The Celtics have been thrilling their fans with up-tempo exciting basketball which has not been seen in Boston in a long time, and this 11-1 start is more than any Celtics fan could ask for at the beginning of the season.  Having said that, they have recently shown some flaws which may cost them down the road, if they do not get fixed.

The team is 4-1 over its last five games, but they could easily be 2-3, since two of their victories came on last second shots.  The counter argument that they could also be 5-0, if Pierce's desperation shot at the end of the Orlando game had gone in, is also true, but relying on last second shots is not a good long-term plan for winning a championship.

Against the Miami Heat, the Celtics built a 15 point lead in the middle of the fourth quarter, only to see it all get erased, necessitating a great drive by Pierce to win it.  The Orlando Magic game was ugly from start to finish, and though the Celtics' comeback attempt was nearly successful  - in spite of the way they were playing - it showed that the team still has a lot of things to work on.  Saturday's game in Charlotte was also no work of art, but they managed to pull it out anyway, on a great buzzer beater by Ray Allen.  I'm going to include one that does not seem like it should be in my list of examples, but it qualifies, given the way the Celtics played in the fourth quarter, and that is the game against the Lakers.  The Celtics built a large, comfortable lead, but in the fourth quarter the Lakers started making inroads against the Celtics, gradually whittling the lead down.  It never got close enough for the Celtics to have to worry about, but a couple more unanswered baskets by the Lakers would have put them within range of one of those insane Kobe Bryant scoring outbursts.

All these games showed the same weakness in the Celtics' execution and, no, it's not on the defensive end.  At times the Celtics have stopped moving the ball on offense the way they have been doing when playing at their best.

The end of the Miami game saw them walking the ball up the court and looking to head coach Doc Rivers to call set plays, with the result that the defense had plenty of time to set up and the Celtics could not get the ball moving to get open shots.  

The ball movement was weak for the entirety of the Orlando game, and only a lot of hustle and great individual talent got them close at the end.  The best opportunity they had to take the game came on one of the night's rare examples of good ball movement in the fourth quarter, when Pierce penetrated into the lane, drew the defense and hit Tony Allen coming in from the side along the baseline.  Allen, looking like he was still thinking about his rehabbing knee, came up short on the layup attempt, but it was the right thing to try, and if they had been doing it the whole game, the Celtics would have had a much better chance to win.  It should be noted that in the games since that one, Tony Allen has finished strong every time he has gotten the chance, so that problem seems to have been corrected already.

For most of the game against the Lakers, the Celtics were again moving the ball well, getting good shots and scoring quickly and often.  But in the fourth quarter, they started to slow down and play conservatively, with too many players making individual moves, resulting in a slowdown in the Celtics' scoring, and giving the Lakers the chance to score unanswered points to cut into the lead.

The Charlotte game had decent ball movement, but still not to the level they have shown when everything is going well.  That was just one of those games they had to grind out, as Rivers said in his post-game press conference.  Note, however, that the Celtics got a one point lead with 4:01 remaining in the game, and did not score again until Ray Allen's buzzer beater; a few more passes on the offensive end and players moving without the ball would surely have produced a good scoring opportunity or two in those four minutes of game time.

Of particular concern should be the ends of the Heat, Lakers and Bobcats games, when the Celtics slowed down and started plodding methodically.  If this was caused by fatigue on the part of the big three (R. Allen, Garnett and Pierce), Rivers is going to have to find a way to get them more rest.  If, however, it was not caused by fatigue, they will have to figure out what is causing it and, well, stop that.  If it's just a loss of focus, that can be easily fixed.  Celtics fans should just hope that this was not a strategy on the part of the coaching staff to take care of the ball and be careful in pressure situations, and if it was, that they will notice that it is not such a good plan for the way this team is built.

When the Celtics run and move the ball like they are capable of doing, they create high percentage open shots, and usually shoot around 50%, but when they allow themselves to get bogged down into a half-court game, using set plays and individual offensive moves, the shots they do get are more often contested jumpers, rather than the layups and wide-open shots they have been beating teams with in the 20 point drubbings they have been handing out.  The question going forward is whether they can maintain the free-flowing style that gives them the best chance to score every time they have the ball, and therefore their best chance to win the game no matter what the situation.

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