Boston 89, New Orleans 77

Nice to rebound from a couple of home losses to Western teams with a win on the road. We'll try to do the same thing tonight in Dallas at 9:30 pm Eastern (VIEWING ALERT) on TNT.

[recap] [box score] [highlights]

This game was really ugly through three quarters, and it didn't get much prettier in the fourth, except on the scoreboard. And it was the bench that did it for the Celtics. Tied at 64 heading into the fourth, it was seven and a half minutes before any of the Big Three (reduced to the Big Two due to a thumb injury to Ray Allen; more on that later) made a bucket in the fourth. By that time, Boston had a ten point lead. Glen Davis had a couple of buckets, but give most of the credit here to Eddie House and Leon Powe. House had eight of his 12 points in the fourth; Leon had seven of his 11 in the period. Good stuff from both of those guys. It's been a while since Leon's had this kind of game. Here's hoping he keeps it up, and Doc lets him.

So, yeah, Ray hyperextended his thumb somehow in the first quarter, and didn't play in the second half. He says he's going to try to play tonight, but he also said that he couldn't grip a ball last night, and I don't see how that's going to change in less than 24 hours. This will leave us awfully thin in the backcourt, as Tony Allen didn't even make the Texas trip with his own thumb injury. In Ray's stead last night, Gabe Pruitt started the second half, though House was clearly the more effective player. Still, it's hard to see a Rondo-House backcourt being able to effectively defend the much taller Dallas guards (Jason Kidd is 6'4", Antoine Wright is 6'7"). I imagine that if Ray can't go, Pruitt will start, and Rondo will probably go close to the full 48.

This injury also might affect Ray's ability to play in the All-Star game, his nomination to which I keep meaning to write about, but also keep running out of time. I am out of time now, as well. Maybe over the weekend.

Finally, having had League Pass for a year-plus now, I've heard most NBA teams' announcing crews, and none is more annoying than New Orleans'. I don't know how Bees fans listen to these guys every night. It's not just that they're biased, though they are. Most announcers for halfway decent teams are; I think the only team this year I've heard whose announcers aren't biased are the Sacramento Kings. Besides, it would be a bit hypocritical for a Boston fan to hate on biased announcing, as Tommy and Mike are the worst (best?) when it comes to that.

No, these guys were just flat-out annoying, the kind of people you roll your eyes at when you spot them from afar at a party. The color analyst is always making terrible jokes; I like a good (or bad) pun more than most, but there are only so many times that you can talk about Leon's "Powe-tential." The play-by-play guy is always encouraging these jokes, and I also thought he went a little overboard on a couple of crossovers by Chris Paul. They were nice moves, but not the anklebreakers this guy said they were, and besides, the guys whose ankles were allegedly broken - Gabe Pruitt and Eddie House -- aren't exactly institutions of the NBA All-Defensive Team. (For his part, the color analyst told Gabe Pruitt to "Dust your keister off, because he just dusted you!" after Paul took him to the cup. Ugh.) And the sideline reporter takes his job waaaaaaaaay too seriously. They do a promotion where the fans get to ask the broadcasters questions, and last night's question was "Which team besides New Orleans has the best chance to win the championship?" and while I actually can't remember what the sideline guy's answer was, he put way too much explanation in it for being a sideline guy.

Also, last night's trivia question for the NO fans was "Which Hornet won a championship with Boston last year?" and it was multiple choice -- and somehow 12 percent of the people texting in the answer got it wrong.

I'm convinced that those 12 percent were taking advantage of an ingenious plan a few of my friends and I dreamed up at a Clippers game this season. They have a promotion where you text the answer to a question they post on the JumboTron and you have a chance to win prizes, and we figured that we would just text a random letter (A, B, C, D) every night there was a Clippers game around the time they usually put the question up. Alas, you have to be present at the game to win - I think you have to go to some booth or something.