Boston 92, Minnesota 90

Doc Rivers won't like it. Most fans won't like it. But that's how I like my Celtics-Wolves games to be.

[recap] [box score]

I always want Minnesota to do well because they have Al Jefferson, one of the truly likable former Celtics, as well as Ryan Gomes, another Boston guy who was part of the Garnett trade and who I've loved since his freshman year at Providence. And, of course, they have Jonny Flynn, whose performance I'll get to in a little bit.

So, coming into the game, given that Boston was 5-0 and Minnesota hadn't tasted victory since a wild comeback in their season-opener, I was worried that this one would be a laugher. I even told a friend of mine who's a Wolves fan that I wouldn't really care if we lost this one, and I meant it. At least I think I did. Ultimately, I was pleased with the game: A night when the Celtics finally had to face a little adversity; a confidence-builder for the Wolves; and an eventual win for the green-and-white.

If I were a rabid Wolves fan (see what I did there?), I'd be awfully upset with coach Kurt Rambis. Either Minnesota doesn't have a single player who can play help defense worth a damn, or Rambis decided to introduce a defensive scheme on the fly without installing it in practice first. Either way, it likely cost his team the game.

Minnesota defended Rajon Rondo the way the Lakers did in the 2008 Finals, when Rambis was an assistant coach in LA: They sagged way off of him (never covering him above the free throw line), using his defender to double the ball or clog driving lanes. Eventually, the Celtics realized that leaving Rondo at the top of the key wasn't the best counter to this strategy, and started moving him around the basket.

My favorite action they ran to counter Minny's defense was to iso Paul Pierce on the wing, with Garnett on the opposite block and Rondo floating on the baseline. The other two men on the floor were up high, opposite the ball. Flynn, the designated free safety, was stationed just outside the lane on the strong side, keeping an eye on Pierce. Garnett came across the lane to set a screen on Flynn; Garnett's defender, Ryan Hollins, followed him (he had to, to keep KG from posting up Flynn); no one rotated down or over; and Pierce hit Rondo with a pass for an easy two. Rondo had 14 points in the third quarter, and a good portion of it came on plays like that.

The reason I think there's a chance that 'sota never practiced this before is because after every Rondo layup, Flynn's head snapped over to the Wolves' bench, as if he were asking Rambis, "Am I really supposed to just leave him back there?" I've never seen a player act this way, and while it may have just been some rookie frustration boiling over, it really looked like the team wasn't on the same page at all.

Bullets:

• I haven't written much yet this season about Marquis Daniels, but he's just a perfect player for us. He does a little bit of everything, which you can see from the box scores, and he takes the pressure off of whichever starter (usually Pierce or Ray Allen) plays with the second unit to be the primary ballhandler and initiator of the offense, which you can't see from the box scores. Brian Scalabrine's recent return allowed Doc to trot out a five-man bench unit (Daniels, Scal, Rasheed Wallace, Eddie House, and Shelden Williams) in the second quarter, and that group cut a 31-23 lead to 33-31 in about three-and-a-half minutes together.
• Perkins then replaced Williams and became the only starter on the floor, somethin I've fairly certain we haven't seen in the past two-plus seasons, at least outside of crunch time. Perk promptly dropped in a half hook over Jefferson off the glass, and Allen came in for Scal at the next stoppage. That's about all the "Perkins as Option A on offense" I'm comfortable with, but I'm encouraged that this experiment didn't have me staring in horror at my television, which it would have as recently as last year, before the playoffs.
• The bench gets the credit for this win: No Boston starter had a positive +/-.
• Boston had been shooting the leather off the ball to start the year, but they cooled off considerably on Wednesday, shooting just 44.6 percent from the floor and making only five of 19 threes. I had wondered how the team would react when the shots stopped falling -- in particular, whether Rondo would step up his aggressiveness. We didn't really find out, as Rambis' peculiar defensive scheme sort of ran our offense for us.
• As good as Boston had been offensively, they had been better defensively, and that also wasn't the case for most of this game. Minnesota shot 52 percent for the game, and everyone -- especially Oleksiy Pecherov, but also Gomes and Jefferson -- seemed to be making whatever the put up. (The exception was Corey Brewer, a unique but maddening player who cannot be portrayed any more favorably than he is here.) The D stepped up big-time when we needed it, however, allowing just one bucket in Minnesota's final eight possessions.
• Celtics play-by-play guy Mike Gorman kept pronouncing Minnesota journeyman forward Brian Cardinal's last name "Car-di-NAL," like he was from Ibiza and not Illinois. For God's sake, look at the guy. How do you think he pronounces his name?

TMJF: Stat Line: 33 minutes, 4-6 FG, 1-1 3FG, 1-1 FT, 10 pts, 5 rebs, 5 assts, 2 TOs.

Wednesday was probably Flynn's best game as a pro, though most of his stat line came in the first half, and those who didn't watch the game will blame him for Rondo's big offensive night. He stayed within himself most of the evening, his only real mis-step coming on a couple of drives to the bucket that resulted in a missed layup and a blocked layup. But he left Rondo in the dust on a number of occasions, a testament to his quickness. And he played more than twice as much as Sessions, a sign that Rambis was pleased with his play, as well.