- May 23, 2012
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Head to head - series tied 2-2
9/11/16: Celtics 93 @ Wizards 118
11/1/17: Wizards 108 @ Celtics 117
24/1/17: Celtics 108 @ Wizards 123
20/3/17: Wizards 102 @ Celtics 110
What you need to know
These two teams do not like each other. At all.
Last year Brad Beal suffered a concussion at Marcus Smart's hands. It's fair to say the pair still don't like each other:
In the off-season the two teams chased marquee free agent Al Horford pretty hard. Here was Jae Crowder's personal pitch to Horford:
"He's a perfect fit," Crowder said. "That's what we were telling him. He had Washington and some other teams looking at him, but we beat them four times this year. You don't want to go there."
If you cast your minds back to early January, some stuff went down in the waning minutes in Boston:
The Wizards chose a unique way to express their disdain for the men in green in their next encounter:
Isaiah Thomas for his part had his own thoughts on that fashion statement:
OK that's great, but give me basketball stuff
The good news is that this promises to be about as evenly matched a playoff series as you're going to find.
The two teams rank 8th and 9th respectively by SRS, so it would be misleading to think of it as a typical 1st vs 4th seed matchup. And yes, they split the season series in a very entertaining manner.
Key areas:
Rebounding - Washington is not the greatest rebounding team in the world and don't possess any players as physically imposing as Robin Lopez, however Marcin Gortat and Otto Porter are pretty proficient on the offensive boards - you can bet your bottom dollar that this is an area that they will look to exploit
Perimeter defence - the Celtics are the second stingiest in the league when it comes to guarding the three point shot, while Washington rank 8th in three point accuracy.
Washington's chances in this series will hinge on whether they're able to knock down those outside shots - doing so opens up lanes for John Wall to exploit, particularly if he's guarded by Isaiah Thomas.
Bench bunch - Atlanta doesn't have the scariest bench in the world, yet they consistently outpointed Washington's ragtag bunch. On the other side of the coin it took the Celtics a surprisingly long time to come to grips with the likes of Bobby Portis and Paul Zipser.
The Wizards can't win the series here, but they will be hoping they don't lose it here though.
The big question:
Who does Brad Stevens allocate Isaiah Thomas to defensively?
It'll be interesting to see what the Celtics do with Thomas, because they can't hide him on Beal - that leaves Otto Porter, but as previously noted Porter loves to crash the offensive glass.
It's worth noting that the Wizards broke 100 points in all four encounters against the Celts this season.
Prediction:
This could well go 7 games, which we'd all enjoy after a decidedly vanilla first round.
I also predict a refereeing conspiracy at some point ft. Tommy Heinsohn, Jason Smith to flatten Kelly Olynyk on multiple occasions and a return of the ever popular "Harden vs Westbrook" debate.
I'm excited about this one. I only hope they play this before Game 3 in Washington;
