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When superstar laden teams are put together, usually cohesiveness is a quality that is quickly forgotten about in favor of high scoring averages and memories of highlight reel plays. This has been the philosophy of the United States National team for quite some time and in the past few years the team focused philosophy of European and South American teams has displayed the error of building teams based on such superficial guidelines. The Boston Celtics are clearly a win now team built around three aging superstars, one of whom will go down as one of the greatest players to ever play the game in a market and on a team that was often an afterthought in the post season. But here's the thing about these three superstars that will make the equation work: these are players that know how to play within a system and that do not need the ball to be great players. This is especially true of Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, two of the best players in the NBA for the past ten years.

Ray Allen is THE consummate shooter in the NBA, an absolute assassin from anywhere he has space to shoot, he instantly gives the perimeter game relevance with his marksmanship. Pair him with Kevin Garnett, a former MVP with the likes of Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell sharing the court, and you have an inside-out combo that will force opposing defenses to pick their poison and usually pay for their decision. Another facet of Garnett's game that Boston fans haven't seen in their post players since the days of Robert Parrish and Kevin McHale is his ability to dominate a game defensively. Garnett routinely faced the best power forwards in the Western Conference on a nightly basis and still made it to the All-Defensive team eight times. Now imagine him facing the lowly post players of the Eastern Conference. Dwight Howard, Jermaine O'Neal, Chris Bosh and Rasheed Wallace are the only four worthy of mention as of right now and none of these players come close to the west's Tim Duncan, Amare Stoudemire or Dirk Nowitzki in terms of match-ups, so it is possible that we could see Garnett's best overall defensive numbers of his career while in Boston.

With all that said, two players cannot win a championship by their selves, unless one of those players is a healthy and mobile Shaq, so lets take a look at the remaining Celtics roster starting with Paul Pierce. A star in his own right, he has never been on a team that has been anywhere close to championship caliber since his days at Kansas.

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