It wasn't pretty, but the Celtics started the 2008-2009 season with a 90-85 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers. 

The night began with the raising of the Celtics' 17th Championship Banner and a teary-eyed Paul Pierce proudly hoisting his ring to the crowd, and ended with the Celtics firmly entrenched as the team to beat in the East.  LeBron and his Cavs came out firing, looked good for most of the game, but just couldn't hold off the C's for the full 48 minutes.

Pierce was the catalyst for Boston, leading all scorers with 27 points while dishing out 4 assists, however it was a couple of role players who we can thank for tonight's victory.  The Leon Powe Train has not stopped rolling since the playoffs.  13 points off the bench in 23 minutes with a couple of hightlight reel plays [one a thunderous dunk over the now red afro and goatee'd Delonte West; the other the game winning dunk with seconds on the clock as Varajeo hacked at his arms].  Powe lead all Celtics with a +12 +/- rating and punished the Cavs for attempting to cover him with Wally Szczerbiak.

The other Celtic I'd like to commend is Mr. Tony Allen.  For one night he made Celtic Nation forget about the dearly departed James Posey.  No, he'll never fill Posey's shoes, but he doesn't have to.  T. Allen brings a completely different set of skills to the court, and tonight he put them all to use.  He was aggressive with the ball [yes, sometimes still a little too aggressive, but much more controlled than in the past], and he was stellar on D, covering LeBron for brief stretches.  He finished with 11 points on 4-9 shooting, and I will mention that he finished with a -2 +/-, but I don't think that's a trend we'll see continue this season.  He seemed confident with his knee, at one point attempting one of his old "zoom down the lane and jump as high as he can attempting to put back a badly missed brick" plays that he used to pull off before his surgeries.  He wasn't perfect tonight, and a couple of his shots probably shouldn't have gone in, including a baseball heave as he was drawing contact, but it's clear that he's going to bring an entirely new dimension from the bench that we didn't see much of last year: penetrating and attacking offense.

KG and Ray Allen were cold, cold, cold.  Garnett finished with 11 points on 5-15 shooting with only 6 boards and no blocked shots.  Ray was 2-9 with 8 points and 4 turnovers.  Didn't matter, though, as Rondo chipped in with 14 points, 3 steals, 5 boards and 6 assists with an effecient 4-5 from the field, and with Pierce, Allen and Powe providing the rest of the scoring, the defense did the rest.  The Cavs were held to under 43% from the field, committed 21 turnovers and King James was held to a paltry 22 points on 9-21 shooting, including a horrendous 4-8 from the free throw line (and a couple of key charity stripe misses in the waning seconds). 

BOXSCORE

MVC: Doc Rivers... weird, I know.  I'm still not used to it.  But I wanted to commend him on sticking to a solid 9 man rotation, with House, Powe, Allen and Davis getting all the minutes off the bench.  When the others riding the pine are Scalabrine, O'Bryant and a rookie, it's not that hard of a decision to make, but I was curious as to how Doc would handle his bench and I didn't disagree with a single move. 

Lastly, I can't describe how thrilled I am to begin this season.  Boston didn't look great tonight -- we were bad from the line (21-34), couldn't knock down much from behind the arc (3-14), and got close to nothing from two-thirds of our Big 3, but we took down one of the biggest threats to our next banner with the same style of basketball that got us our last:  defense, role players stepping up and a hefty dose of Paul Pierce.

Next Game: Friday, Halloween night vs Chicago