NBA legend Charles Barkley said on TNT’s “Inside The NBA” that it “would be a total gag job” if the Boston Celtics don’t win the championship this year.
The Celtics have the best record in the NBA, but they are 0-2 versus the defending champion Denver Nuggets.
“If they don’t win a championship this year, it would be a total gag job because they have everything,” Barkley said, via MassLive.com. “You only play five players. They got Tatum, Brown, Jrue Holiday. Your rotation is going to shrink during the playoffs, so the bench isn’t as important as you think it is. You got Brown and Tatum, two of the best ten players in the league probably. You got a great leader in Jrue Holiday. You have the best 6th man.”
The Celtics are 48-14. They are fourth in the NBA in points per game and fifth in points per game allowed.
After the Celtics lost to the Nuggets, Jaylen Brown spoke about the tough loss.
“I feel like we made a lot of mistakes,” Brown said. “Obviously they’re a really good team and they capitalized off of that, but I think we kind of beat ourselves a little bit tonight. Free throws, turnovers, giving them layups. And with that being said, how many points did they have? 115? And offensively, we could’ve been better. We turned the ball over. There’s a lot of stuff you could look at and the environment, intensity was great. So I think it’ll be a learning moment for our team.
“That’s what basketball is about. That’s what the journey is about. It’s about growth, it’s about improvement, it’s about team. And we gotta embrace the journey. You know, we’re not perfect. We expect that. So this is an opportunity for us to learn. Things didn’t go our way, but then the environment was great. The intensity level was great. We played hard and we had opportunities to win. Now we gotta be able to be smart.”
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