Before the season began I wrote a piece detailing how much I expected the Celtics two veteran superstars to play this year; the premise being that the careers of both Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett have shown remarkable longevity. As it turns out my estimates were just about (and in one case exactly) right. I predicted Garnett would suit up for 71 games, and average 30.7 minutes per game. His final numbers were 68 games played, and 29.7 MPG. For Pierce I picked 75 games and 33.4 MPG; he took the floor 77 times, and did in fact average 33.4 minutes per game. I also guessed that no Celtic would score 20 points a game, but that 6 would average in double figures. Pierce led the team at 18.6 PPG, followed by Garnett's 14.8, Jeff Green's 12.8, Jason Terry's 10.1, Avery Bradley's 9.2, and Brandon Bass' 8.7 (I left out Rajon Rondo's 13.7 in 38 games, and Jordan Crawford's 9.1 over 27).
In another preseason post I said the Clippers would "overtake the Lakers for L.A. supremacy, as Howard/Gasol/Nash/Kobe never quite figure out how to play together." When the Clip show defeated the Lakers at Staples Center a week and a half ago, they clinched their first division title in franchise history.
Also in that article I chose Lakers head coach Mike Brown as the first to be fired, and amazingly he was after just 5 games. To be fair though I expected Knicks coach Mike Woodson to get the axe as well, but instead he guided New York to the East's second best record. Woodson also just won April's "coach of the month" award, oddly enough along with Brown's replacement in LA, Mike D'Antoni.
