Boston's demise shouldn't be a shock

I’m starting to wonder if Boston has what it takes to dig themselves out of this hole. I’m starting to wonder what will happen when they reach for the magic wand they’ve used so often in recent years and find it’s turned to plastic.

Today’s home loss to the Knicks, their 5^th in a row and first at home to New York in 6 years leaves them closer to the bottom of the Atlantic Division than the top- the same division they’ve utterly dominated over the last 5 seasons.

The Lakers have garnered the bulk of attention where failing clubs are concerned, yet their demise may have taken the attention away from the Celtics who face very similar issues to LA be it age or roster composition.

Unlike the Lakers, Boston do currently occupy a playoff position, however that might have a lot more to do with playing in much weaker conference than LA and because of the core three of Rondo, Garnett and Pierce who continue to perform extremely well.

It’d be unfair to compare this Boston team with their 2008 Championship vintage so for the purposes of this exercise it might be more apt to compare this Celtics team with last season’s who were still good enough to push Miami to a 7^th game in the Conference Finals.

And in conducting that comparison what’s most alarming is that statistically it’s not as though they’re performing particularly worse, (in fact in many important areas they're actually doing better) which leaves one to wonder whether in fact the magic has gone and that these Celtics can no longer succeed purely because of the brilliance of Doc Rivers and the continual output of the Big 3.

Though Boston isn’t leading the league in defensive efficiency as they did last season, they’re still ranked in the top 10, while granted their offense is dreadful with only 3 teams performing worse, their offense was awful last season too, averaging under 92 points per night which ranked them 26^th in the league.

The Celtics over the years (particularly last season) have over performed what their numbers were suggesting which if anything masked some of the deeper problems that exist within this team.

Rivers continues to talk about maybe making some big changes but the reality is Rondo’s the solitary player the Celtics have who could possible solicit any genuine booty. Instead Rivers has played around in free agency which has yielded fading stars such as Jason Terry or Leandro Barbosa.

I’m not sure what the solution for Boston is other than the suggestion that they do make changes and of the ilk which will inject both youth and a little something different into the line-up. Unfortunately for Boston fans such changes aren’t going to happen overnight or before the trade deadline expires.

The complexion of the East is changing rapidly and for the first time in quite a while the Celtics bare little relevance to its make-up.