is still putting up
respectable numbers, but he’s obviously hampered by many minutes and an off-season
knee surgery that takes time to heel.

Bryant claims to be at 100 per
cent, but his 31 minutes per contest is the lowest amount of time played since
his sophomore year in the NBA.

There’s no way that these Lakers
break the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls record of 72 regular season wins, as some NBA
analysts have recently suggested.

Expect the season to wear the
Lakers down a bit, with January and February bringing away losses that will
limit their total wins to under 65. They could lose their first game of the
season on Thursday when the Denver Nuggets have Nene back in the lineup, fully
healthy and ready to bang against LA’s bigs.

The otherwise underachieving
Nuggets always raise their level of play when the Lakers are in town – and
Thursday night will be no different.

Carmelo Anthony, amid the latest
controversies and conversations of him wanting to go to Chicago, New York or
elsewhere, will give everything he has for a win against the Lakers but it
looks more likely that the Nuggets will win by a slim margin.