No Celtic played over 30 minutes in Boston's balanced opening night win

The Celtics came out victorious in their first game of the fresh 2018-19 season. While watching, it felt like there wasn't one player who was constantly running the show for Boston. While Jayson Tatum, who was just as amazing as we all remember him, was surely the player of the game for the C's, the team had an extremely well-balanced night.

One reason for the even scoring was the monitored playing time. We knew Gordon Hayward would be on a minute restriction in his return from injury, but I don't think anyone expected the team's other stars to have limited playing time.

Yet, not a single Celtics player logged over 30 minutes in Tuesday night's opener. To put that into perspective, there were 88 players in the league who averaged over 30 minutes throughout last season.

A few thoughts come to mind when thinking about why this is. First of all, it was opening night, y'all. Brad was likely looking to ease his guys back into full-time action, while also getting a feel for his rotations.

More importantly, Hayward's return made it easy to forget that Kyrie Irving has been out for six months himself. This was likely the reason for his rusty shooting and mere 29 minutes of action on the court.

Look, there are going to be a lot closer games in which the main unit will register loads of minutes. Guys like Irving and Hayward will naturally work towards ramping up their playing time as well. What I think this really shows, though, is just how deep of a basketball team the Celtics are.

With Irving and Hayward back, the Celts bench is one of the strongest and most proven in the NBA. Of the nine players who got into the true rotation, every one of them posted seven points or more. That's incredibly distributed scoring and truly displays the depth of Brad Steven's unit. Moving forward, this will give the head coach a lot of lineup possibilities and, if minute distribution stays anything close to Tuesday night, could preserve Boston's talent for later in the season when it matters most.



Follow Erik J on Twitter: @erikjohnson32

Photo via @NBA