“It’s all messed up," Garnett said. “It’s all messed up, it is. I want to use another word but I won’t. It’s difficult but we’re going to take it a game at a time. This is the longest I can remember.”
One of the consequences of the compressed schedule that came out of the lockout was some exceptionally grueling road trips for a handful of teams. The Bulls and the Spurs got the worst of it, with nine-game trips they’ve already completed. Now the Celtics, who have the only eight-game trip this year, are up. Four teams have seven-game trips, including Portland, which is on that trip now, and Minnesota, which begins its trip on Monday. Cleveland has done its seven-gamer already and Denver will hit the road for seven starting in late March.
Boston has won six of its last seven games to move to 21-18, and will try to keep that momentum going. They can take heart in the knowledge that the Spurs handled their trip very well, at 8-1, and the Bulls got through theirs at 6-3. Even the Cavs held their own, with a 3-4 record on their trip. After the Lakers, the Celtics play the Clippers, then move to Golden State, Sacramento, Denver, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.
Celtics coach Doc Rivers was asked whether he had ever seen a trip like this one. His answer: Never.
“In my career,” Rivers said. “I’ve been in the league for 26 years. It’s a long road trip but I do think there’s rest in it. The first two games are tough because of the long flight, you play and then you play the next day. But then after that, there’s days off in between. I think the other one is the last, the Denver game before we go back East, that’s a hard game. Whenever you play Denver on a back-to-back, that’s a hard game because there’s no oxygen.”
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