Okay, so right off the bat, it's worth noting that being from Vermont, it makes no real sense for me to have any attachment to a team from a city almost 1600 miles away.
I started following basketball "closely" (as in I paid attention during SportsCenter as a kid, and watched games when I could) when I was 7, and when I realized the Celtics were my team, I only had to wait a year to get a championship.
Fast forward a couple years to middle school, and I'm impossibly gangly and playing a ton of basketball myself. I also got a "smart" device around this time, so I could pay much more attention to college basketball. When Anthony Davis was doing what he did in his freshman year at Kentucky, as a long-armed, goggle wearing defensive specialist, I was enamored.
I knew about New Orleans, of course, because of Chris Paul and David West, and I always liked their jerseys (still have a Chris Paul teal pinstripe); but I decided I would take to the now-Pelicans with a close likeness to the Celtics.
We had AD, then came the Nerlens Noel for Jrue Holiday swap. Eric Gordon was already there via CP3's departure, and Tyreke Evans came due to the departure of Greivis Vasquez, which is a deal that still looks good in retrospect.
Even if it came with a much less good $44 millon contract.
Then came Boogie, and the wonky ass huge teams (if you didn't cheer for them during Omer Asik and Alexis Ajinca minutes, don't talk to me); and I saw a couple games in this era, one pre-Cousins and one post.
The Cousins game was the one where Enes Kanter took the ball the length of the court and dunked on him.
Anyway, after a few more years of mediocrity, but also the sweep of Portland (we remember), the AD thing kinda ended, and we're sort of here now. I'm going to go on record and say that I wish we kept Lonzo, but I do like the group we have.
As much as I'd love to overreact to the Zion weight stuff, I'm not going to because I haven't seen him play. Everyone who's been healthy (not you, Ingram, get better) has been marginally good, we're just having a bad time closing games.
The rookies need attention, both Herb and Trey look great. They're both super long, Trey can shoot every bit as advertised, and Herb is called "Straightjacket" by Trey for a reason. Also, Valanciunas (obviously not a rookie) has been doing a lot of eye-opening things through the first stretch of games.
It's early to make too many judgements (this isn't the Celtics, after all), but the Pels don't look like a really legit threat now, and that's okay. We have to sort of think about our season starting at maybe Christmas, and doing a lot of damage control until then.
That's fine, right?
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