Denver 94, Boston 85

All that falling behind and catching up finally caught up with us.

[recap] [box score]

I missed most of the first half -- yay, exam review! -- and so I didn't see Ray Allen's big first quarter or us lose the lead. I did see us dig ourselves into a huge hole and then climb out of it, which has become standard recently.

I'll admit that once we got going in the second half, I thought we had it wrapped up. Eddie was hitting, the crowd was going crazy, and Denver appeared to be coming unglued. But we couldn't score the big bucket that we needed to make it a two-possession lead.

Frankly, I think we just wore out. It's been a long week, starting with the win in Detroit on Sunday., We had to expend tremendous energy to come back from big deficits to beat the Raptors on Monday and the Hawks on Wednesday. Paul Pierce, who played 90 of a possible 96 minutes in those two contests, looked especially beat: Down two with eight minutes to play, Pierce had the ball on the left wing. Denver brought Kenyon Martin over to double, and Pierce just didn't have the energy to protect the ball. Martin swiped it from him, Linas Kleiza converted the three-point play on the other end, and we never got any closer.

Of course, Denver was finishing up a three-games-in-four-days road trip, so all credit to them. They got the job done and we didn't.

I said before the game that I didn't care too much about the outcome of this one, and I still don't. We won the games we needed to this week. Sure, it's discouraging to lose a first-quarter lead and not put the game away when we were in position to do so late. But it's a long NBA season, and nights like this happen.

We're in Milwaukee tonight. The Bucks are terrible, but we've got to be exhausted. This is a game I could easily see us losing if we hadn't lost to Denver Friday night -- a trap or letdown game, if you will. Dropping one to the Nugs may have caught our attention, however, so I expect a stronger effort than one might expect from a team playing it's fifth game in seven days. The bench played very well against Milwaukee in a win earlier this year, but after a strong game in Detroit, has gone pretty much AWOL over the last three (with the exception of House finally finding his stroke last night). House, Leon Powe, Tony Allen, and Glen Davis are going to be important if the Cs are to win tonight.