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Gordon Hayward has likely been lost for the season and the Boston Celtics are 0-2.
Other than that, things are great.
After a close defeat in Cleveland for the season-opener, the Celtics opened the season at home with another tough loss. This one came courtesy of the rising Milwaukee Bucks, who scooted to a 108-100 win behind 37 points and 13 rebounds from Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Now, this shouldn’t come as major surprise — as the remade Celtics feature just four returning players from last season. With newcomer Kyrie Irving, rookie Jayson Tatum and second-year man Jaylen Brown, the Celtics are relying a younger cast. Throw in the Hayward injury and, well, the learning curve just became that much more difficult.
On the bright side, coach Brad Stevens has his fairly athletic team playing hard. That’s one thing around here that isn’t new.
“I don’t want to make the excuse that we’re a young team, but we are,” Irving told reporters after a 7-of-25 shooting performance (17 points, three assists). “We definitely have some experience here, and we have to utilize that and continue to exude confidence in the young guys and ourselves, and understand that the game comes in waves.
“There will be ups and downs and we have to withstand other teams’ runs as well as hit back and have that hit-first mentality in the first quarter, second quarter, third quarter and fourth quarter.
“Once we understand we have to put a complete game together, including myself at the head of the ball, and being better with it and putting guys in the right spots, we’ll be fine.”
For now, however, the Celtics will have to make the best of a rough start and realize that this is a marathon. By the end of the year, maybe things really will be great.
It will be interesting following the Celtics. You know teams are going to go after Kyrie and dare other guys to beat them. We’ll see how Kyrie responds to that nignt in and night out. It should be noted that Kyrie still hasn’t won a game without LeBron. We all know the Celtics will start winning games, but he LeBron thing should be noted.