Boston 96, New York 86

For the second straight game, the Celtics came back from a double-digit second half deficit to win a game on the road and keep pace with the Chicago Bulls atop the East.

[recap] [box score]

I wasn't able to watch Saturday's game, but Monday's game -- the fourth quarter, at least -- was all about "want to." Word is that Doc Rivers called the team's first half play "soft" in the locker room at halftime, and that inspired them, but this game didn't turn around until 7:26 remained in the fourth quarter. The Knicks' Chauncey Billups had just hit a three-pointer and Rajon Rondo, stumbling over a Ronny Turiaf screen, had crashed into him. Billups' four-point play gave the Knicks a nine-point lead. Boston, which had been struggling to keep pace with New York all game, could have given up at that moment.

Instead -- with all the momentum heading the other way, with a blood-soaked bandage struggling to contain a cut over Ray Allen's right eye, with the Madison Square Garden crowd periodically into chants of "Paul Pierce sucks!" -- the Celtics scored the game's next 13 points. New York came back briefly to tie it, but Boston got the last ten points of the game for the final margin of victory.

I wish I had been writing down the sequence of plays, because it was full of defensive deflections, diving for loose balls, and stalwart defense. Two hustle plays come to mind, though: Rajon Rondo covering more than half the court, width-wise, to chase down a Ray Allen miss and throw it out of bounds off of Amare' Stoudemire; and Kevin Garnett diving for a loose ball near midcourt, his long arm tying up Stoudemire even as the ball rested squarely in Stoudemire's lap. The former play led to a Pierce bucket that brought Boston within two; the latter led to a KG jumper after he won the tip that completed the 13-0 run and put the Celtics up four.

This game was a battle. Troy Murphy was the first of three players to shed blood on the night, suffering a superficial cut in the first half that resulted in a trickle of red down the bridge of his nose. Allen was the second, falling victim to a stray Jared Jeffries elbow while contesting a rebound -- an inadvertent elbow, it appeared, but a reckless one. New York's Carmelo Anthony was the third, colliding with Rondo's elbow while going for a steal and opening a small cut over his eye. And the most blatant hit didn't even draw blood -- after grabbing a first half rebound, Anthony barely missed Glen Davis with one elbow before connecting with the side of Baby's head with the second.

Not one of these plays, by the way, drew a foul call from the officials.

In the end, Boston snatched this victory from the jaws of defeat. But the Knicks were complicit. Quite frankly, they panicked. They're 7-9 since trading for Anthony, and the frustration of unmet expectations on the league's biggest stage are starting to boil over. A win over the Celtics could have done a lot to buoy their sinking ship, and as that win slipped away, they sped up the process with bad shots and tentative offense, looking to the officials for help that wouldn't come.

To their credit, though, the Knicks are certainly relevant, especially if relevance is measured by how much I dislike them. In past years, I've gotten fired up in games against New York due to some lingering chippiness between Pierce and Quentin Richardson, and the presence of Turiaf, whose reckless disregard for his fellow players' welfare has led me to believe for some years now that he's one of the dirtiest players in the game. But this season it's different, the vitriol the Knicks have for the Celtics encouraged by the team's first meeting in New York this season, which Pierce punctuated by bowing to the crowd after his game-winner. There's a chance we see these guys in the playoffs -- the Knicks are currently the seven seed -- and while they don't seem like a threat to win a seven-game series against us, it'd certainly be a hell of a fight.

Houston 93, Boston 77

[recap] [box score]

I was watching the tournament, so I don't know what the hell is going on, either. From following the score, though, I can tell you that it was never really a game. For the first time all year, really, the Celtics got blown out.

Framed that way -- "for the first time all year, the Celtics got blown out" -- it doesn't seem that bad. But consider: We're 7-5 since we traded Kendrick Perkins; we've scored more than 87 points once in the last six games; we're on the verge of losing home-court advantage in the East; and we have to play in New Orleans Saturday night. We haven't been healthy, so I know it's not time to panic, but it's a little weird that we're playing worse as we're getting guys back. And I know that Shaq's still out, but Nenad Krstic hasn't been the problem -- or he hasn't been the problem that Shaq is capable of fixing.

On the bright side, the Bulls lost in overtime to Indiana Friday night, so we're technically still atop the East. Even that silver lining comes with a gray cloud, though; Derrick Rose nearly willed the Bulls to victory after coming back from a big deficit. That guy is terrifying right now.

Boston 92, Indiana 80

Boston's season is (hopefully) back on track, but not without a few "here we go again" moments early against the Pacers.

[recap] [box score]

Thanks to Monday's loss to the Nets, the Celtics found themselves in need of a win over the Pacers just to keep pace with the Bulls atop the Eastern Conference. And despite a fierce Paul Pierce dunk for the game's first bucket that I hoped would set the tone, Boston reverted back to the uninspired offensive ball it had played in the last several games, trailing by as many as seven points.

Enter Jeff Green and Glen Davis, who injected energy and, more importantly, offense into Boston. In his finest game in his short Celtics career, Green had 17 first-half points, keeping the home team a few points ahead of the visitors throughout much of the second quarter.

And then, the key sequence, the one that gave the Cs a comfortable lead: two Ray Allen threes sandwiched around a Paul Pierce triple, extending the Boston advantage from four points to eleven in less than a minute. The Garden crowd went crazy; timeout, Indy; but the Pacers wouldn't get closer than five the rest of the way.

Granted, the offense didn't keep rolling that way all night -- in fact, it was a fairly middling offensive performance, aside from that one minute. But that one minute is the kind of minute we'd gotten used to this season, a stretch where Boston's starters played with energy and purpose and rhythm and knocked down some shots as a result. Those are things that have been missing from Boston's offense lately, and hopefully it's back to stay.

Notable

• The Celtics organization honored Mike Gorman and Tommy Heinsohn before the game. They've been talking about "30 years of Mike & Tommy" on all the broadcasts this season, but this was the big evening, so to speak, as far as I could tell. A nice simple ceremony for a couple of guys who I think would rather not have had one at all.
• Perhaps as part of the festivities, Celtics "celebrity" fan Donnie Wahlberg joined them at the broadcast table for most of the second quarter. I was actually pretty impressed with his basketball knowledge; he seemed to understand the game, rather than just know it as a fan. One exception: He kept mentioning that he liked the Perkins trade because Andrew Bynum was the difference-maker in last year's Finals. Ignoring the fact, first of all, that Boston was ahead three games to two before Perk got hurt, it makes no sense at all to say that replacing Perkins with Shaquille O'Neal or Nenad Krstic is going to help Boston handle Bynum.
• Delonte West returned after missing eight games or so with a sprained ankle. Forced to sit the majority of the season due to a couple of injuries, West hopefully can find his rhythm before the postseason. It occurs to me, however, that his role maybe has changed somewhat. In training camp, which is really when he was able to get the majority of his work in, he was handling second-team point guard duties alongside Nate Robinson. Now, Robinson is gone, and West's likely backcourt partner is Carlos Arroyo, a true point guard who isn't suited to play the two. That means that West will probably slide over to shooting guard. On the one hand, it's his more natural position. On the other, it's another adjustment to be made in a season in which he probably hasn't yet felt comfortable.
• Troy Murphy had a two-handed reverse dunk in this basketball game. I can't find video of it, but I promise you that it happened.

I'll probably be tweeting a lot over the next few days, about the NCAA Tournament. My handle there is, of course, @HSSlamPhD.

Week in Review

First order of business is to explain the radio silence over the past week. Mostly, it's due to the fact that Championship Week is my favorite time of year, and I've been obsessed with college ball for the last six days or so. It'll continue through the NCAA Tournament -- and I'll probably post some tourney thoughts throughout on my basically-idle college hoops blog -- but I do pledge to pay the Celtics a little bit more attention here.

Since the last time I posted, after the Golden State win, Boston has gone 1-2, with losses to the Clippers on Wednesday and the Sixers on Friday, and a win over the Bucks on Sunday afternoon.

I never enjoy watching a Celtics loss, but dropping the game in Philly wasn't too upsetting -- nor surprising. Doug Collins has those guys playing really well after a tough start to his first season on the sidelines. Philly had played us very tough twice in December, the first matchup coming down to a Paul Pierce buzzer-beater. Collins also seems to have a particular reverence for the Boston organization and Doc Rivers, and I figured he'd get his team to play hard for him, which they did. (That they came out flat the next night against Milwaukee in a 102-74 loss to the same Bucks team that Boston held to 56 points on Sunday is perhaps the best evidence of that.) Boston hung tough, but couldn't break through and Andre Iguodala put the game away with a very difficult drive that was reminiscent of the shot that appeared to have won the game for Philly back in December (which Pierce ended up winning for the Celtics).

The Philly loss was only annoying because it came on the heels of an awful performance against the Clips at home, a game in which Boston dug itself an early hole that it couldn't quite climb out of. DeAndre Jordan had an unusually good game inside for LA, and they hit like half their three-point attempts, many by Mo Williams.

Those losses really only matter because the top seed in the East is still very much an open question. We're just one game ahead of surprising Chicago, with Miami lingering very much in striking distance. Moreover, Boston's in the midst of a stretch of winnable games, before finishing with some tougher teams and quite a few games on the road. Therefore, any loss, but particularly one at home to a sub-.500 club, matters. Boston showed last year that you don't necessarily need home court advantage to be successful, but from where I'm sitting, a path to the Finals that goes through Orlando and either Chicago or Miami looks a lot better than one that has both the Bulls and Heat as opponents.

Sunday's game against Milwaukee was something of a joke, with the tired Bucks managing just nine first-quarter points before getting only marginally better after that. Keyon Dooling's two missed free throws in the final seconds ensured that this would be a historic evening for the Celtics: a franchise low for points allowed in the shot clock era. The total would have been even lower if not for Earl Barron, a journeyman center who is on his second ten-day contract with the Bucks. Barron, playing hard in the fourth quarter to try and earn a spot on Milwaukee's roster for the rest of the season (believe it or not, despite a 26-39 record, the Bucks are only a couple of games out of the East's final playoff spot), scored ten points, the only Buck to score in double figures.

It was far from a cohesive performance offensively, however, and with three consecutive such performances under the team's belt, fans can only hope that the switch turns back on quickly. Boston is back in action Monday against New Jersey.

Quick bullets about some personnel:

• If you don't follow the team too closely, but peruse the box scores, you may have noticed a new name: Carlos Arroyo. Arroyo started the season as Miami's starting point guard, but subsequently lost that job to Mario Chalmers and was released by the Heat when they signed Mike Bibby. For the first time in this era, Boston has a true, somewhat reliable point guard behind Rajon Rondo. Arroyo's nothing special, but he's not erratic (like Sam Cassell, Stephon Marbury, and Nate Robinson) nor inexperienced (like Gabe Pruitt, Lester Hudson, and Avery Bradley). He's solid with the ball and can make the occasional jumpshot. He's good insurance if the oft-injured Delonte West can't stay healthy, and could see the court alongside West depending on Von Wafer's play and recovery from injury.
• Nenad Krstic has continued to surprise. He posted two double-doubles this week, averaging nearly 16 points and 13 rebounds in the three games. When he traded Kendrick Perkins, Danny Ainge made the point that Boston had gotten off to its fast start and beaten good teams with Shaquille O'Neal starting in the middle while Perk was out. Presumably, this meant that when Shaq came back, he'd take his starting job back. It will be interesting to see which way Doc decides to go when the Big Shamrock does get healthy.
• Glen Davis returned after ten or so days off while he rehabbed a sprained tendon in his knee. He looked good. When he went down with the injury, I remember reading something that indicated he'd been hurting all season. On Sunday, he moved around the court better than he had all year. Perhaps the time off did him some good.

Boston 107, Golden State 103

For the second straight game, Boston let most of a big lead slip away before hanging on for a win.

[recap] [box score]

The situation on Friday night was actually more dire than the one against Phoenix on Wednesday, when the Celtics gave up 18 straight points but still had a 10-point cushion. This time, Boston held an 84-67 lead, but Golden State scored 32 of the next 48 points -- 22 of those by Monta Ellis -- to pull within 100-99 with 3:30 to go. Paul Pierce then went to work, scoring a three-point play by hitting a jumper while being fouled by Reggie Williams. The defense also dug in, with Jeff Green and Rajon Rondo securing steals. The game wasn't won, however, until Boston, leading by two, got a crucial offensive rebound from Ray Allen off a Kevin Garnett miss with 12 seconds left. Allen hit two free throws to provide the final margin.

Lost in all the talk of the trade and the new guys is how well the old guys are playing. Garnett didn't have a great game Friday night, but he's had an excellent season and is close to being at 2007-08 form. Paul Pierce has been taking over games less than he has in the past, which is terrific; he's having the most effiicient season of his career from the field and is still there, as he was on Friday, for a key bucket when you absolutely need it. Rondo's assist numbers aren't quite as gaudy as they were to start the season (he did, however, have 16 against the Warriors), but he still has the ability to control the game on each end of the court like few, if any, of his peers.

Then there's Allen. He's been in the headlines relatively recently due to becoming the all-time three-point king, but such milestones overshadow his general excellence. At 35, he's shooting significantly better than he ever has from the field (50.5 percent) and the three-point line (46.5 percent). He's having the best season of his Celtic tenure, and the best season ever by a shooting guard at his age. He's just a marvel. On Friday, he hit his first seven shots, and his first five triples, on his way to 27 points. Ray has faded a bit in the playoffs since his arrival in Boston, not playing poorly so much as shooting inconsistently. He's shown no signs of slowing down this season, however.

As for the new guys, Jeff Green broke through with 21 point, getting extra minutes in the absence of Glen Davis, who will miss a week or so. Nine of those points came when he was playing with Boston's starters in place of Nenad Krstic, and while he did hit a couple of long twos, it's clear that he's most effective well inside the three-point arc. Reactions to his offensive performance should be tempered somewhat simply because it came against defense-allergic Golden State, but it was still an encouraging step forward. He did have just one rebound, however.

Krstic may be reviving his career in Boston. He had 11 points and six rebounds, with most of his damage coming in a very active first quarter. He's going to move to the bench eventually, when Shaq comes back (which could be Wednesday), but I hope he won't be forgotten once he does. The ball doesn't stop in his hands the way it does with O'Neal, and while defense is not his strong suit, he doesn't indiscriminately foul penetrators the way Shaq does.

Troy Murphy went 0-4 from the field, missing both of his shots from deep, and has yet to make a field goal as a Boston Celtic. Here's hoping it's due to his being rusty, and not that he did really lose his shooting touch overnight in the offseason.

Sasha Pavlovic, signed Thursday off the waiver wire, didn't play. He's a good three-point shooter who was almost certainly signed just in case disaster hits the backcourt in terms of injuries. It's hard to see him having much of an impact.

And, catching up with a few old friends: Kendrick Perkins is slated to miss another week or two with his knee injury; Nate Robinson will miss four to six weeks with a knee injury of his own, and Semih Erden continues to sit for the Cavs with injuries that were bugging him as a Celtic. Seems like the injury bug stays with the Celtics this season, no matter where they go.

On the bright side, Luke Harangody had a career-high 18 points Friday night in Cleveland's shocking win at Madison Square Garden, and Leon Powe signed with Memphis for its playoff run. That last one isn't exactly the "bright side," as I had hoped Powe would re-sign with Boston, but I'm definitely happy that Leon caught on with a playoff contender.

Boston 115, Phoenix 103

Strange, strange night at the Garden.

[recap] [box score]

The Celtics were killing the visiting Suns, up 28 in the third quarter, looking ready to run the visitors out of the gym and threatening to turn the fourth period into a formality. But a funny thing happened on the way to the locker room...

To its credit, Phoenix's bench was excellent, going on an improbable 18-0 run that made the final few minutes interesting. I thought Jared Dudley was the catalyst, making a couple steals and hitting a couple of threes, never giving up despite the fact that his team seemed hopeless out of it. Newly-acquired point guard Aaron Brooks took it from there, putting on a dazzling scoring display that reminded viewers -- particularly those that picked him in the third round of their fantasy league -- of the offensive force he seemed poised to become in Houston, before an ankle injury early in the season set him back.

To their discredit, the Celtics -- mostly the bench, but also the starters for a stretch when they came back in -- really let the Suns back into it. I thought the second unit really suffered from the absence of Delonte West, who missed his second straight game with an ankle injury. Rookie Avery Bradley is running the point in his stead, and he lacks the experience to organize the offense. He's also recently developed a habit of having a little bit of a quick trigger, which is problematic for a guy whose jumper is, by all accounts, a major question mark.

Standard NBA comeback, you say? Everybody makes a run, right? Perhaps. But things started to get a little strange around the 2:16 mark, with Boston by nine and the ball. Phoenix chose to lengthen the game by intentionally fouling. They put Paul Pierce on the line, who made the first and missed the second; Glen Davis got the rebound. They quickly then put Rajon Rondo on the line, who made the first and missed the second; Kevin Garnett got the rebound. Davis went to the line after that, missing the first and making the second, breaking the pattern of offensive rebounds but also sealing the game for all intents and purposes.

But Phoenix kept fouling, which is fine, I guess, even though they weren't scoring enough to make any real progress. A minute later, with Boston up 11, Pierce broke a double team near midcourt, found Rondo on the wing, and Rondo slipped his 15th assist to Davis cutting baseline for a dunk. Davis, however, either went up wrong or came down wrong, and hobbled off with what the team called a strained patella tendon; he'll have an MRI on Thurday.

After a Suns timeout, Mickael Pietrus missed a three, Boston got the rebound and dribbled out the next shot clock. Garnett then picked up a technical, apparently for verbally jousting with Phoenix coach Alvin Gentry, whose role in the incident didn't seem to sit well with Doc Rivers. Phoenix made the ensuing free throw and another bucket, and that should have been that.

But Rondo, for whatever reason Rondo has for doing these sorts of things, decided that playfully dribbling out the clock a foot in front of the Phoenix bench wasn't enough. He launched a three-pointer as the clock expired, and Dudley, challenging the shot, put him on his ass for this breach of etiquette. The play triggered an official review to determine that there were four-tenths of a second left. Rondo hit two of the three free throws an the game was finally over.

Boston-Phoenix is one of the more unlikely chippy rivalries, taken up a notch by the incident between Garnett and Channing Frye earlier in the season. After the game, Doc made a comment about a lot of talk coming from the Phoenix bench, which may have led to the Garnett tech (and, for all I know, could be what baited Rondo into shooting that three at the end of the game). Doc had less-than-positive words to say about Gentry after the first matchup. I can't help but wonder if it goes deeper, because my impression is that Doc isn't that kind of guy an Gentry seems so mild-mannered.

Speaking of Garnett-Frye, KG destroyed him tonight, getting off to a hot start on his way to 28 points on 12-for-14 shooting. He didn't score in the fourth quarter, and when he got to 28 in the third, I started to wonder what his high as a Celtic was. The answer is 33 in Game 5 of the Eastern finals against the Pistons, one of four 30-point games he had in his first season in green. He hasn't had any since. I'm not sure why I find this interesting, but I do.

It was the home debut for the new guys, by the way. Brief evaluations:

• Nenad Krstic again looked great; active on offense with good range and a nice scoring touch inside. He's really going to benefit playing with Rondo, too; it appeared to me on a couple of occasions tonight that Krstic was slow going up for a shot because he was so surprised at how the ball had arrived at the perfect time in the perfect spot.
• Jeff Green had some nice moments in the first half, draining a couple of mid-range jumpers an gliding end-to-end for a layup after a steal. Still, he uncorked a horrific looking three-pointer from the left corner and missed at least one other jumper pretty badly. His shooting in his first three games has been very erratic, which suggests to me that he really doesn't have a consistent shooting stroke. It's hard to tell from watching on TV, but his release looks a little funky to me, like he's got a little bit too much of his left hand on the ball.
• Based on the amount of playing time he got in New Jersey this season, I wouldn't have been too surprise if Troy Murphy showed up in Boston with only one leg. He didn't have any obvious physical problems, but he wasn't much better than he would be if he were missing a limb. He barely got off the ground on a couple of second-half layups that were blocked by Marcin Gortat. His one three-point attempt -- his first shot of the game -- did rattle in and out, so he was just an inch or so away from bringing the house down. The good news is that he didn't appear to be grossly out of shape the way Rasheed Wallace was last year, so hopefully he'll get his legs back under him soon enough. After all, he hadn't played in a game since November 9th.

Celtics to Add Troy Murphy

Buyout season is upon us, which means high-priced vets on bad teams agree to take less money than they'd earn over the course of their contracts in order to sign for the minimum with a contender for a shot at a ring. Tuesday was a big deadline; if a player hadn't hit waivers by then, he's ineligible to play for a team other than his current one in the playoffs.

Everyone knew that the Golden State Warriors were going to buy out Murphy, but whether he was going to sign with Boston or Miami was an open question Monday night. But I woke up Tuesday to the news that Murphy had chosen the Cs, filling one of three roster spots opened up by the trades that sent Marquis Daniels to the Kings and Semih Erden and Luke Harangody to the Cavs.

It's hard to know what to expect out of Murphy. It wasn't always that way; in each of the last two seasons, with the Pacers, he was good for a double-double every time out. But he's been a non-factor in 2010-2011, moving from the Pacers to the Nets in an four-team trade this offseason in which Jersey gave up Courtney Lee to Houston and Indy got Darren Collison and James Posey from the Hornets. He was injured in the preseason, came back to play very limited minutes in 18 games, then got a string of DNP-CDs; I think eventually the organization just told him to stay home. The Nets dealt him to the Warriors at the deadline.

If Murphy can get back to last season's form -- if his lack of PT in NJ is unrelated to injury or significant decline in skills -- than Boston will have a pretty good player on its hands. Murphy is a terrific three-point shooter and excellent rebounder and, at 6'11", can play up front alongside Kevin Garnett if Boston's centers are unavailable due to foul trouble or injury, or Doc wants to keep them on the bench for some reason. Murphy not agile enough defensively to play the James Posey role in the small lineup that Doc's been pining for, but if he's not too rusty, it's easy to see Murphy on the floor more often and in more crucial situations than Jeff Green.

Whether expecting the Murphy of seasons past is reasonable is up in the air, though. The Nets hardly paid a king's ransom for him, but they did give up a solid young player in Lee for him. And while it's understandable that Murphy's not in the Nets' long-term plans, it seems to me that sitting him as they did only hurts his trade value -- unless, of course, he's so bad that being on the court would make him completely untradeable. There's enough weird stuff going on in New Jersey -- Russian billionaire owner, new head coach, mortgaging the future for Deron Williams -- that the possibility of this simply being bad business on the part of the Nets is strong, strong enough that I'm only slightly concerned that Murphy has morphed, Sam Cassell-like, from a very good player to a useless one in one offseason.

Any positive contributions Murphy does make to the Celtics will be compounded by the fact that he's not making them to the Heat, who trail Boston by just two games in the loss column for first place in the East. Miami is expected to fill one of the holes in its starting lineup once Mike Bibby clears waivers; Bibby gave up his entire salary next year in order to get the Washington Wizards to agree to a buyout. Murphy's long-distance shooting, both spotting up and in the pick-and-pop, could have been a pretty formidable weapon on Miami.

As mentioned above, Boston still has a couple of roster spots left to add bought out players. Among the possibilities are Leon Powe, who of course was a great role player on the championship team, and Corey Brewer, a strong defensive wing whose decision-making on offense makes Tony Allen look under control. As more of these guys sign, with Boston and other teams, the playoff picture will start to get a bit clearer.