"Annoying" is the word I will use to describe this loss. It was annoying for several reasons. First, it came the day after another annoying loss to a bad team, the Clippers. Second, we've now lost six in a row at Oracle Arena. Third, the officials in this one matched Delta Airlines employees in terms of incompetence. Fourth, we turned the ball over 25 times. And fifth, we blew an 18-point lead.
I'll try to tackle these one by one in reverse order. I'm not going to do bullets, because I have too much to say. Then again, I have to be up early to go to the dentist, so maybe I should do bullets. Nah, I'm too fired up to sleep at the moments. Narrative it is.
Blowing an 18-point lead. So, yeah, we had a big lead in the first quarter, gave up a few buckets to end the period, and then the second team came in and by halftime the lead was gone. The second team does this a lot; comes in with a big lead, decides to take the quarter off, and pisses the whole thing away. (You'll recall that this is what had Kevin Garnett yelling at Glen Davis in the famous crying incident last season). Oddly, the bench often brings us back in games after a sluggish first quarter. It's like they are paid by the NBA to keep games close, no matter what. Hmmmm. I probably shouldn't joke about that, or David Stern will revoke my League Pass and have my family killed.
Also, we shouldn't just blame the bench for blowing the lead. We should additionally blame the starters for not taking the lead back. Ray Allen hit something like six of his first eight shots and ended up finishing 10-for-21; Kevin Garnett never really established himself in the post against Vlad Radmanovic, of all people; and except for a flurry of threes in the fourth quarter from Eddie House and Rasheed Wallace (among a much larger hailstorm of misses), we didn't get much of anything out of the bench. House and 'sheed are bench guys, but hey, I was rollin'.
According to the Golden State broadcast, we had gone something like 88 straight games in which we had a 16-point lead at some point. I guess we were due.
25 turnovers. That's a season-high, thank God. The Warriors lead the league in steals, but some of that is due to the pace of their games and the relatively high number of possessions that result. They aren't a good defensive team, and yet at one point, it was as if C.J. Watson was wearing a green jersey, we were throwing him the ball that often. He had something like six steals in his first ten minutes of action and finished with seven. Also, when Tony Allen moves into your starting lineup, you are just going to turn the ball over more. That's a given. Five turns for Tony in 28 minutes, one fewer cough-up than team leader Rajon Rondo, but Rondo was so bloody masterful offensively (more later) that we are giving him a pass.
The officials. Just comically bad-slant-weird stuff from the crew tonight. Hard to say which team, if any, was favored. I'm obviously biased, but I had the Golden State broadcast on League Pass Broadband and the Warriors announcers spent as much time being mystified by calls against Boston as they did griping about calls against Golden State. I recognize that not everyone is Tommy Heinsohn, but when the your opponent's announcers ackowledge questionable officiating in their favor, that's generally a sign you're getting screwed.
A few things stood out. We got called for at least two and I think three offensive foul calls for pushing off with the off-arm while shooting a layup, a fairly high number considering this call didn't really exist five years ago. Monta Ellis actually got called for what my father has always referred to as "up-and-down," which was technically the correct call on the play, but I literally cannot remember ever seen it called in an NBA game. Davis left the game with a knee injury in the fourth quarter on a play where he was both dragged to the ground by his arms and body blocked by another player below the waist; no call. And Kendrick Perkins got called for the most ridiculous technical foul I have ever seen: Perk caught the ball in the post, went up for the shot, and made it despite being fouled (no call). While this was happening, Rony Turiaf came over to block Perk's shot from behind, only he was too late, and he ended up off balance, hanging on Perk's back, elbowing Perk in the head in the process (no call). Perk then shrugged his shoulders ever so slightly, a fairly natural reaction for someone who suddenly finds himself with a 260-pound Martinican hanging on his back (you're damn right I Googled "What are people from Martinique called?"). Turiaf went crashing to the floor, which was his own fault, and Perk gets rung up for ... what? Who knows? The point that Golden State got on the ensuing free throw might have come in handy.
(Also, I know Ronny is listed at 247, but this was the first game he's played all month, and this is the holidays. Plus, he's added at least three or four pounds to his beard since the preseason. I'm sticking by 260.)
Losing to bad teams. I spent a lot of time talking about this last year, too much time probably, but in the big picture, losses to non-contenders like the Clips and the Woyas don't really matter. They happen every season, and they frankly just aren't a big deal. We don't need to send a message to these teams, we don't have to worry about them gaining confidence against us. They are horseflies to be swatted away by our thoroughbred tail.
With that being said, home court advantage could be really important this year, and the freaking Kings just lost consecutive home games in which they first failed to score a single point in overtime against Cleveland and then blew a seven-point overtime lead to the Lakers before falling in double OT. With other teams giving away games to our chief competition, it'd be nice if we won most of the games we should win and all of the ones in which we have an 18-point first-quarter lead. And while I'm not panicking at all about this, you'd like to see us play with the same crunch-time killer instinct that guys like Lebron James and Kobe Bryant always have. I'm not saying we don't have it, just that I'd like to see it a little more often.
Now we're ready for some bullets, for the denouement. This post is a masterpiece.
- 30 points and 15 assists for Rajon Rondo one night after missing two potential game-winning free throws against the Clippers. A friend and I had a brief conversation before the game, as we wondered how Rondo would respond to the situation. With 12 points and seven assists in the first quarter, apparently. The old Rondo sulks, maybe refuses to shoot, and certainly avoids drives to the basket so he doesn't have to step to the stripe. The new Rondo goes for 30 and 15 and knocks down seven of nine free throws. I actually thought there were two occasions where Rondo sought out contact in numbers-up situations where he normally would have (correctly) given up the pill. It was as though he wanted to shake those free throw demons right away. Man, I love this kid.
- Wallace has stopped going inside. 'sheed started the season only shooting from the outside, and shooting well; he quickly moved to only shooting from the outside, but shooting poorly; then, after Doc Rivers apparently begged him to do so, he went inside for several games and was going great. He's now back to shooting almost exclusively from the outside, but he skipped the stage where he makes them. He hit a couple wide-open ones tonight, but he missed three that he shouldn't have taken. All five of his shots came from beyond the arc.
- On a related note, I hate that we took 19 threes against a team like Golden State, which has so little in the post. Turiaf was in just his second game back after a month-long hiatus, and Andris Biedrins played just 14 minutes in his first action since November 8. No one else on their team is a legitimate player in the post (and Turiaf is barely that). And yet we didn't pound it into the paint, even without Paul Pierce.
- Down 101-98 with 44 seconds left, Doc called a timeout and drew up a play for a Ray Allen three-pointer, which he always does in those situations. I generally hate that call, especially since Ray hadn't hit anything in a while. Forty-four seconds is too much time to force a three. Two points aren't exactly guaranteed, but defenses are generally so concerned about not giving up the three (especially with Ray and Eddie House on the court) that it's pretty easy to get to the bucket. A Rondo penetrate-and-kick probably results in a cleaner look anyway.
- Ray missed that three, but we got a stop on the other end and Golden State ended up fouling intentionally. Ray went to the line down three with under five ticks left. He made the first and then missed the second on purpose. What's noteworthy about this, for me anyway, is that Ray did what I've been saying for years that people should do in this situation: Throw a line drive at the front rim without going through your usual pre-shot routine or shot motion. The other team isn't expecting you to shoot out of rhythm; the element of surprise will be enough to get the rebound, if not often, then at least more often than taking a conventional shot with the intent to miss. Ray's execution was lacking -- his fastball was a little high and rocketed off the backboard without scraping the rim, resulting in a dead ball and Golden State possession -- but the idea was right.
Next game is Wednesday at Phoenix, where the Lakers just got their faces melted by the Suns tonight. A win in the desert would avenge an early-season home loss, but without Pierce, Boston's going to have to play awfully well to avoid a third straight defeat.
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