No. 1 in East knows place
Cavs’ status not top priority
WALTHAM — The Celtics know that regardless of whether they nail down the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed with a win against the Milwaukee Bucks tonight or a Cleveland Cavaliers loss to the Toronto Raptors, few believe they actually deserve the status.
“I mean, we are, so it doesn’t matter what people think,” Avery Bradley said after yesterday’s practice. “We’re the No. 1 seed right now, and it’s our job to take care of business tomorrow.”
The one emotion the C’s don’t express regarding this kind of thinking is surprise. The NBA world naturally is going to keep thinking Cleveland is the team to beat once the playoffs begin this weekend.
“You have to just go out and prove what you’ve done,” Al Horford said. “People are always going to rely on experience. Cleveland’s done it for so many years — I should say LeBron ( James) has done it for so many years — that that’s just the way it is. So why would you bet against that? For us, we’re not going to get caught in that. We’re going to keep working as a group and keep getting better and see what we can do. I feel really good about our team.”
In fact, Horford feels better than good about his new team after making playoff appearances with the Atlanta Hawks.
“These are the playoffs that I’ve looked forward to the most probably since I’ve been in this league,” he said. “I feel very strong about this group. I think we have a special group. I can’t wait for us to get started.”
The words and actions of James have made it clear the defending NBA champions don’t place a great premium on the top seed. The Cavaliers star clearly doesn’t speak for the Celtics.
“That’s how he feels,” Horford said. “The way that I feel about it is, and what I’ve been saying for a while now, I want us to be playing at a high level of basketball at this point of the year, making sure we’re doing the little things on the defensive end. I felt like (Monday night against the Brooklyn Nets) we were really good. There were times we could have been better. We relaxed a little bit in the third, but for the most part, I feel good about where we’re at as a group. And then we just need to keep making adjustments on offense and understand that teams are going to throw different stuff, especially at Isaiah ( Thomas). So, (those are) things that we’ll prepare for, and we’ll be ready to make adjustments.”
IT in trainer’s room
Thomas was not made available to the media after practice so he could attend what was described as a “follow-up” meeting with trainer Ed Lacerte. The subject of their meeting wasn’t serious, according to coach Brad Stevens.
“Everybody’s expected to play,” Stevens said in reference to tonight’s regular-season finale against the Bucks at the Garden. “He’s had all kinds of nagging injuries, right? Just that time of the year.”
Thomas banged his left elbow following a collision with the Nets’ Isaiah Whitehead in Monday night’s win, though it was unclear if this was the reason for his meeting with Lacerte.
No unrest about rest
Stevens didn’t rule out resting players tonight, though the prospect seemed unlikely.
“If they need it,” Stevens said. “But we feel like, from the standpoint of reps and freshness and everything else, we’re in pretty good shape. If you look at it from a total minutes, a minutes-pergame standpoint, total number of games, we’ve tried our best to manage those things appropriately all year. And then we’ve got, obviously, the silver lining of injuries is that people missed a lot of games, so we should be ready to go.”