Quickness, quickness, and more quickness at the point guard position tonight.

Just a brief preview today, guys. Sorry there won’t be an extensive column.

The Celtics and Bucks meet tonight, in what will likely be a preview of a first-round playoff matchup. With three games to play, the Celtics are in the Eastern Conference’s fourth seed, one game back of Atlanta for third place (the Celtics hold the tie-breaker). The Bucks are in fifth, one game ahead of Miami (the Bucks hold the tie-breaker). If things stay the same, Boston will play Milwaukee in the first round.

Here are a few bullet points about tonight’s game and the potential playoff matchup:

1. When Andrew Bogut went down with a freak injury, it was assumed his loss would end Milwaukee’s run as a “team nobody wants to play in the playoffs.”  Instead, the Bucks have rattled off four straight wins, including the game in which Bogut got injured. 
2. On his reaction to Bogut’s injury, Tony Allen said, “I said, ‘God bless him. Please Lord, bless him.’ I wouldn’t want that for nobody. Me being a person that’s torn my ACL, I just wouldn’t wish that upon nobody.”
3. Kurt Thomas has started in Bogut’s absence.  In Milwaukee’s last game, he played 37 minutes but registered only 2 points and 8 rebounds.  Not exactly the 25 and 15.5 Bogut averaged against Boston this season, but Thomas is a solid pro who plays good defense.
4. For all those Celtic fans upset at Kevin Garnett for his comments about the boos (“The don’t come to the f**king games” being one of them), know he did it in part because he was upset about another heart-wrenching loss and his own worst performance in weeks.  Flip Saunders tried to explain some of Garnett’s competitiveness: “It’s like pulling teeth trying to get him off the floor,” Saunders said. It’s like pulling teeth trying to pull him off the practice court. Everyone talks about the amount of minutes that you play on the court but as hard as he played in games, he played that hard in practice. He probably wish he would have given up when I told him to sit down and he wouldn’t sit, he probably wishes he would have sat now in the latter part of his career. But that’s just kind of who he is. He loves to play the game, he loves to compete. Sometimes he’s right on that border as far as how much he talks to opponents and everything else, but he’s an unbelievable competitor.”