Regular Season Game 43
Wizards (25-17) vs. Celtics (12-30)
TD Banknorth Garden
6 PM
CSN and FOX New England
Previous Results: Wizards 124, Celtics 117, Wizards 115, Celtics 110.
East's best against East's worst tonight. You'd think this would be a blowout, but the Wizards have a wierd way of never being able to blow out the Celtics. All the games last year were close, and the first two this year have been as well. The Celtics have lost 10 in a row, but many of those have been close losses. It may look like a mismatch, but you never know with this Wizards team.
Look for Gilbert to have a big game tonight. In the first matchup, Rajon Rondo shut him down extremely well. Don't expect that to happen again. Arenas has too much pride to let a rookie shut him down twice in a row, and I expect him to teach Rondo a thing or two about messing with the Black President. Otherwise, the Wizards are still going to struggle with Al Jefferson and Ryan Gomes, and will need to force lots of turnovers from the poor Celtic guards.
Wally Sczcerbiak is questionable for today's game, and as we all know, he didn't play in the last game. I kind of want to see Wally play, because he's a horrible defender, and Caron Butler could easily go off on him. He's also a bit of a ball-stopper, which would slow the Celtics down. If he doesn't play, we may see a lot of Allan Ray tonight.
Celtics blogs: We did this already here. I'm not doing it again.
Your lines:
Wizards at Celtics: Wizards by 5.
Over/Under on Big 3: 69.7 points.
I'm not going to be watching, because Sunday is newspaper production day. Still, this is an open game thread, so any thoughts on why the Wizards didn't draft Rondo (who would have been a perfect fit) go here.