Celts keep winning, but top spot in East still up for grabs

BOSTON -- The Boston Celtics are the defending Eastern Conference champions and, despite dealing with as many injuries as any team in the league, they still sit atop the conference with a three-game lead in the loss column over the Miami Heat. They've already beaten the Heat twice, too.

All that seems like a formula for the Celtics to make it to The Finals for the third time in four years. But it's too early to give the Celtics that. The situation at the top of the East is just getting interesting.

Since their two early games against the Celtics, the Heat have found their rhythm. Thanks to the No. 1 defense in the league, the Chicago Bulls are one loss behind Miami, even though they've had their starting frontline together for just nine games. After restructuring their roster with two trades in mid-December, the Orlando Magic are a better team, too. Beyond that, the Atlanta Hawks and New York Knicks are each one smart roster move from becoming serious threats to the top four.

Monday's Celtics-Magic game was one of those special regular season games that makes you yearn for playoff basketball. It wasn't quite the game we expected -- an offensive affair with the teams combining to score 126 points per 100 possessions -- but it was well-played and went down to the wire, with the Celtics pulling out a three-point win thanks to some timely stops down the stretch.

The win evens the season series at 1-1 and certainly helps the Celtics, now 31-9, with their goal to earn home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. But should these two teams meet in the postseason, they probably won't take much out of this game.

"It is only one of 82," Celtics coach Doc Rivers said afterward. "The playoffs are a different breed. Guys have more time. They're more rested. It's just different.

"If they had won, I don't think it would have shaken our confidence one bit."

Rivers plans on having a deeper team by April and May, when Kendrick Perkins is back in the starting lineup and Delonte West is running the second unit. The Celtics' free-agent additions (West, Shaquille O'Neal and others) were supposed to help them rest their stars in the regular season. But just as much, they make them a scary team in the playoffs.

"In the back of our minds, we wonder what we're going to look like when we're full strength," Paul Pierce said. "Because we haven't been able to see that yet, and we're still able to pull out a lot of games."

Magic coach Stan Van Gundy plans on having a better defensive team by the time the postseason rolls around. The Magic had the top defense in the league two seasons ago and ranked second behind Charlotte last season. But this season, they've struggled to get consistent stops against the league's better teams.

Still, Orlando has proven to be more potent offensively since adding Gilbert Arenas, Jason Richardson and Hedo Turkoglu. The Magic have scored 109.1 points per 100 possessions since the trades, an improvement on the 104.8 before the deals.

"They're just better now," Rivers said. "I thought it was a good trade, because it gave them more talent, in my opinion. I thought it gave them more talent and more playmakers."

With four talented teams atop the East, the playoffs could come down to matchups. That's why Turkoglu may be the most important player on Orlando's roster. Though he struggled in Toronto and Phoenix, he's a great fit for Orlando's system. And as a 6-foot-10 playmaker, he's tough for any team to defend.

"I've always said he's one of the more difficult matchups for me, personally, at that position because of the way he shoots the ball, the way he handles and play-makes," Paul Pierce told the Orlando Sentinel before the two teams met in December. "And it doesn't hurt for him to be 6-10, so it's hard for me to get to his shot."

There's a common thought that the Celtics match up well with Orlando, because they don't have to double-team Dwight Howard. That allows them to stay at home on the perimeter and not get beat by the Magic's 3-point shooting. But even after Monday's loss, Orlando is the only team in the league with a winning record -- now 14-12 including the postseason -- against the Celtics since they acquired Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett.

With the Magic still adjusting to their new roster, we might not know just how good they are until the end of the season. Earlier on Monday, Van Gundy was asked about being lumped in with the top teams in the East, and he wasn't ready to say his team deserves that distinction.

"Boston's got nine losses," he said. "We've got [15 after Monday]. That's not lumped together at all. Boston has sort of separated themselves. And the Heat had separated themselves until [LeBron] James got hurt. And then there's the other four of us lumped together. To be honest, there's two lumps."

There's still plenty of time for those two lumps to become one. Despite Boston's dominance, the Eastern Conference playoffs promise to be as fascinating as ever.

John Schuhmann is a staff writer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here and follow him on twitter.

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