On Wednesday night, the Celtics played a typical mid-season game against the Denver Nuggets, a middling Western Conference team. They won, no problem, no big deal really. No big deal that they managed to score at a rate equivalent to the 4th best team in the league, and defended like the 2nd best. Just another ho-hum January game in the Garden.
Folks who still think the Celtics aren't "true" contenders aren't looking at the right numbers. This ho-hum game that was no big deal actually stands as a pretty good example of what the Boston squad's been doing night in, night out for a while now — to good teams and bad.