By: Dan Massar, YawkeyTalkies Staff Writer

The Celtics may wear green but they aren’t green.

They have a few players that make a lot of green but they aren’t green.

Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca may be running for Senator and trying to bring green jobs to Massachusetts but the Celts aren’t green.

In other words, the Celtics are OLD!

The big three and Rasheed Wallace are all in their 30’s.  Paul Pierce is the youngest at 32.

This was exposed over the weekend.  First the Celts took on the Atlanta Hawks on Friday night at the TD Garden.  The Hawks are young and athletic.  They have a number of weapons in Joe Johnson, Josh Smith, Al Horford, and Jamal Crawford.  Throw in a terrific veteran point guard in Mike Bibby and it’s a very solid team.

Celtics fans will remember how tough the Hawks played Boston two years ago in the first round.  Now the Hawks are even better and are still young while the Celtics are even older.

The Hawks were fresher on Friday night.  They dominated the boards and the game.  The Celtics weren’t cohesive on offense and lacked their usual intensity.

Things got worse Saturday night in Indiana.  The Pacers are an even younger team then the Hawks.  The Celtics had a 9-point lead at halftime and it was looking like they were handling back-to-back games well.  Wrong.  The Pacers played a great second half.  In the 4^th quarter they looked like the veteran team as Danny Granger and Dahntay Jones carried Indiana to the win.  Boston gave up a season high 113 points.  Not a good defensive effort for a team that had been shutting teams down defensively.  It turned out to be a foreshadowing of what another team from the Hoosier state was going to do on Sunday night.

The Celtics looked like an aging team over the weekend.  It’s one thing to be an old veteran team that uses their experience to outwit and outlast their opponents like Rudy from season 1 of Survivor (Yes, Richard won, but we can all agree Rudy was the man).  But the Celtics showed their age in a bad way against two up and coming teams.

The good news is there are no back-to-back games in the playoffs.  But there are plenty in the regular season and in order to secure a top seed they are going to have to do a better job with them.  The other good news is they don’t have another back to back until the first week in December.

You know what they say, age is just a number. The Celtics need to keep it that way.

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