Posted By Lynn Worthy, Sun Staff
The Boston Celtics are as deep as your average tablespoon, depending on who you ask. However, New York Knicks president of basketball operations and head coach Isiah Thomas claims he doesn‘t think depth will be an issue.
Prior to Thursday’s game at the TD Banknorth Garden the member of the Basketball Hall of Fame made a comparison between the current Celtics and the teams he played against in the 1980s.
“It’s funny, when I was playing we used to always say if we could ever get to the Celtics bench if we could ever get to Greg Kite you know and get (Robert) Parish, (Kevin) McHale, or (Larry) Bird out of the game we’d be alright,” Thomas said. “But we never got to Greg Kite, and I don’t see these three guys going away. I think it will be the same thing.”
Thomas and the Detroit Pistons were knocked out of the playoffs by the Celtics twice during his career. In 1984-85 the Pistons were defeated in the Eastern Conference semifinals (four games to two), and 1986-87 Boston won the Eastern finals in seven games.
The Pistons did win back-to-back championships in the 1988-89 and 1989-90 seasons with Thomas as the point guard.
Thomas’ remarks are a contrast to those printed in Thursday’s New York Post in which Quentin Richardson of the New York Knicks questioned the Celtics depth beyond Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett.
“They're not that deep of a team," Richardson told The Post. “After those three, there's a significant dropoff."
While he didn’t directly comment on the bench players, Thomas said the dynamic of putting the three All-Stars together makes the other players on the team much more dangerous. Great players have a knack for infusing teammates with confidence, according to Thomas.
“I think when you have three players such as those they give everyone else confidence so everyone plays a step above where they normally would play,” he said. “If you isolate those guys and put them on different teams, they probably don’t have they type of confidence that they would have playing with those three guys. Playing with those three guys, they’ll make shots and do things they probably haven’t traditionally done in this league.”