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.