Your Morning Dump... Where it's time to play some basketball

Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big story line. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.

“It’s gonna be two teams getting after it, whether it’s biting, scratching, no matter what you have to do to win, that’s what it’s gonna be,” Terry Rozier said. “I think we’re looking forward to it. I know I am. I like the stuff that Embiid talks. It’s good for basketball, it’ll get you hyped up, so you know, if they like it, we love it. It’s going to be a lot of fun. We ready for it.”

MassLive

Well, kids, this is what we’ve been waiting for.

It’s showtime (in a Beetlejuice sense, of course, not a Lakers sense). Celtics and Sixers in a game that actually kind of, sort of, matters (insofar as it will constitute 1/82nd of the Celtics’ record at the end of the season).

Me? I’m here for every last second of over-analysis, over-reaction and over-thinking that will follow a Celtics loss (if the unthinkable should, in fact, occur). This is, unquestionably, the most talented team the Celtics have had in almost a decade (which is an embarrassment of riches, if you think about it; there are teams in the league that have never had a roster this good).

But if we’ve learned anything from the last few seasons with Brad Stevens, the Celtics are prone to some early season rough patches. Stevens takes the long view, and these early season games seem to be as much about collecting data for the C’s nerd-in-chief as they are about winning.

Am I writing all this as a sort of pre-game rationalization for a potential poor performance? Perhaps. Perhaps.

One thing’s for certain, you can toss the preseason out the window. Much has been made of the C’s poor performance during the preseason: The team took a ton of threes and missed a truly startling number of them. They didn’t play aggressively on offense, and their defense was, well, let’s just say that showing game film from the preseason to a basketball coach would be kind of like showing Nightmare on Elm Street to grade schoolers–in a word, terrifying.

At the same time, guys, it’s the preseason.

I loved Gordon Hayward’s chase-down block in the first game.

I’m here to tell you that if that play had happened in June instead of September, it would’ve been awesome.

But in the first game of the preseason?

Who

Cares

The Celtics have been crippled, literally, by injuries the last two years–the last three, if you throw in the injuries to Bradley and Olynyk that impacted the Celtics’ first round loss to the Hawks.

One of the parts of basketball that fascinates me is the shootaround. I (because, truth be told, I suck at basketball… where was I? oh, right, anyway…) I don’t understand what players get from the shootarounds that come before the first and third quarters. You got about two basketballs per player on the court, and they’re tossing ’em toward the hoop from all over, and some of those shots they take are just absolute bricks.

That’s the lens through which I’m inclined to view the Celtics’ preseason.

Stevens–unlike some coaches out there–doesn’t draw a distinction between how he treats the starters and how he treats the guys on the bench. These guys are competitors, so you know starting means something to them. At the same time, it doesn’t mean as much as it does elsewhere. These guys all know that if they play well, they’ll get their minutes. They don’t have to prove anything to anyone.

So I’m pretty sure the direction came down from on high, perhaps after Gordon Hayward’s non stop flight from the baseline to the camera pit, ‘hey guys, that’s what the playoffs are for.’

Speaking of that guy:

Hayward starts the season on a minutes restriction

Celtics forward Gordon Hayward will be limited to 25 minutes of floor time when he returns to a regular-season game for the first time in nearly a year Tuesday in the season-opener against the Philadelphia 76ers.

Celtics coach Brad Stevens said that, while Hayward had his best week of practice in the long crawl to opening night, the team will keep him on a minutes restriction for the first couple weeks of the season.

Hayward, who missed all of last season after fracturing his ankle on opening night in Cleveland, played in three exhibition games but sat out the exhibition finale while dealing with a back issue. Hayward admitted he’ll have some natural butterflies for opening night, which will be his first regular-season game in a Celtics uniform at TD Garden — but he’s eager to dive back in.

NBC Sports

Last season–and, mind you, this is a league where many of the benchmark advanced stats are ‘per 36′– the Celtics player who led the team in minutes per game, Kyrie Irving, averaged just 32.2 minutes per game.

The days of players logging 40+ minutes a game are gone (unless you have the misfortune of playing for Tom Thibodeau, or you’re LeBron James and you don’t feel like subbing out), and good riddance. Yeah, Russ played every minute of every game of the ’69 Finals, and that was a truly epic way to cap a career. The downside? He was all of three years older than Al Horford when he retired.

So Hayward’s starting the season on a minutes restriction, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to make a big impact on how the Celtics’ rotations work.

At any rate, I’m glad the season’s here. If the Celtics come out tonight and bury the Sixers, I’m up for all the trash talk, and if they lose? Well, I’ve got my excuses all nice and polished up and ready to go (trust me, as a Vikings fan, keeping excuses handy and in good condition is something I’ve become very good at.)