Boston 90, Cleveland 85

Hot-footed it home after Legal Writing class today to catch the final 39 minutes of the season-opener. (Damn these early starts on the West Coast! I really would have liked to see the ring ceremony. Oh well, I'll be getting my Tivo soon.)

[recap] [box score]

Things I liked:

-Bench play from Tony Allen and Leon Powe. These guys came out and showed they were ready to replace James Posey's scoring on the second team. A buddy of mine who lives in Jersey who had caught preseason games against the Nets and Knicks had said that Powe looked comfortable creating his own shot, and that was apparent when he caught the ball in the post against Cleveland and faced up. I liked Tony's aggressiveness, too, even though he didn't really get going until seven big points in the fourth quarter (including two impressive and-ones over Lorenzen Wright). On a night when Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett were off (their shots will fall soon enough), they rescued us.

-Good defense on LeBron James carrying over from last year's Eastern Conference semifinals. Any time you can hold King James to 22 points on 9-for-21 and only eight free throw attempts, you have a good chance to beat the Cavs.

-Paul Pierce's crossover and pullup jumper on LeBron. Can't find a video of it, but that was sweet.

-Our 24-13 third quarter. We were a third quarter team last year, and we really took it to the Cavs tonight after halftime.

Things I didn't like:

-Our end of quarter execution. This has long been a problem for us under Doc, although less so last year now that we have more playmakers.

At the end of the first half tonight, we ran a 1-4 flex set for Rajon Rondo, who penetrated and then found KG in the corner. Garnett had a good look that didn't go down. I don't mind the set, but what's KG doing 20 feet from the basket? That's a bit out of his range, and he's not going to get any offensive rebounds that far from the hoop.

Then, up three points late with a chance to ice it, we ran the screen and roll with Pierce and KG. Cleveland switched, but Pierce could only get a tough 17-foot fallaway off over Anderson Varejao. Paul needs to do a better job exploiting the mismatch there. Sideshow Anderson is a good defender, but if Pierce can't get the space to squeeze off a better shot, he needs to go to the bucket and try to get a call.

-Kendrick Perkins. Last year, Perk didn't play much late. Without Posey to play our small lineup, we'll likely be counting on fourth quarter minutes from Perk. There's absolutely no reason for Perk to foul out against the Cavs like he did tonight; Zydrunas Ilgauskas is essentially a jumpshooter and the rest of Cleveland's bigs aren't good enough to commit fouls against.

-Rondo's dumb foul on LeBron up four with less than ten seconds to go. We missed a free throw and Rondo tried to steal the rebound from LeBron and got the whistle. I thought Rondo played a very good game overall, but this was just a dumb basketball play. I joked that Rondo was trying to further shatter LeBron's confidence at the line (he had just missed the first of a pair the last time downcourt, and he missed the front end this time, as well), but it was just a bad play.

Can't complain with 1-0, though, particularly when the 1 came against what most consider to be the main competition for the East title.