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T

he San Antonio Spurs came into our house on Wednesday night and did what they expected to do – get a win to kick of a grueling, six-game road trip during the Thanksgiving Holiday season.  As for our Boston Celtics, well, these are troubling times indeed for a team that started the season with high expectations.  The C’s are now 6-6, and they don’t appear any closer to solving their problems than they were after Game 1 in Miami.

Where to start?  The troubles continue for Jeff Green, who finished 2-7 from the floor and scored only 5 points.  Green has been nothing short of a major disappointment for the Celtics, who paid handsomely to keep Green in the fold this off-season.

If it only ended there.  Boston, who finished last season as the worst rebounding team in the history of the NBA, is on a pace to eclipse that mark this season.  Tonight was no different – when a team out-rebounds you 41-25, you can pretty much count on a loss.

Such was the case tonight.

The loss of Darko Milicic only makes the Celtics smaller than they were before, and while Darko barely played, it was nice to have the additional size on the bench.

For me, it all comes back to Danny Ainge’s decision to trade away Kendrick Perkins.  Losing Perk created a huge void in the post, one that Ainge tried to Band-Aid with old players two seasons ago (e.g., The Big Diesel), but the team simply hasn’t been the same since.

This loss only ratchets up the pressure on everyone within the Celtics organization – Ainge in particular.  Ask him and he’ll shrug off the Celtics’ slow start, and he’ll stick to the party line.  He’ll reiterate that this team needs to play well in the spring, and that’s all that really matters.

I beg to disagree.

Boston needs to fix a host of problems and do so quickly, or this season is going to get away from them in a hurry.

We’ll see what happens.  For now, our C’s will continue to be anemic on the glass.  Too bad our old friend Perk will be in the house soon, dressed in a Thunder uniform, cruelly reminding us of what might have been.