Game 27 Preview: Celtics at Nets

Hopefully, the Celtics and Nets play nice and not naughty when they
square off this afternoon.

Merry Christmas to all!

This time last year, the Celtics opened the NBA season -- to those who forget, last year's season was affected by the work stoppage -- at Madison Square Garden as they took on the New York Knicks. They fell in a heart-breaker, 106-104.The green are hoping for a different result during this Christmas visit in the state of New York.

We all know what happened these two teams played. Rajon Rondo started chaos with Kris Humphries after he fouled Kevin Garnett pretty hard, Rondo's assist streak ended, three players were ejected, and the Nets continued their beat-down en route to a resounding victory.

The Celtics will hope to get some revenge this time around in the Barclays Center for the second and final time this season. The Nets (14-12) are coming off a 95-92 victory on Sunday night over the Philadelphia 76ers.

Leandro Barbosa and Chris Wilcox are not with the Celtics. Avery Bradley, who was planning on joining the team on the trip and possibly even playing today, is also not with the Celtics and will not join them out west this week. However, newly-acquired Jarvis Varnado is with the team and active for today's game.

The Celtics (13-13) are coming off a tough loss at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks last Friday night, 99-94. Boston is 11-17 all-time on Christmas day. Hopefully they'll deliver Celtic fans everywhere the gift of being over .500!

Here's a preview:

Projected lineups:

Celtics:
Rajon Rondo
Jason Terry
Paul Pierce
Kevin Garnett
Jason Collins

Nets:
Deron Williams
Joe Johnson
Gerald Wallace 
Keith Bogans
Brook Lopez

Keys to the game:

1. Countering Blatche and Evans:  Andray Blatche and Reggie Evans made their presence felt last time these two squared off. Andray Blatche had 8 offensive rebounds in 29 minutes. The entire Celtics team had 8 offensive rebounds. Meanwhile, Reggie Evans completely dominated Jared Sullinger. Evans and Blatche combined for 23 rebounds, more than half of what the Celtics did as a team. With the addition of Jarvis Varnado and the insertion of Jason Collins into the starting quintet, the Celtics should be better equipped to stop these two ferocious beasts.

2. Banging with the bigs: The Celtics should have no problem at the start of the game battling with Lopez and Humphries, as 7-footers Garnett and Collins will help clog up the middle. The trouble will come when one or both of those two are on the bench. The last time these two teams played, Jared Sullinger was eaten alive, Wilcox only played 7 minutes, and Collins came off the bench. Now Wilcox is out but in comes Varnado.

3. The bench needs to deliver some Christmas gifts: The Celtics bench has been really inconsistent of late. Their past three games, the bench has scored 15, 16, and 35 points in succession. Hopefully they're turning the corner, but like this team has shown all season, they'll take a few steps forward, then take ten steps back. We don't know what kind of performance to expect, but they need to contribute.

These are the new Christmas jerseys that the Celtics and Nets (along with
all the others playing today) will be sporting