Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big storyline. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.
Opening week offers more than just a tipoff of the season series against the Sixers, who lost to the C’s in last season’s conference semifinals. The Celtics will play their first road game on Oct. 19 in Toronto against the Kawhi Leonard-led Raptors, and that figures to be the other member of the Eastern Conference’s new top three teams.
Though the network schedule can change with events during the season, the Celtics currently are scheduled to play 27 times on ABC, TNT and ESPN, in addition to additional games on NBA TV.
Back-to-backs will be few and far between for the Celtics this season, again thanks to the early start. Boston will play on consecutive days just 12 times throughout the 2018-19 campaign, and none of those back-to-backs will combine for the previously-dreaded four-games in five-nights spell.
With all of that said, the C’s will have to endure five back-to-backs during the first seven weeks of the season.
Boston’s longest road trip of the campaign will be a five-gamer beginning at the end of Week 3. The nine-day journey tips off Nov. 3 in Indianapolis, then it’s off to Denver, Phoenix and Salt Lake City, respectively, before wrapping up Nov. 11 in Portland.
Learning the Celtics have 27 games on national TV got me excited, then I remembered the green played 25 games on national TV last season.
I saw one strength of schedule ranking which put Boston at 16th, but preseason SOS analysis is pretty worthless.
All things considered, the schedule lacks any sort of “holy crap the league is out to get us” stretch of games.
There’s another aspect that has my “I’m old, I need my sleep because I wake up at 5am every day for work” gripe:
The C’s will play 13 Friday night games, 18 Saturday games (one in the afternoon and 17 at night) and six Sunday games (two in the afternoon and four at night). That right there makes up 37 games of the season.
There are plenty of marquee games: Christmas (vs 76ers), New Year’s Eve (vs Spurs), MLK (vs Heat), and Super Bowl Sunday (vs Thunder).
Giddy up.
On Page 2, a team that hasn’t made the playoffs in 5 seasons takes a shot at us.
6 can't miss games on the Lakers schedule, presented by @Delta. pic.twitter.com/knUPGSdLGI
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) August 10, 2018
I guess putting the Celtics logo on a trash can is funny. Then again, it’s a trash can with a massive Lakers logo.
If you peek inside, you’ll find the results of their last 5 seasons.
The links:
Globe – 11 games to watch this season | NBC Sports – Closer look at season ahead
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