For starters, some hits and misses

With a number of the Red Sox players strolling through the FleetCenter last night wearing Celtic warmups and the grins of champions, Celtics captain Paul Pierce, caught up in the moment, exclaimed, "Let's make it three in a row, y'all."

A touch of hyperbole, to be sure, but hey, let's not ruin the moment. The Celtics opened their 2004-05 season with a new coach, new players, a new attitude, and, with any luck, a new resolve. They do not need to win 21 in a row, as the Patriots did, to regain their standing. Nor do they need to win a championship, as their baseball counterparts have done.

They simply need to play hard, play together, and win some games.

To accomplish all three last night against division rival Philadelphia, and old friend and former Celtics coach Jim O'Brien, would have merely been an added bonus.

It sounded good, anyway. The Celtics led by 18 points in the third quarter, clung tight to a 6-point lead with five minutes remaining, then watched it get wrenched from their grasp by Philadelphia's irrepressible Allen Iverson.

Thus, a new coach, new players, and a new attitude merely yielded new problems last night.

Like how to close out a win. "This one's our fault, man," conceded Ricky Davis. "We lost our focus. We've got to be mentally tougher than that."

You can be sure first-year coach Doc Rivers will be tossing and turning over this one. Until the final 10 minutes of the game, his players did everything he could have hoped for: They ran the ball, they shot the ball, they defended the ball. Understand that the Celtics scored 83 points through three quarters, and shot 57.7 percent in that stretch. It should not shock you to learn the high score and the high shooting percentage were the result of transition baskets, exactly the style of basketball Danny Ainge has been pining for since he took over this operation.

Will the Celtics be able to continue their uptempo style throughout the grind of an 82-game schedule? That's a question for another night.