Boston 102, Milwaukee 97 (OT)

Hey, a win's a win. So what if we blew a 12-point fourth-quarter lead? So what if the Bucks didn't have Michael Redd and Charlie Villanueva?

[recap] [box score]

I'm a couple days late with this post, mainly because this wasn't a very important game. As I've said before, the success of our season will not be measured by how well we do against Milwaukee. We'll be measured by how well we do against the Clevelands and Torontos and Detroits, and so far, we've passed all those tests.

In fact, the big story from Saturday is that a late skirmish that saw Bucks center Andrew Bogut head to the showers with his second technical has also gotten Kevin Garnett suspended for Tuesday night's game vs. the Knicks (7:30 pm Eastern).

This is a good time to point out that this sort of situation is precisely why I am always critical of Doc when he leaves KG in too long at the end of games that are well in hand. Because of his competitiveness and intensity, Garnett is susceptible to incidents like this one. That's not to say Garnett should not have been on the floor Saturday night against Milwaukee when this happened; he should have been, as the game was close. But one day, he's going to do this at the end of a game that is effectively over, and he's going to be hit with a suspension that could be easily avoided.

Now, our next opponent, New York.

The Knicks have been one of the surprise teams of the young season, as new head coach Mike D'Antoni has led them to a 6-4 record. Like all D'Antoni teams, they like to go up and down, and so it's a tough game in which to be shorthanded. Leon Powe and Glen Davis are going to need to come up big, particularly defensively and on the boards. We're also going to need to find a third scorer somewhere.

We played the Knicks six times last year; twice in the preseason, which I mention only because after we blew them out in the first one, the second one got exceedingly chippy after a very hard foul by Jamal Crawford on Ray Allen.

We got our revenge in the first meeting of the regular season, a 104-59 -- yes, you read that right -- win which provided one of my favorite moments of the season: a fan taking off his Knicks jersey and casting it away during a timeout while the Boston crowd went wild.

The next matchup came on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a game I distinctly remember watching in the middle of the day because I was home from work for the holiday. We won 109-93, and the game was memorable for two reasons: Crawford and Paul Pierce got ejected in the third quarter for yapping at each other, and Kendrick Perkins played completely out of his mind.

Perk had 15 of our first 17 (he also assisted on the other bucket), on an array of jumpers and layups and even free throws. He finished with 24 points. We could use that sort of scoring Tuesday night.