Rhymes with Hondo

Sorry Perk

2012-01-31T01:14:00.000-08:00

Out of respect for the big fella, I'm not going to post the video here, but RwH readers need to know: In last night's Clippers-Thunder game, Kendrick Perkins secured his place on NBA highlight reels until the end of time -- the wrong way. In the third quarter, Perk got absolutely obliterated by Blake Griffin, victim of the the most spectacular ~~dunk~~ dunk-like maneuver I have ever seen on a basketball court.

(Check it out here.)

Cleveland 88, Boston 87

2012-01-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

The Celtics just gave this one away.

After sort of sleepwalking through the first half -- understandable, perhaps, given all the minutes everyone has had to play due to injuries -- the Celtics finally put some space between them and the young Cavs in the third quarter, and led by 11 with 4:24 to play.

From there, the Boston offense went completely stagnant. The closest the Celtics came to scoring was probably when Paul Pierce got a Cleveland defender up in the air, drew contact on a 16-footer -- but didn't get the whistle. The league is trying to clean up that kind of play this year, sick of offensive players getting to the line by leaning into defenders and drawing contact. So they've emphasized that if the defender goes up and the contact comes from the player with the ball leaning in after the defender lands, there should be no call. This, however, was a missed call; the Cavs defender clearly had not landed by the time he hit Pierce.

It's tempting to blame one play in a one-point loss, and there were others, besides that missed call, that probably would have won the game for the Celtics. Up one with less than a minute left, a Ray Allen three-pointer rimmed out, but Kevin Garnett grabbed the rebound. Rather than going back up, he looked to kick it back out to run some more clock -- and traveled when he couldn't find anyone immediately open.

On the ensuing Cleveland possession, Kyrie Irving missed a drive, but Anderson Varejao grabbed the offensive rebound and found Antawn Jamison open at the top of the key. Jamison missed the three-pointer, and Brandon Bass grabbed the rebound. But a Cav -- I think it was Alonzo Gee -- poked it away, and Varejao pounced on the loose ball, calling a timeout with 22 seconds left.

Anyone one of those plays might have secured the game for the Celtics. But instead, Cleveland had one possession to win, and Byron Scott decided to win it or lose it on that final trip down floor, instructing Irving to dribble out most of the clock at half court. Varejao came up and set a high screen, which Boston defended well. Irving drove right, over the screen, and Bass hedged nicely. But Irving, the top pick in last summer's draft, spun back left, ripping the ball through Avery Bradley's steal attempt. Irving continued to the bucket, and lofted a pretty left-handed layup over a recovering Bass that dropped through with 2.5 seconds left.

Boston still had a chance to win, of course. They advanced the ball to half court with a timeout, and inbounded to Pierce, who was immediately fouled by the Cavs, who had one to give. After another timeout, Boston again inbounded to Pierce, who was rushed by most of the Cavs defense. He had to double-clutch, and the ball was still in his hand when the buzzer went off. (The shot missed short, anyway.)

Time to move on. The Celtics have their chance for revenge on Tuesday, in Cleveland.

Boston 94, Indiana 87

2012-01-28T11:40:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

As many of you know, when Paul Pierce is introduced to the home crowd, the announcer refers to him as "The Captain, and the The Truth." The former is, of course, a nod to the fact that he is the long-time captain of the Celtics, and the latter is the nickname bestowed on Pierce early in his career by a very impressed Shaquille O'Neal.

It doesn't get much more Captain-y, or much Truthier, than the way Pierce has played over the last couple of games.

The night after Pierce's 24 points, six rebounds, and ten assists led his team to an improbable comeback victory over the Magic, Pierce's 28/10/8 helped his team avenge avenge two earlier losses to the youthful Pacers. Playing a dual role as main ballhandler and primary scoring option, there's hardly been a Celtics possession lately with #34 on the floor that hasn't gone through him. Pierce is averaging more than eight assists per game in the five that Rajon R-ndo has missed with a wrist injury, all while raising his season scoring average from 14.9 to 17.7. On Friday night, after a relatively quiet first half, he went off for 17 points in the third quarter, picking apart Danny Granger and the Pacers in the second half with a series of crafty left-handed drives and long-range jumpers.

There's no question that Pierce is being asked to do too much. The 34 minutes he was asked to play against the Pacers are one or two too many; the 44 he played on Thursday against Orlando are absolutely horrifying. Doc hasn't had much choice but to play Pierce a ton of minutes, given all the injuries, and in some ways, perhaps it's good -- maybe it has gotten Pierce into shape. But as fun as it's been to watch Pierce put this team -- his team -- on his back, it'll be good to get some of the cavalry back.

Not that Pierce has been alone. Kevin Garnett has really elevated his play in the last two games, especially on the defensive end. With Jermaine O'Neal out with sore knees, Garnett has had to slide over to the starting five spot, and he has kept two of the game's best young centers, Dwight Howard and Roy Hibbert, well under control on consecutive nights.

And in each of the last three wins, Pierce and Garnett have gotten help from an unheralded teammate. In the first Orlando win, the home blowout on Monday, it was Avery Bradley and his fantastic pressure defense; in the Orlando comeback, it was rookie E'Twaun Moore clutch sharpshooting. On Friday, it was backup center Chris Wilcox, who, after scoring 15 points all season, erupted for 14 against the Pacers.

All these guys helped Boston to what was a pretty comfortable win, despite the fact that Indiana shot 31 free throws (making 30) to the Celtics' 14 (we hit 12).

Doc, by the way, is coaching his ass off. He's been working the sideline with more energy than I've seen him before, keeping his team fighting through injuries and an awful start to the season. And on Friday, he used his timeouts brilliantly to stem any momentum shifts in Indiana's favor. Three times during the game he used a timeout after Indiana went on a five- or six-point run; after two of those, Boston scored on the ensuing possession, and in all three situations, the Celtics regained control soon thereafter. He also drew up a great little high pinch post variation coming out of the under 3 timeout that led to a Mickael Pietrus dunk and a 90-80 lead.

The opponents on the schedule get a little easier this week, but Boston has now started a stretch in which they play at least as frequently as every other night for more than two weeks. They've got the Cavs at home on Sunday, the return date in Ohio on Tuesday, and the Raptors at home on Wednesday, three winnable games before the Knicks and Grizzlies visit over the weekend.

Boston 91, Orlando 83

2012-01-27T01:04:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

What's worse? Losing by 31 on the road to a team missing its starting backcourt, or blowing a 27-point at home to that same team missing that same starting backcourt?

I'm guessing it's the latter, but only the Orlando Magic know for sure.

Orlando, which bounced back from that embarrassing loss in Boston on Monday by winning in Indiana on Tuesday, got off to a rough start Thursday as well. Dwight Howard picked up two fouls in the first three minutes, Boston led 8-2 and everyone was wondering if Monday actually was a fluke after all.

But after a Stan Van Gundy timeout, the Magic spent the next 20 minutes of game time threatening to run the Celtics out of the building. The went on a 30-8 run to close the quarter, taking a 32-16 lead behind 12 points from Ryan Anderson. The second quarter brought more of the same, the lead ballooning to 27 before settling in at a still-comfortable 21.

If you turned it off at that point, I don't blame you. The Celtics were listless in the first half. Paul Pierce, the only guy in uniform capable of creating any sort of offense for himself or others, had done almost nothing. Avery Bradley had done less than nothing, suffering through one of his nights where he can't seem to hang onto the ball, a Tony Allen-esque performance. Brandon Bass was hesitating on his jumper, the first time all season I've seen him look reluctant to shoot. Only Mickael Pietrus, who hit a few early jumpers, and Kevin Garnett, who slid over to the five with Jermaine O'Neal sidelined by sore knees and defended Howard very well, played even decently in the first half.

Towards the end of the second quarter, coming back from a timeout, TNT played a clip of one of Doc Rivers' huddles. They were down 25 at the time, and he told his team they were still in it, pleading with the players to cut into the lead, just a little bit. "At least Doc's trying," I said to myself. I remember being impressed at how convincing Doc forced himself to sound.

I did not necessarily expect the players to listen.

Look, I've watched enough of the NBA to know that no halftime lead is safe. And I know the kind of heart that beats deep in the chests of Pierce, Garnett, and Rivers. But the NBA season is a long, exhausting slog -- made even longer and more exhausting this year by the condensed schedule -- and there are nights when you just don't have it. Indeed, there are nights when saving your strength for the next night is probably the smart thing to do.

Thursday night could have been one of those nights. Down three starters and 21 points, in the first of three games in four nights (and 11 in 17 -- the Celtics don't have two consecutive off-days until February 17 and 18), no one would have been been surprised or complained if the Cs folded the tent early.

But they didn't. Even when the comeback seemed to die in its early stages as Boston squandered three possessions in the first half of the third quarter that would have cut the lead to 13 or 12, they persisted. Indeed, Orlando still led by 18 with about two minutes left in the third. But Boston finished the period on a 10-3 run, and Doc all but sprinted off the bench to encourage the guys as they came off the floor.

The fourth was stunning in the swiftness with which Boston took over the game. They ratcheted up the defense and started making shots on offense, and it took them just four-and-a-half minutes to complete a 15-1 run, taking the lead on an E'Twaun Moore three-pointer.

From there, the offense more or less stalled, but the defense never let up. Howard finally made his team's first field goal of the quarter with 5:56 remaining, cutting the lead to one, but the Magic wouldn't make another shot until Hedo Turkoglu buried a three-pointer with 39 seconds left to cut the Boston lead to 87-83. Orlando, which had scored 58 points in the first half -- one more than it got in the entire game on Monday -- managed just 25 in the second, including a mere seven in the final quarter. The Magic players let their frustrations boil over, forcing bad shots and earning two late technical fouls arguing a couple admittedly tough calls that didn't go their way.

As badly as Orlando imploded, however, Boston's defense was absolutely tenacious in the second half. With Bradley having such a nightmare evening offensively (and with Keyon Dooling lasting just a half before getting hurt in his return after seven missed games due to injury), Doc turned to the rookie Moore, who responded in a big way. He harassed Chris Duhon and a hobbled Jameer Nelson all over the court, forcing Orlando to get into its offense late. Garnett played Howard largely without the benefit of a double team and held him to 50 percent shooting and eight trips to the free throw line. Even Bass, who doesn't have much of a defensive reputation, got into the act, making a late steal and staying in front of Turkoglu on the perimeter as Hedo pounded the ball, looking for a driving lane.

Offensively, Pierce was the catalyst, getting hot early in the fourth against long-time antagonist Quentin Richardson before finding Bass for a couple 20-footers on the pick-and-pop when Orlando started running two defenders at him. But the revelation was Moore, without whom we simply would not have won the game. Moore had 16 points, including a perfect four-for-four on three-pointers. Three of his triples came at the end of the third and the first half of the fourth -- he accounted for points 3 through 5, 11 through 13, and 23 through 25 of the 25-4 run that saw Boston go from down 18 points to up three. His lone two-point field goal was just as crucial; Howard cut the Boston lead to one, Moore caught a hit-ahead pass and attacked the rim despite not having numbers. His soft floater over Jason Richardson and Jameer Nelson bounced all over the rim before dropping through, preserving the Celtic lead.

After the game, Boston celebrated about as much as you'll ever see from an NBA team during the regular season, at least in the absence of a buzzer-beating game-winner. Watching Doc and the guys hug and pound each other on the back as though they had just won a playoff series, I couldn't help but get a few goosebumps. For the last four years, we've been chasing championships, and when you have realistic expectations of winning the last game you play in June, nights like this one tend to be forgotten.

The NBA is a business, but at bottom, it's still basketball. And I fell in love with basketball long before I truly understood the NBA. So I don't feel at all bad for enjoying this win without worrying about whether Boston can turn around, or is turning around, its season. Of course I'm going to swell with pride watching a couple of veterans play their asses off to pick up their fallen teammates while their coach exhorts them from the sideline; I wouldn't be a fan if I didn't.

Maybe this season will be worth watching after all.

Viewing Alert

2012-01-26T00:16:00.000-08:00

The rematch with Orlando is Thursday night, 8 p.m. Eastern, on TNT. Orlando bounced back from Monday night's humiliation by beating Indiana on Tuesday. I'm not going to bother speculating about which of the injured Celtics might suit up for this one. Your guess at the starting lineup is as good as mine.

Boston 87, Orlando 56

2012-01-23T23:45:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

Raise your hand if you predicted a 30-point game Monday night.

:Raises hand:

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I predicted an even larger margin of victory.

"Darn," I said to my girlfriend when we I saw all the Celtics who were inactive for the game, using a word that is a bit stronger than "darn."

"We're going to lose by 100."

I was exaggerating, of course, but not by much. A blowout seemed imminent. Rajon R-ndo, Ray Allen, Keyon Dooling, and Mickael Pietrus were all in civilian clothes with various maladies. That's our starting point guard, our starting shooting guard, and the two men who back them up, all out of commission. In addition, Chris Wilcox, one of just three big bodies on the Boston roster, was down with an injury -- with the league's most dominant center since Shaq's heyday coming into town. How could the Celtics keep it competitive, never mind win?

The answer, of course, is that I have no idea. I can't explain why Kevin Garnett looked better than he has all season, why Marquis Daniels and Jermaine O'Neal played with more energy than they have in weeks, or why Sasha Pavlovic was flying around the court, making steals and blocking shots. And I certainly have no explanation for why the now 11-5 Magic played as poorly as they did, setting a franchise record for offensive futility.

I'd like to say that the Celtics turned a corner tonight, but Orlando was so bad that this game is probably best described as an anomaly, just another funny night in an NBA season that promises to be even more full of surprising results than usual. The win is significant, sure, and could be a big confidence boost moving forward, but as fans, I would caution against reading much into the margin of victory and the dominating nature of the performance.

With that heaping spoonful of salt served, I'd be remiss to not mention that the defense, almost from the beginning, was excellent. Garnett and Pavlovic each had steals on one of Orlando's first three possessions. O'Neal blocked two shots and drew a charge in the first seven minutes. Howard had 12 points in the first quarter, but went 0-10 the rest of the way. Boston doesn't double Howard much, and O'Neal and Greg Stiemsma did a good job, as Kendrick Perkins did before them, of pushing Howard a bit farther from the basket than he likes, forcing him into a number of tough running hooks.

No one was better defensively than Avery Bradley, however. He had three steals and one block, and hounded Jameer Nelson into at least two other turnovers with the kind of hounding, full-court defense you don't often see in the NBA. His only two baskets came early in the first quarter, and his offensive limitations will probably limit his role considerably once the regulars heal, but he didn't turn it over once on Monday, a major plus after he coughed it up six times against Washington on Sunday.

Honestly, you could go down the roster tonight and say nothing but good things about everyone who suited up. Garnett had a double with 14 points and ten rebounds, adding five steals and two blocks for good measure. Paul Pierce with a 19/5/7. Brandon Bass burning his old team, tying Pierce for game-high honors with 19 points. Even JaJuan Johnson, the only one of ten Celtics in uniform who didn't play until garbage time, had a thunderous jam and a nice baseline turnaround. (His other two shot attempts were blocked, however -- so much for nothing but good things.)

A few non-game related notes:

* Glen Davis got a nice acknowledgement from the team and the crowd, in recognition of his four years of service in green. He then went out and made two of nine shots, making the Celtics fans even more appreciative of Bass than they already were. Von Wafer got no such recognition, and took out his aggression with five quick points in the final seconds.

* As they do a few times a year, Tommy Heinsohn and Mike Gorman brought Celtics CEO and co-owner Wyc Grousbeck to the broadcast table for the second quarter. I love it when they do this; I don't know if other teams do it, but they should. Grousbeck didn't sugarcoat the team's early season struggles, noting that the team wasn't ready (read: was out of shape) when they tipped off in December. He didn't speak entirely frankly about the potential of blowing up the Big Three, but he didn't talk with blind optimism about the team, either. He's less caustic than Danny -- I don't know, but listening to him talk makes me more confident that whatever decisions the front-office makes will be good ones.

* Line of the night, from Grousbeck, on Kendrick Perkins: "He's a great guy. He told us he wasn't gonna re-sign here, but he's a great guy."

Orlando will look to work out its frustation against Indiana on Tuesday night. They won't have to wait long for revenge, either; Boston travels to Florida on Thursday for the rematch. The Celtics are off until then, which hopefully will some of Boston's injured players a chance to get healthy. I've got a feeling we'll need them next time around.

Boston 100, Washington 94

2012-01-22T13:44:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

At least we can still beat the Wizards.

It wasn't as easy as you'd hope -- the Celtics coughed up all of a 15-point third quarter. But in an early Sunday game, on the road, missing two starters for much of the game, and given the team's early-season struggles, any win is a good win.

And yes, I said missing "starters," plural. Rajon R-ndo sat for the second straight game with his injured wrist, and Ray Allen left in the second quarter with an injury that the Boston Globe's Gary Washburn kept referring to as a "jammed" ankle, whatever the hell that is.

This game was won on the back of Paul Pierce, who matched his uniform number and obliterated his season-high with 34 points. This is the third time the Celtics have played the Wizards this season, and in the second matchup, Pierce was struggling offensively until early in the second quarter, when Washington coach Flip Saunders put Chris Singleton on him. Pierce looked offended that someone would dare put a rookie on him, no matter how strong that particularly rookie's defensive reputation happens to be.

Singleton has since moved into the starting lineup (and deservedly so; the kid is the most versatile defender I've ever seen at the college level and should be a really nice player for them), and Pierce wasted little time going to work. Eventually, Nick Young and Jordan Crawford entered the torture chamber and had similarly little success in stopping Pierce's familiar array of drives and clever maneuvering for mid-range jumpers. The Captain was coolly efficient, accumulating his bounty on just 15 shots, making 12 of 15 free throws, and dishing out ten assists. He ended Sunday's game just two rebounds shy of a triple-double.

Pierce was the leader, but he had a little help. Kevin Garnett missed his first three shots, but went 7-for-7 from the second quarter on, including two huge buckets down the stretch. On both of those, Garnett craftily used a ball fake to shake his defender, perhaps taking advantage of his reputation as someone who passes more than he should. Both hoops (a thunderous dunk and a 21-foot jumper) pushed a three-point Boston lead to five, helping ensure that the Wizards never took possession of the basketball with a chance to tie for the final 4:46.

KG finished with 17 points, and joining him in double figures were Mickael Pietrus (14 points) and Brandon Bass (13) off the bench. Bass had what has become a fairly typical game for him in a Boston uniform, hitting about half of the jumpers he takes and grabbing a bunch of rebounds. Pietrus, who probably would move into the starting lineup if Allen has to miss any further time, took as many two-point field goals as three-point field goals, the first game in seven as a Celtic in which his threes haven't outnumbered his twos. (Thirty-four of his 44 shot attempts this season have been from behind the arc.) It's good to see a little depth in his offensive game -- we need him to be more than just a shooter.

Avery Bradley took several steps backward after his solid performance on Friday, going 1-for-8 with six turnovers in more than 41 minutes of court time. (He did have seven assists, but I don't remember him doing a lot of creating for others -- sometimes guys just get assists by swinging the ball to open shooters.) He also did little to stop John Wall, who nearly matched Pierce's numbers with 27 points, ten rebounds, and seven assists. Stopping Wall is no easy task, but Bradley earns his paycheck on the defensive end of the court and he didn't seem to bother Wall at all. His backup, E'Twaun Moore, wasn't any more effective -- or any less ineffective, I should say -- than he's been all season, and so point guard is going to remain a concern for as long as R-ndo and Keyon Dooling are out with injuries.

It's a tough week for the Celtics, with the Magic visiting Monday, a return date in Orlando on Thursday, back home for the Pacers on Friday, and then the Cavs in the Garden on Sunday. The Magic haven't played since beating the Lakers on Friday, but they've got five games this week, including a four-in-five stretch, with Boston being the front end of both back-to-backs, so we'll see if Stan Van Gundy manages his guys' minutes bit this week.

Chris Wilcox's availability is rarely noteworthy, but against Dwight Howard, Boston will need as many bodies and fouls as possible. Wilcox hasn't played since January 13th due to a sore calf. I have no idea if Wilcox will be available at all this week, but I'd be surprised if Greg Stiemsma could guard Howard for more than eight minutes of game time without fouling out.

Phoenix 79, Boston 71

2012-01-21T00:45:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

You might be tempted to look at the box score of this game, note the absence of Rajon R-ndo's name, and assume that was the reason the Celtics managed just 71 points while just shooting just 40 percent from the floor. And it's probably true that R-ndo, who missed the game with the sprained wrist he suffered Wednesday night against Toronto, would have made a big enough difference to swing the outcome of this game from a Boston loss to a Boston win; he's much too quick for Steve Nash, and indeed registered his career high of 32 points in a matchup with Nash in the 2008-09 season, well before he became a consistent scoring threat.

Hell, even R-ndo's backup, Keyon Dooling, might have made the difference. It wouldn't have taken much: The Suns didn't exactly scorch the net themselves, and they turned the ball over 21 times. But Dooling sat this one out, too, sidelined for the fifth straight game with a sore knee.

What's really frustrating, though, is that Boston could have -- should have -- won this game, even without their first- or second-string point guard. It came down, as it has in each of the team's last seven losses, to the most basic fundamental in the game of basketball: making open shots.

At around 45 percent on the season, the Celtics are in the middle of the NBA pack when it comes to shooting. And yet, I'd bet that if you filtered the data for open, mid-range jumpers, Boston would rank at or near the bottom of the league. (There's a good chance such data is available, but I don't know where to get it.)

You really ought to be able to take an open jumper for granted in the NBA. I'd say that almost every team, at any given time, has at least three guys on the floor who you'd feel reasonably confident in taking a wide-open 15- or 17-footer. Right now, Boston has two guys on its entire roster who I feel confident seeing take those shots: The great Ray Allen, who hasn't exactly lit it up recently, and Brandon Bass, our backup power forward.

That's not good, and it gets worse, because so much of Boston's offense is predicated on that mid-range jumper. (Again, I'm sure the data to prove or disprove this claim is out there.) Sure, we'll run Allen off of screens to try and spring him for a three, and R-ndo will take matters into his own hands and penetrate on occasion, but there's no post-up game to speak of, and so many of R-ndo's forays into the lane end in a kick-out to a teammate whose defender has sloughed off to help.

Statistically speaking, an offense based around mid-range jump shots is not a good one: you're better off taking a contested three than a contested two, for example, because the added difficulty of making the longer shot is outweighed by the extra point when the shot is made. Boston has succeeded in recent years in part because it has some excellent mid-range shooters, in part because the shots they got were more open than is typical, and in part because their defense was so good that they didn't need to be outstanding offensively.

We're seeing now that the offense looks like when the shots aren't falling, and it isn't pretty. And with R-ndo on the sideline and Paul Pierce still not himself, the usual alternative sources of offense aren't available. There's little we can do at this point but hope that the shots start to get down.

On to some Phoenix-game-specific stuff:
* After Marcin Gortat went nuts with a 14-point first quarter, mostly off of pick-and-roll with Nash, the Celtics defense was pretty good the rest of the way. They forced something like ten turnovers in the third quarter alone, and by and large shut down Nash, both his scoring and his assists. There were a couple crucial errors in the fourth quarter by the new guys -- a missed rotation by Mickael Pietrus; Bass leaving Channing Frye to help Kevin Garnett with Gortat in the post -- but the Celtics were more than adequate on that end to win.

* Boston trailed 46-35 at halftime, then opened the second half by scoring 18 of the first 22 points, the team's lone offensive outburst of the game. From there, however, the offense sputtered, as the Suns quickly went on a 12-0 run to re-seize control. The Celtics, maddeningly, went away from the more fluid offensive sets that had been working, in favor of a series of clock-draining post-ups. When Pierce is healthy, these plays are annoying, but tolerable. When he's not, or when the guy posting up is Marquis Daniels, it's just stupid. Stick with what's working.

* Bradley probably had the best game of any Celtic. He had ten points on 5-of-9 from the field, even burying a couple of the open mid-range jumpers that have eluded him in his career (and his teammates this season). He also had three steals, including picking Nash clean as the veteran point guard dribble near midcourt. Only one assist, but only one turnover, too. It was his finest outing of the year.

* In contrast, Bradley's backup for this game, E'Twaun Moore, was terrible. He shot 1-for-6, including a bad miss on a wide-open three-pointer (supposedly his specialty), and he committed three turnovers in 12 minutes of action. Moore's a rookie, and the way he's playing reminds me a lot of a college freshman in his first couple weeks of game action. As you move up in levels, the game moves faster, and for many, it takes some time to adjust, for the game to slow down, as some are fond of saying. You don't see it as much in NBA rookies as you see it in college freshman, but it happens, and its happening with Moore. His lone bright moment came in the third quarter when, with the shot clock running down, he find himself in an isolation with Nash. Moore calmly backed Nash down, then swished a sweet turnaround.

* It's funny, because Doc Rivers has quite notably been terrible at developing rookies over the last several years by not giving them playing time. His hand is forced somewhat with Moore, but Doc seems willing to give Moore run even without the exigent circumstances of injuries and a crazy schedule. Whatever Doc has seen in Moore on the practice court hasn't translated to games.

Boston 96, Toronto 73

2012-01-19T01:32:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

The Raptors aren't very good, so I'm not going to pretend that this win means much of anything or that the Celtics are even on the road to being "back." But I will say that as a fan, it was nice to have a game against an inferior opponent go the way we've gotten used to around here for the last several years. Boston jumped out to a 29-14 first-quarter lead, then buried Toronto in the third quarter after the second unit let the Raps back in the game in the second.

The big news from this game, really, is that Rajon R-ndo left near the end of the third quarter after landing on his elbow/wrist trying to break his fall after being fouled by Linas Kleiza. (Kleiza is a tough customer and the refs called a flagrant on the play, but it didn't look to me like a dirty play at all.) He was down for a while, then got up to shoot his free throws -- a good sign, all things considered, because the game was well in hand at the time and he didn't need to take them (if he hadn't, he'd have not been allowed back in the game at any point). R-ndo is day-to-day and reportedly said he'll be ready to play Friday when the Suns come to town.

Up until his injury, R-ndo was excellent, scoring on a bunch of nifty drives and getting to the free throw line. So easily was he getting to the basket and scoring, in fact, that he didn't have his first assist until midway through the third quarter -- certainly the longest I ever remember seeing him going before dropping his first dime.

It's been a difficult early season for R-ndo, on whose shoulders a heavier offensive burden has been placed. To be effective, he needs teammates who can either knock down shots (to spread the floor and open up the lane) or who can get out on the fast break with him, where his vision and creativity can flourish. As has been well-documented, however, the Celtics are busy playing their way into shape, and no one is really knocking down many shots. This isn't something he's used to, and I think his production has suffered a bit as he tries to adjust.

Any win is a good win when you're struggling, but just as important as the result was the progress made on the court: The Celtics are starting to knock down some open looks, rebound, and get into shape. There's a long way to go, but on any journey, the first step is going to be small.

Notes:

* Mickael Pietrus hit four of seven three-pointers Wednesday night, the only seven shots he took. In five games this year, he's 11-for-27 behind the arc -- and three for five inside it. If he continues to hit at his current 40 percent clip, that's fine, but the guy is at 36 percent for his career from downtown and I'm not convinced he's a good enough outside shooter to justify such an imbalance. At least he contributes defensively, as well.
* E'Twaun Moore has gotten Avery Bradley's minutes the last couple of games. (Bradley only played in garbage time against the Raps.) Moore has not, in my eyes, played particularly well, and I wonder if his inclusion in the rotation has more to do with Keyon Dooling's absence than anything else. Without Dooling, the second unit has been badly hurting for offense, and Bradley is a disaster offensively. If Moore's not knocking down shots, however -- and he isn't -- the Celtics are probably better off with Bradley's defense on the floor. We'll see what happens when Dooling returns.
* Another position battle is that for backup center, between Greg Stiemsma and Chris Wilcox. Doc has said that neither has separated himself, and that he'd use them situationally: Stiemsma in physical games, Wilcox in more uptempo contests. Wilcox has been bothered by a sore calf and missed the last three games, and so Stiemsma got the backup pivot minutes against the Raptors. I prefer Stiemsma to Wilcox because of the rim protection he provides, but if he's gonna stick in the league, he'll need to learn to grab a rebound with two hands, rather than try to tip it to a teammate with one. Against the Raptors, Stiemsma rebounded as though he were trying to prevent the ball from touching his body, swatting it in the direction of his teammates on the perimeter. There are times where tipping a rebound is appropriate, but it seemed to be Stiemsma's default Wednesday.

This Could Be a Very Important Week for the Celtics

2012-01-16T12:41:00.000-08:00

Three games, four nights, three losses. After losing at home to the Bulls on Friday, in Indy to the Pacers on Saturday, and at home to the Thunder on Monday, the Celtics are now 4-8, having lost five straight for the first time in the Big Three era.

There were signs of life on Monday, to be sure, as Boston hung with a young Oklahoma City squad, currently the holders of the best record in the NBA. Paul Pierce looked more like his old self than he has at any point during this young season, and for the first time in a while, the Celtics put in a respectable performance on the glass and seemed to get most of the loose balls. Ultimately, turnovers and an inability to capitalize offensively down the stretch did the Celtics in, the same way they were done in against Chicago when they overcame a horrible-shooting first half to cut a 20-point lead to one, only to see their chance to take the lead rim out. Turnovers, an ability to score, and some ~~lucky~~ ~~skillful~~...nah, let's go with lucky, three-point shooting from Russell Westbrook.

As the title of this post suggests, I think the next six days could dictate the future of the Celtics franchise. That may seem a bit strange, given that the next three teams on the schedule are the 4-10 Raptors, the 4-8 Suns, and the 1-12 Wizards. Here, however, is my completely unsubstantiated and probably untestable hypothesis.

Last week, after the loss to the Mavs, someone asked Danny Ainge if the Celtics were too old. His answer was non-committal, but he did throw this in: "I'm committed to the guys as long as they're going to perform, but they've got to perform. They've got to show they have an opportunity to win. Otherwise, I've got to at least make an effort to go in another direction."

Ainge certainly isn't the only person to give the Celtics a far-from-ringing endorsement -- something the players deserve with their performance thus far. In a post-game interview last Wednesday, Dallas' Jason Terry said, in so many words, that the Cs were too old to compete at a high level in the NBA. At halftime of the Bulls telecast on Friday, the EPSN studio crew wrote Boston off, announcing the physical decline of Pierce in the process. And there's been plenty of talk in the blogosphere about Ainge blowing it up -- selling off the veterans with an eye towards building a new contender.

What's this got to do with Toronto, Phoenix, and Washington?

It's just a hunch, but I think that if the Celtics can't win these upcoming games -- or at least two of the three -- Ainge will have his answer to whether his team has an opportunity to win. At least, he'll have that answer in his mind, and that's all that matters.

We can talk all we want about Pierce and Garnett playing themselves into shape and giving the new bench guys time to gel. By the end of this week, the season will be a month old, and all the other teams off to slow starts will have righted the ship. Boston's schedule isn't getting any easier -- seven of their games so far have been at home, and the games against the Raps and Suns are also on the parquet. Boston has also already had a four-day break, a rare luxury in this condensed season. In contrast, they've got a five-game road trip coming up in February, an eight-games-in-thirteen-nights roadie in March, and a road back-to-back-to-back looming in the middle of April. If the Celtics can't beat the Raptors, Suns, and Wizards, then the Celtics' ability to even make the playoffs would be in doubt -- and I guarantee that simply making the playoffs is not what Ainge had in mind when he talked about the "opportunity to win."

I'm not saying that "blowing it up" is necessarily the smart move. Kevin Garnett's physical decline and price tag for this year make it unlikely Ainge could fetch much of value for him -- he'd probably be more valuable as an expiring deal. Pierce's age and slow start to the season are likely to make potential buyers wary, as he's scheduled to make a combined $32 million in 2012-13 and 2013-2014 -- and trading the Captain would likely incite a riot among the team's fan base. And Boston's early struggles have only served to confirm what many have long asserted about Rajon R-ndo -- that's he's not a point guard you can build a team around. Ainge could get something for him, but he's not at the peak of his value at the moment. Ray Allen, an expiring contract who has performed well thus far, probably would bring in something, but nothing to build a dynasty around.

There's also a third option, an alternative to "put up or shut up," where Ainge patiently waits for the team to play better (this is going to happen, by the way; it's just not possible for us to continue to miss as many open shots as we have so far), then pulls the chair out from under everyone at the trade deadline by shipping out Rondo and the veterans. This possibility, rather unpleasant to stomach though it may be, is probably the smart play for Ainge -- wait for everyone's stock to bounce back, rather than sell low. But that's something to worry about in March.

For my part, I think the team is going to improve. We're going to start hitting some shots, Doc will (hopefully) settle on a bench rotation, and our conditioning will continue to improve. At this point, my expectations are low -- I want to make the playoffs and make a little noise there, though I reserve the right to later talk myself into how we can win a championship (one of the privileges of being a fan). But I can't argue with anyone who says the Celtics are done, and I don't think anyone will be able to convince Ainge otherwise, either, once he makes up his mind.

Here's hoping that's not this weekend.

Viewing Alert

2012-01-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

Friday: Chicago at Boston, 8 p.m. Eastern, ESPN.

At first glance, the last thing a struggling Celtics team needs right now is a tough home game against the class of the East, coached by a defensive wizard (Tom Thibodeau) who, as a former Doc Rivers assistant, is intimately familiar with what the team does. Boston's had trouble putting the ball in the basket as it is; it's going to be even harder against the Bulls.

Derrick Rose, last year's NBA MVP, missed Wednesday's game against the Wizards with a sprained toe, but I've read that the Bulls are optimistic he'll play against the Celtics. That's bad news for those fans whose sole concern is a Boston win or loss, but it's good news for basketball fans: Rose and Rajon R-ndo tend to bring out the best in each other -- remember their battles in that first-round playoff series in 2008-09, when Rose was a rookie? And Chicago, who can be a little boring to watch even with Rose on the court due to their pace, becomes positively excruciating with their best catalyst on the bench.

The key to the game, if I had to pick just one, will probably be rebounding. Boston has struggled on the glass this year and Chicago, with the energetic Joakim Noah, can definitely cause some problems in that regard. The Bulls also have a good-shooting power forward in Carlos Boozer, the kind of player the Celtics have struggled to guard in recent years (because he keeps Kevin Garnett occupied).

Here's to stopping the bleeding...

Dallas 90, Boston 85

2012-01-11T21:40:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

After four days off, going against an opponent who had played the night before, the Celtics nonetheless looked like the more tired team Wednesday night against Dallas.

The explanation, it turns out, is rather simple: Boston was the more tired team. Word is that Doc has been pushing the guys in hard in practice in an effort to use this rare opportunity to get the team in shape after the shortened preseason. Paul Pierce even reportedly did an hour-long sprint workout on the treadmill after today's shootaround.

If this seems implausible to you, or if you're ticked at Doc for maybe costing us a win by pushing too hard, I urge you to consider the alternative. It's either this, or we get four months of the sluggish play we've seen so far from Pierce and Kevin Garnett, followed by an early playoff exit. (Remember how playing into shape worked for Rasheed Wallace two seasons ago?) And if not that, then a realization that is far more unpleasant, if one we're going to have to come to soon: these veterans don't have it anymore.

So, yeah, given these alternatives, I'm going to go with the most pleasant option, the options that affords the most reason for optimism. It's going to be a weird season, and it's too early to start worrying about our playoff spot. We're gonna have to be patient, particularly in the early-going.

We're gonna have to be patient even if the losses come due to infuriating things like the defensive glass and blown defensive assignments. The Pacers killed us with offensive rebounds on Friday; though it wasn't as big a factor Wednesday, especially in the second half, the Mavs did have 13 offensive rebounds (compared to two for the Celts). And while I think that Boston's defense has been quite good over the past six games, Pierce blew a crucial rotation on a late Dirk Nowitzki drive (a mistake he atoned for by drilled the game-tying three with 25 seconds left). And then, on Dallas' game-winning possession, Garnett was in Nowitzki's shorts with no help behind him. Dirk easily drove around KG and made a circus shot while being hammered by Brandon Bass, who was waaaaaaaaaaaaay late on the play. Either Bass blew it or KG did -- there's no way the plan was to defend Nowitzki that way.

So I'm remaining patient, even as we sit a game below .500, having not yet beat a playoff-bound team with three games against such teams (Chicago, Indiana, and Oklahoma City) in four days looming on the weekend, starting on Friday.

Notes:

Rajon R-ndo has been brilliant this season, and on Wednesday (Ray Allen's first off-night of the young season), his aggressive offense has been the only consistently good thing for Boston so far. Yet he's made some crucial mistakes, as well; he's already committed a couple of rally-crushing turnovers this year, and Wednesday night he made a bad gamble for a steal on a Nowitzki drive, leaving Jason Terry wide open for a three-pointer at the end of the shot clock. He also threw away Boston's last shot at a tie by delivering an inbounds pass to Ray too low; Ray couldn't corral it and it went out of bounds, sealing the game ... Avery Bradley has shown that he's one of the most tenacious on-ball defenders in the league, but he also has the worst jumper of any guard I can think of. He had a wide-open 20-footer from the top of the key on Wednesday that he rocketed off the backboard, a foot high and a foot right. It's almost inconceivable that he could miss a shot that badly ... Mickael Pietrus made his Celtics debut against the Mavs, making the first shot he took in the green and white, a three-pointer. He made some nice defensive plays but also took a very bad three-pointer in the fourth quarter. Still, it'll be nice to have a more competent offensive player to spell Pierce ... Marquis Daniels didn't play, though I think it was because he's recovery from some sort of bug as much as it was the presence of Pietrus ... ESPN's announcers noted that part of Boston's rebounding woes are due to the fact that the guards aren't going to get the ball off the glass. That's true, but it's only part of the story. Our bigs are being pushed around by the other team's big bodies ... Dallas coach Rick Carlisle was ejected in the third quarter, charging out onto the court to protest a play in which Garnett grabbed Nowitzki as the big German tried to free himself up around a screen. It's the second time this season an opposing coach has elected the rather unusual remedy of storming onto the parquet to protest a relatively innocuous play at a non-crucial moment; Flip Saunders was tossed less than two minutes in to Boston's home win over the Wizards earlier this month.

Viewing Alert

2012-01-10T23:10:00.002-08:00

Hey gang...I hope to keep posting regularly now. I'm studying for the Nevada bar exam but should be able to watch most games and at least put up a few words every time I do between now and the end of February.

Dallas at Boston, 8 p.m. Eastern, ESPN.

After dropping three straight to start the season, the Celtics won four in a row. That's the good news. The bad news is that the teams they beat -- the Pistons, the Wizards twice, and New Jersey -- are hardly world-beaters; they're a combined 5-25 on the season. And in Boston's last outing, a sluggish home loss last Friday night, they lost to the Pacers.

This means, of course, that Boston still hasn't beaten a playoff-caliber team. Dallas, the defending champs, would qualify, but at 5-5 and winners of two straight, they're just now rounding into form.

Boston's had four days off, while Dallas played Tuesday night. But the Mavs got plenty of rest in easily dispatching Detroit -- ten players played at least 17 minutes, but no one played more than Dirk Nowitzki's 28. Nowitzki, by the way, was 9-of-10 from the floor and was a +42 on the night (meaning that the Mavs outscored the Pistons by 42 points when Action Dirk was on the floor, and were outscored by 28 with him on the bench).

By the way, former Celtic (twice over) Delonte West hooked up with Dallas in the offseason, and has started every game other than the season opener. With Jason Kidd sidelined with a bad back, West has been starting at point guard, with the newly-acquired Vince Carter playing the two. Dallas also added Lamar Odom in the offseason, LO having demanded a trade from the Lakers after he was included in the Chris Paul deal that was squashed by the league.

I haven't really seen Dallas this year, and so I can only speculate as to whether integrating the new pieces has been a source of Dallas' struggles. I do know that Tuesday night notwithstanding, Nowitzki's shooting has been terrible this year, as has Shawn Marion's, and that Odom has been more or less a non-factor thus far. Dallas is deep, but they may still be figuring out how to put the pieces together.

Celtics Drop Two to Start Season

2011-12-27T22:11:00.000-08:00

I've been in DC since last week, spending time with friends and family over the holidays. I've been too busy to blog, but I haven't been too busy to catch Boston in their season-opening games -- a 106-104 loss in New York on Christmas Day, and a 115-107 defeat in Miami Tuesday night.

In both games, Boston started out very slowly, digging a double-digit hole for themselves in the first half. In both games they clawed back to have a realistic shot at winning, taking the lead into the fourth quarter against the Knicks and getting to within three of the Heat late in the fourth.

It's a disappointing start to the season, and yet we should take it with a grain of salt -- the same grain of salt, I should point out, that would accompany our gloating over a 2-0 start, had the ball bounced that way.

The first way to put these losses in perspective is to remember that Paul Pierce hasn't seen the floor yet due to a sore heel. Boston badly missed his offense in a stagnant fourth quarter against the Knicks, and his presence on the defensive end of the floor could have meant a Boston win in either game (or perhaps in both).

The second is to remember that we just played the Knicks and the Heat, two of the better teams in the league. Miami is the odds-on favorite to win the title this year and are in great form (they absolutely took apart Dallas in a Finals rematch on Christmas Day) and New York just might be the third-best team in the East. Even if the Knicks aren't quite as good as some think they are, it's indisputable that Boston's first two opponents are two of the tougher teams in the league to guard. So the fact that we've surrendered 110.5 points per game -- normally a very alarming number -- is tempered by the fact that we've done so against two of the league's best offensive outfits (teams that play at a fast pace, to boot). If New Orleans lights us up Wednesday night, then I'll start to worry about the D.

Honestly, we're not that far from 2-0. We didn't deserve to win either game, really, not with the way we played in the first half, but we hung around, like we always seem to. Carmelo Anthony got hot in the fourth quarter in New York and a rookie named Norris Cole beat our zone (!) in the fourth quarter in Miami -- if not for those guys, we really could have opened with two wins. Two road wins, without the Captain.

That's probably stretching it. My point is, I'm not too concerned. The season ahead is lockout-shortened, but it's still long. Losing on the road to the Knicks and Heat was likely to happen.

Here's what I do hate: Ray Allen has played 38 and 40 minutes, respectively, in the first two games. Allen is, as always, in outstanding physical condition, but that's just too many minutes. Way too many. I'm going to give Doc a little bit of a pass because of the bodies he's missing (Pierce and the newly-signed Mickael Pietrus play the wing), but given Doc's tendencies, I'm expecting that I'll be complaining about the minutes situation all year. Doc did do a nice job limiting Kevin Garnett to 33 minutes Tuesday after KG played 37 in the opener, and this despite the fact that Chris Wilcox sat the whole second half with some sort of (hopefully minor) injury. But Rajon R-ndo can't play 40-plus minutes a game, either, if we're going to make a deep playoff run after what will be a very grueling season.

Save for one absolutely critical turnover in the waning moments against Miami, by the way, R-ndo has been almost flawless. He followed up a 31/5/13 performance against New York with a 22/8/12. Even better: He hit nine of 12 free throws against New York and seven of 11 against Miami. Seventy percent from the line from your point guard isn't normally something to get excited about, but normally your point guard didn't shoot under 60 percent from the stripe last season. What's more, I think this improvement could be permanent; he's slowed his pace at the line way down and everything about the shot looks smoother. A somewhat reliable free throw stroke should give him the confidence to go to the bucket more this year, which we're going to need.

Another bright spot, offensively, has been the bench. Brandon Bass had 20 points and 11 rebounds against the Knicks, while Keyon Dooling did the heavy lifting with 18 off the bench against the Heat. I'm more confident in Bass' ability to contribute regularly than Dooling's; Dooling will rarely shoot as well as he did Tuesday night, and the confidence these strong evenings brings may end up doing more harm than good if it convinces him to play outside his rather modest offensive abilities. Put another way, I'm going to need to see several more games of solid shooting from Dooling before I get comfortable watching him cock the ball way back -- behind his shoulder, to the side of his head -- truly one of the more bizarre shooting strokes in the NBA.

A lot to improve on, but no need to panic just yet.

Jeff Green Out for Season

2011-12-17T09:02:00.000-08:00

Jeff Green will not play basketball this season, due to an aortic aneurysm. He's having heart surgery next month.

This certainly comes as a surprise, though we've known for a little while now that Green was having some sort of health issue. He had been held out of the team's early practices because he hadn't yet passed his physical.

The temptation is to tack this on to the list of reasons that the Green-for-Kendrick-Perkins trade last February was a disaster, but that's not fair to Danny and it distracts from the more important issue, Green's health. While heart surgery is a serious matter, it sounds like Green's long-term outlook is good and that the condition, when treated, doesn't even threaten his career, let alone his life.

From a basketball perspective, this obviously puts the Celtics in a tough spot. When action is taken to try and replace Green in the rotation, I'll let you know.

Catching Up On The Preseason Moves

2011-12-12T15:31:00.000-08:00

I generally don't like to post about rumored moves, because I can't keep up with the news and you're better off getting your information somewhere else. This year, especially, has been difficult to follow, with the whole offseason and preseason condensed into like three weeks. I think the below information is accurate, but I'm seeing all sorts of conflicting reports and can't be sure.

Let me start with the moves we didn't make:

We didn't trade for Chris Paul. I laid out how I felt about trading Rajon Rondo for Paul in this post, but it really turned out to be a moot point: If what the Lakers and Clippers were willing to give up wasn't enough to satisfy David Stern, then no package the Celtics put together would have. Rondo reportedly has been upbeat at camp thus far, so it appears we've avoided the whole mess and kept everyone reasonably happy.

We didn't trade for David West. Before he signed with the Pacers, we were rumored to be sending Jermaine O'Neal and an unnamed player to the Hornets in a sign-and-trade for West. It ultimately fell through, and I know a few people are a little bummed out that it did. I'm glad we couldn't get it to work, though. I've always liked West, but he's 31 and had ACL surgery in April, and his preferred mid-range game doesn't make him a good fit alongside Kevin Garnett. That meant that at best, we would have been getting a sixth-starter type who poses some lineup challenges for Doc. At worst, we'd have been getting a veteran who needed more than eight months to recover from a knee injury and was more or less useless in perhaps our last push for a championship. Not the kind of guy you want to throw $20 million at, especially at the expense of the only decent center on our roster, as unreliable as his health may be.

We didn't sign Delonte West. This is the one that bugs me a little bit. A wrist injury derailed his return to Boston last season, but the guy is a proven combo guard who can help at both ends of the floor. I don't exactly know what went down, but I'm guessing Delonte wanted more money or more years than we were willing to give him. I'll be interested to see, when he does sign (the Lakers are a possibility, by the way), how much it's for, because I think we're going to regret not ponying up for him.

Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Jermaine O'Neal were under contract and are back, as is Avery Bradley. We also signed our two draft picks, JaJuan Johnson and E'Twaun Moore. Here's how we've filled out the rest of the roster:

We traded Glen Davis to Orlando for Brandon Bass. I like this move. Baby is a likable guy and a serviceable player, but his love affair with his inconsistent jumper was infuriating. In Bass, the Celtics get a similar player (Bass loves the mid-range game, too), but one who shoots a bit better and can score at the rim -- where Baby would get his shot blocked inside because he lacked the athleticism to get off the ground and explode through defenders, Bass should be able to finish those plays. Bass is also a more consistent offensive rebounder than Davis, and better on the defensive glass, as well. If I have one reservation about this trade, it's that Bass was highly-coveted by the Magic, who signed him to a four-year, $18 million contract in 2009, then almost immediately soured on him. He averaged just 13 minutes per game in his first year in Orlando, averaging twice that last year when the Magic shook up their team with various trades. Magic coach Stan Van Gundy is a defense-oriented guy, and so it's hard for me to imagine that he'd sign off on this swap if unless he thought he was getting an upgrade on that end of the floor. The defensive metrics seem to point to Bass being a downgrade from Davis, whose major contribution on defense was taking charges in help defense situations. So I guess we'll see how Bass holds up on D, though a good scheme can do a lot to hide deficiencies in that area.

We signed Jeff Green to a one-year deal. Jeff Clark over at Celtics Blog has some good insight as to what this specific contract means for Boston's financial future (though I don't know where he gets the $9 million figure -- I haven't seen it confirmed anywhere), but here's what it means to me: Danny blew up the core of the 2008 title team, the team with the best record in the East at the time, for a guy who is going to be an unrestricted free agent after this season. I know I shouldn't live in the past and that you shouldn't throw good money after bad, but it just doesn't make sense to me. What could Danny have seen during Green's three-month tenure with Boston last season that made him second-guess his opinion? Don't get me wrong; I'm not a huge fan of Green's. But it's unreasonable to expect a guy to come to Doc River's Celtics in the middle of the season and expect him to integrate in right away. It hasn't happened at all in the past four seasons. Either you believe in the guy or you don't. To me, this contract is just another sign of how bad the Perk trade was, even if the contract is actually fine for the Celtics.

We signed Chris Wilcox, Marquis Daniels, Sasha Pavlovic, Keyon Dooling, and Greg Stiemsma. Along with Bass and Green, this is the crew that's going to make up the second unit. Wilcox is a journeyman center who is capable of decent numbers when he's healthy, but his 57 games with Detroit last year were the most he's played in a season since 2007-08. In his prime, he was putting up like a 13/7, but it's unlikely he's capable of that now. Daniels was finding his rhythm as a Celtic last year before a spine injury in early February ended his season and led to a trade to Sacramento. Especially with Delonte gone, it'll be good to have him back to spell Ray Allen. Pavlovic signed at the trade deadline last year to fill one of the roster spots left open by Daniels' move to the Kings. He played 17 games for the Celtics last year, and through the first 16, he made exactly four shots. In the 17th, the regular season finale against the Knicks, with all of Boston's starters resting, he came off the bench to make seven of ten shots (including four of five threes). I wouldn't expect him to play a lot of minutes, but he's the best shooter on the bench. Dooling is another journeyman, a point guard who excels on the defensive end but shoots too much, given how bad he is at it. His career three-point percentage is decent (35 percent), but his overall shooting percentage has been below 40 in each of the last two seasons. He's also the one new guy I know I'm going to have trouble rooting for, and that's especially true since we apparently chose him over Delonte. Stiemsma is a big body who was the D League defensive player of the year last season. I saw him on the USA team that won a bronze medal at the Pan-Am Games in October, and he did little to stand out.

A Few Thoughts on the Schedule

2011-12-07T15:14:00.000-08:00

The lockout-shortened NBA schedule was announced yesterday, with the league trying to cram 66 games for each team into a time period stretching from Christmas Day to April 26. The result of the labor dispute from a scheduling standpoint is a lot of stuff we're not used to seeing, from back-to-back-to-backs (each team has at least one) and ridiculous stretches like the Hawks playing nine games in the season's first 12 nights.

My first thought when I heard about all of this is that there's going to be some bad basketball played this year in the NBA. While I wasn't a night-to-night fan of the whole league in 1999, the last time a labor dispute shortened the season, I can't imagine that the product that season was up to our usual NBA standard.

I'm not going to spend much energy talking about the Celtics' schedule as compared to the rest of the league's, save a point I heard Jackie MacMullan make on "Around the Horn" this afternoon, which is that, because of TV, the marquee teams (like the Celtics) end up with tougher relative schedules than normal due to the league not wanting to lose premier matchups. Thus, while each team plays only 18 non-conference games (and therefore twice against only three non-conference opponents, Boston's home-and-home Western Conference foes are Dallas, Oklahoma City, and, of course, the Lakers.

Other than that, I'm not going to spend time arguing the league screwed Boston by giving them their back-to-back-to-back on the road in the middle of April during the season's stretch run, or analyzing whether we have more tough Western opponents on the road or at home. I abhor this phrase, but the schedule "is what it is," it sucks for everybody, and nothing can be done about it.

I'm also not going to go through the schedule and highlight the key games and stretches -- you can do that yourself by looking here. But there are a few things the schedule affects that I do want to discuss. (Good thing I have a blog, then!)

I have very low expectations for the regular season. Another point I heard MacMullan make today is that the shortened schedule favors veteran teams -- I have no way of verifying this, but she asserted that the top four teams in 1999 were also the four oldest. Boston certainly qualifies as one of the oldest. In some ways, this makes sense -- the lockout means a very abbreviated training camp and preseason schedule, which benefits veteran teams that have a lot of experience playing with each other. And, as MacMullan pointed out, older players tend to take better care of themselves in the offseason (out of necessity).

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine that playing 17 games a month for four month's is going to be easy on the Boston veterans' legs, well-conditioned though they may be. So as long as we're safely in the playoffs, I'm not going to start freaking out if we don't show up on random nights throughout the season.

Doc's most important job is managing minutes. There's a caveat to my above promise, and that is if that we lose games in March and April while Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Kevin Garnett are playing 38 minutes per. Most of the things I criticized Doc for in past years have gotten a lot better, but he still rides the horses too hard. Allen is 36 and played 36 minutes per game last year (just one off his career average); Pierce is 34 and played 34 per last season; KG is 35 and played 31. I don't have a number in mind for each of these guys; I just know it needs to be lower. Playing 66 games instead of 82 theoretically means fresher legs in the postseason, a good thing for an older team like ours, but Boston's legs won't be fresh if the studs are playing huge minutes night after night after night, with fewer days off in between.

The rookies better be ready. To that end, there's some opportunity here for Boston's two draft picks, JaJuan Johnson and E'Twaun Moore. It depends on what Boston does in free agency, but it's quite possible that the former Purdue teammates will be asked to play significant minutes during the regular season. (The same goes for second-year point guard Avery Bradley.) I'm excited by this prospect -- Doc hasn't done a great job breaking in rookies over the last four years, and so this is a good opportunity to get them some playing time in advance of the rebuilding period that will follow the Big Three era in Boston. The abbreviated preseason makes it harder on these guys because they won't have as much time to prepare, but Johnson and Moore are probably better-prepared to handle it then some other members of their draft class, because they -- unlike their peers -- have four years of college playing experience.

Why the Trade Rumors Don't Worry Me

2011-11-30T18:23:00.000-08:00

As I'm sure you've heard, the NBA is back, baby, with the season set to open on Christmas Day. And no sooner than we digested that news along with our Thanksgiving leftovers did we receive the first real indication of basketball season: The annual Rajon Rondo trade rumor mill.

This year's iteration is Rondo for New Orleans' Chris Paul, a free agent next summer who is looking to join his own super-team to compete with the Unholy Trinity in Miami. And although those talks seem more or less dead as of this writing (Paul reportedly won't agree to sign an extension with the Celtics), enough has been made of it over the past 24 hours that it's worth a discussion.

Given my overall opinion of the guy, what I'm about to say borders on heresy, but here goes: Rondo for Paul is a no-brainer, slam dunk for the Cs. This isn't a novel statement -- you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees. As much as I love Rondo and think Paul is kind of a punk, there's no question that CP3 opens up more possibilities for a franchise, both this year and moving forward, than #9 does.

Danny Ainge knows this. That's why he proposed the deal. And whoever the hell is running things for the Hornets (the franchise is owned by the NBA) knows it, too. That's why he declined it.

I heard these trade rumors last night and thought little of them, but awoke this morning to a couple of semi-hysterical emails and texts messages. I started searching the deep recesses of my brain to try to retrieve who the past Rondo trade rumors had swirled around. Finding nothing there, I turned to the Internet, and quickly came across this article by Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. It's not Deveney's main thesis, but the below quote from that article illustrates the point I want to make rather nicely:

After having spent the Celtics’ ’08 title march in the background, you might say Rondo’s star was born in those playoffs. And yet, a month later, Rondo was one of the most prominent names on the trading block. He was going to Detroit with Ray Allen in a package for the Pistons’ three best players—Tayshaun Prince, Richard Hamilton and Rodney Stuckey. Or he was going to Memphis with Brian Scalabrine for Rudy Gay, Mike Conley and the No. 2 pick in the draft. No, he was off to Phoenix with Allen for Amare Stoudemire, Leandro Barbosa and the No. 14 pick.

None of that came to pass. In fact, none of it even came close to happening. Each scenario, at the time, was considered ridiculously in favor of the Celtics (though that Pistons deal would have been a good one for Detroit) and served as little more than grist for the rumor mill.

I don't necessarily agree with Deveny's main argument, that Ainge throws Rondo's name out in trade rumors as a motivational tactic. (It's certainly a possibility, but I think it's more likely that Ainge simply thinks that it's possible that one day, an opposing NBA GM will make a dumb decision and overpay for Rondo. It certainly wouldn't be the first time an NBA GM made such a decision.) But Deveney is right when he says that the vast majority of rumored trades involving Rondo would have been seen as major coups for the Celtics.

(I would have to agree with that assessment, with the possible exception of a proposal that Ainge is rumored to have proposed after the playoffs last year, a proposal that just became public knowledge yesterday: Rondo and Jeff Green to Oklahoma City for Russell Westbrook and Kendrick Perkins. I wonder how that conversation went: "Hi Sam, it's Danny. Remember when we had the best team in the East and then traded you our center and defensive anchor for your overrated combo forward? Yeah, I can't believe Shaq and Jermaine got injured, either! Anyway, Sam, we screwed up, and we'd like our center back. Can we swap again? No? What if we gave you Rondo, too, and you gave us that athletic kid who can't shoot, either -- Westbrook, I think his name is. No? But Sam ... Wait, hello? Sam????" In seriousness, I probably reacted as poorly as I did to hearing that proposal because it would have been a sneaky admission by Ainge that he messed up by dealing Perkins for Green in the first place, instead of an outright one, and because it would make me sad to have the band back together, sans Rondo, knowing that we easily could have kept all five together and not thrown away a chance at last season's title. I'm also not that high on Westbrook, though a lot of people are and would rather have him than Rondo.)

The point is that at least while our team is built to win now, any Rondo trade is very likely to overwhelmingly benefit us. It'd be something to be nostalgic over -- I'd probably even shed a few tears -- but our favorite franchise would almost certainly be in better shape because of it.

That caveat -- at least while our team is built to win now -- is important, though. Because, as fun as these last four seasons have been, we have to remember what we've gotten ourselves into. When we traded the 5th pick in the 2007 draft to Seattle for Ray Allen and Al Jefferson and a couple of future firsts to Minnesota for Kevin Garnett, we did so with an eye to a three-, maybe four-year championship window. Rondo's excellence and the surprising relative longevity of Paul Pierce and Allen have extended that window somewhat, but we're in year five now. It's going to end soon, my brothers and sisters in green, and when it does, it's going to end ugly.

Not necessarily ugly on the court or for the health of the franchise, in a basketball sense. When their run as alpha dogs is over, the veterans could bring in draft picks or promising players from franchises looking for something extra to put them over the top. Or Boston could use their cap room to sign a free agent stud. Rondo could be turned into a couple of pieces around which a playoff -- if not a championship -- squad could be built. The Celtics could be postseason mainstays again.

But emotionally, it's probably going to get ugly. The contract extension that Pierce signed in the summer of 2010 makes it likely that the Captain and the Truth retires a lifelong Celtic, and that's one drama-bomb I'll be happy to avoid. But Ray and KG are up after this year, and in all likelihood, they'll want to stay. And Pierce will want them to stay, and so will Rondo, and so will Doc Rivers, and so will I. So will you, and so will all the other Celtics fans in the world. And at some point -- maybe not this offseason, but sometime soon, and possibly even before this offseason -- Ainge is going to have to step in and be the bad guy, tell everyone it's over, and remind everyone of the Window and that it was fun while it lasted.

And then there's Rondo.

Rondo is the most unique player in the league today, if not in history. His peculiar blend of talent, athleticism, and disposition make him a once-in-a-lifetime performer on the basketball court. No player has brought me greater joy than he; it is likely that none ever will.

But Rondo is not, in all probability, a franchise point guard. He has more value to us than any NBA team, but the factors that make that true -- his chemistry with the Big Three and his ability and willingness to manage the three of them on the court -- dissipate when those guys are gone. I'm not interested in debating the degree to which he makes his teammates better and vice versa, but it's virtually uncontroverted that his effectiveness will be reduced when he suits up alongside lesser players and the opponent can focus their energies on stopping him. It is very likely that one winter night in the near future, Rondo will pull a jersey over that tiny head and onto those broad shoulders, and it won't say "Celtics" on the front. It will say "Hornets" or "Pacers" or, God forbid -- no, I don't want to even mention the unpleasant possibilities.

And to me, that's really what this play for CP3 is all about: the future. To sell Paul on signing long-term with Boston, Ainge has to sell him on the possibility of winning right away, going for a ring alongside Pierce, Garnett, and Allen. But from the very day that Ainge brought this team together, he's had at least one eye on the future. He structured the Big Three's contracts so that they would expire in staggered fashion; year-by-year, not all at once. The goal was to contend for championships during the Window, then slowly trade older pieces for younger ones, building the foundation so that the next title team can start from a much more solid base than this one did. Paul would be the bridge from the Big Three era to whatever era is next in Boston.

I say all this not to temper excitement for the season that is unexpectedly just a few weeks away, nor to cause you to monitor the upcoming campaign pensively, waiting for the hammer to drop. Rather, I say it to encourage you to appreciate what is immediately in front of us. As recently as last week, I was convinced that the labor dispute would claim the entire 2011-2012 season. I was faced not only with the loss of a prime season of my favorite player, but the likely closing of the Window and the end of the Big Three era.

And so, while the lockout made me as angry as it made any of you, it also made me appreciate the past and the newly-saved future that much more. On Christmas Day, when we rip the bow off the NBA season, I'll watch with a renewed sense of appreciation. I hope that when I flip on the TV at my grandmother's house, I'll see a familiar face playing point guard for the Celtics, zipping around the court, shooting passing lanes and dazzling the crowd with often spectacular assists.

But if he isn't, I'll know why. And I'll be okay with it.

I think.

A Semi-Interesting Read About Big Baby

2011-11-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

Glen Davis is something of a polarizing figure among Celtics fans, a real love-hate guy. I love his willingness to take charges on defense. I hate his refusal to work on his post game. I love that he's worked hard enough on his jumper to make it a decent weapon. I hate how often he takes it (and so does Shaq, apparently). I love that he cares enough that Kevin Garnett can bring him to tears in the middle of the game. I hate that he's so sensitive that he would actually cry in frustration while sitting on an NBA bench.

You get the picture.

Some people are fond of saying that as fans, we're rooting for laundry. That may be true in certain respects, but it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that there are real human beings wearing that laundry -- and that those human beings are often just kids trying to become men in a setting that isn't exactly conducive to it. Now that a significant percentage of the NBA is younger than I am, I look at players differently than I did five or ten years ago -- not as heroes, but as talented individuals who have flaws, the same kinds of flaws that some of the equally talented (but lower-profile and less well-paid) individuals I'm fortunate to call my friends have.

So I like reading stories like this one from CSNNE's Jessica Camerato that looks at how Davis is dealing with the NBA lockout. Take a look, and maybe gain a little better appreciation for what young NBA players go through in the early years of their development -- as basketball players, yes, but also as adults.

A Reminder of What We're Missing Out On

2011-10-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

Saw this clip a bunch of different places today and had to pass it along.

I agree with Matt Moore (as I often do) in that exhibition highlights are not all that impressive. At the same time, I love that these exhibitions exist; that a bunch of NBA players decide to get together for a little run from time to time. Brings basketball back to its roots.

Something to Read While You're Not Watching NBA Basketball

2011-10-11T15:40:00.000-07:00

By now, you've probably heard that NBA has officially cancelled the first two weeks of the regular season.

I promise not to cross-post every new entry I make on my new blog, but I figured I'd link to it again just in case people missed it the first time. I wrote a post today about my favorite college players of all-time. It features a jump break!

New blog

2011-10-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

Reader(s) --

I've started a new blog. The first post is up, and references no fewer than two Kardashians.

This does not mean the end of RwH. The objectives for the new blog do not include appearing to the outside world to be a huge Boston fanboy, and so I don't want those pages to be overrun with Celtics stuff, which they would be, because I still plan on watching every Cs game. (Assuming, of course, that there are any games to watch.) Additionally, I like what this site has become and it would feel weird to make big changes to its content.

So, moving forward, Boston stuff here, everything else (including Metal Monday and Jonny Flynn obsession) at the new site. Which site, I should add, is still very much a work in progress, and will focus on college ball and non-Celtics NBA. As such, it probably won't kick into high gear until either the lockout ends or the college season starts in earnest. Until then, I'll be tweaking the layout and design, adding and deleting links, and making the occasional post.

:(

2011-06-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

Yes, we knew this was coming.

But still.

Sad face.

Metal Monday: Awesome Internet Gadgets Edition

2011-06-27T18:41:00.000-07:00

Two toys from the interwebs:

1. The first is a flowchart useful for determining what genre of metal you are listening to. Spend some time on the "Discussion" page for the heavy metal genre entry on Wikipedia and you'll find that this chart is both under- and over-inclusive, and a more expansive version, done properly, could be even more hilarious, but "Are the lyrics about dragons?" still makes me chuckle after about a week.

(a/s to my buddy Chris for passing that along.)

2. I came across the second one on a wonderful site called Chart Porn, which is a great resource for fun stuff like this: a widget that evaluates and compares the "evilness" of Slayer albums based on the frequency of terms like "kill" and "Satan". 1985's "Hell Awaits" turns out to be the most sinister album, at 27% evil. And the most evil song? "Blood Red" off of Seasons in the Abyss, which contains one of the seven "evil" words in a whopping 54% of the song's lines.

Lyrics here. Relatively-tame-by-Slayer's-standards thrash metal in the video below.

Celtics Add Pair of Former Boilermakers

2011-06-23T22:58:00.000-07:00

Boston didn't have a lot to work with in Thursday night's NBA Draft, but they made the most of the two picks they did have.

First, they traded the 25th pick to New Jersey for the 27th and a future second-rounder. They used #27 to draft JaJuan Johnson, a 6'10" power forward out of Purdue.

When I jotted down some thoughts on Johnson after watching him against Northwestern in December, I wasn't terribly high on him. He's a big guy who likes to play 17 feet from the basket, and I just don't think he's good at shooting those jumpers to justify taking them rather than going into the post, especially in college. He was passive on defense, also, though that may have been because he has a history of foul trouble and Northwestern's Luka Mirkovic isn't worth worrying too much about. (Though Mirkovic did burn Johnson a few times in the second half.)

My evaluation of Johnson hasn't really changed since then, but I do think Boston is a great spot for him. Mainly, I think Kevin Garnett is the perfect mentor. They play the same position and have the same type of offensive game. There's a good defensive player lurking inside Johnson -- I believe he was the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year last season -- and KG's intensity is contagious.

Johnson spent four years in college, so he should be mature enough to handle the pressure of playing with an intense, veteran group like the one in Boston. And with Shaquille O'Neal retiring and Nenad Krstic off to play in Russia, the Celtics need someone to step into backup minutes in the pivot right away. That may have tipped the scales to Johnson from young Jeremy Tyler.

Johnson is far from a sure thing. There are plenty of rangy, athletic bigs who prefer the perimeter who haven't made it in the league, and it's unclear to me that Johnson will ever be comfortable in the post. He weighs just 220 pounds and isn't likely to get much bigger -- he has long arms but not a particularly broad frame, and he's already put on 40 pounds since his freshman year in college. But he's a great upside pick at the end of the first round.

Boston might've rolled the dice with dynamic scoring wing MarShon Brooks from Providence (the player they originally took for Jersey with the 25th pick) or Texas' Jordan Hamilton (the player other than Chris Singleton -- who is going to be really good, by the way -- who dropped the most in the first round) instead of Johnson. But given the team's needs, and given the guy they got with the 55th overall pick -- Johnson's classmate at Purdue, E'Twaun Moore -- Johnson was probably the right call.

Moore is a 6'4" shooting guard with a good floor game and solid leadership skills. He's a streak shooter -- that same game against Northwestern, he hit a bunch of threes on his way to 31 points -- and a good defender. I like him a touch more than guys like David Lighty and Ben Hansbrough, because I think he's more dynamic offensively.

There are a bunch of guys every year who have his skills, and most of them don't have NBA careers that amount to much. But every so often, a guy like Wes Matthews ends up exceeding everyone's expectations. I'm not saying Moore will be that kind of guy, but the possibility that he could be is all we could ask for out of this pick in this draft, a draft in which most of the last several selections were used on foreign players who can only be defined as prospects in the loosest sense of the term.

BGWG: Los Angeles Really Hates Boston

2011-06-17T22:20:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, the Bruins won the Stanley Cup earlier this week. I'm not a Bruins fan (though I was ecstatic for goalie Tim Thomas, the MVP of the playoffs and a former Vermont Catamount), but Game 7 is a must-watch just about any sport, and I allowed myself the luxury of having the game on in the background as I made some Remedies flashcards.

Well after the Bruins' 4-0 victory, once all the pageantry had ended, the local NBC affiliate switched over to the local news. In teasing the top story (the game), the anchors spent a solid half-minute bemoaning the fact that Boston, and not Vancouver, had won.

Now, it's true that Southern California does have hockey. LA's Kings were a marginal playoff outfit this season; Orange County's Ducks were the fourth seed in the West. (I had to look all this stuff up.) But as far as I can tell, no one really cares about hockey here -- certainly not the way folks do in the Northeast and Midwest. And I'm pretty sure there's no on-ice Kings-Bruins or Ducks-Bruins rivalry to speak of. I suppose Angels-Red Sox contributes some, but it's interesting how history on a basketball court can define a relationship between two cities in so many other aspects.

Metal Monday: A Message For LeBron James

2011-06-13T03:06:00.000-07:00

(It's a bit of a cheap shot, and I'm sure it's very unoriginal, but it's just too perfect. I mean, really, read the lyrics; it's like Hetfield wrote this song just for this occasion. Besides, I've been planning on doing this since I dreamed up "Metal Monday," and I plan on making it an annual tradition to post this song on the occasion of LeBron's exit from the playoffs. At least until he gets a ring. My real advice for LeBron and the rest of the Heat, as well as my long absence from these pages explained, after the song.)

First things first, congratulations to the Mavericks. There isn't an NBA team, other than the Lakers, that I wouldn't have been cheering for against Miami in the Finals, but they quickly became a team worth cheering for. I've been a Jason Kidd fan since his days at Cal, and so it's great to see him get a ring, but it wasn't until this postseason that I developed the proper appreciation for Dirk Nowitzki. The Mavericks play team basketball, are humble and business-like, and are worthy champions. Sure, they have DeShawn Stevenson, but no team is perfect.

So, I said I had some advice for the Heat. It's probably not really correct to call it advice -- I'm not sure it can be advice, anyway, if they'll never read it. But I'm among the few who isn't surprised that Dallas beat Miami in this series, and, especially amid all the post-Finals chatter from the talking heads, I want to take a minute to explain why.

So much of the discussion surrounding the Heat this season focused on whose team this was. Is it Dwyane Wade's team? Is it LeBron's team? To their credit, there was never any real fighting about it, though there was never a resolution, either. Moreover, they never embraced the idea that it whose team it was is irrelevant when it comes to putting the ball in the hole. A discussion of who a team belongs to is relevant for leadership purposes only. You win basketball games as a team. It's a lot subtler than saying "Wade is selfish" or "LeBron is selfish." To me, the Heat just don't yet "get" what it takes to beat an excellent basketball team in a championship series, the same way Kobe Bryant didn't "get it" until the fourth quarter of Game 7 in the 2010 Finals.

In the Eastern Conference playoffs, particularly the Chicago series, LeBron seemed to take over at the end of games. Then the Finals started, and after Wade turned in two outstanding performances in Games Two and Three, talk started shifting to how Wade was taking over, since he had succeeded in the Finals before.

That mentality, even if it's not motivated by selfishness, is destructive. When everyone one is so focused on who is getting the ball, the guy who gets it has a tendency to keep it. And if Wade has the ball and LeBron is just standing around, or vice versa, then there's no Big Three to speak of. Putting the ball in one guy's hands -- putting the responsibility of winning on one guy's shoulders -- minimizes the impact of his teammates, and when one of those teammates is one of the five best players in the league, that's a serious problem.

I'll never forget an interview that Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen did early in the 2007-2008 season (it may even have been before the season). The ESPN interviewer asked the newly-formed Big Three who would get the ball in a final shot situation. Pierce, the career Celtic, and Garnett, the much ballyhooed new arrival, both answered "Ray." And Allen said, simply, "the open man."

I recognize that the Heat don't have the luxury of turning the keys to the car over to someone like Rajon Rondo, and that the ball necessarily must more often than not be in the hands of James or Wade. And I recognize that early-season injuries to Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller prevented what could have been Miami's most effective five-man unit from ever jelling. But if you watched and listened to the Heat all season, you never would have gotten the impression that "the open man" was an answer James or Wade would ever give.

I'm not going to delve into any specific post-game comments that the Heat players made. But Magic Johnson talked after the game about how the Heat needed to get into the gym over the summer. To me, that misses the point. Miami didn't lose this championship because their stars didn't shoot well enough. Teams have won championships with less than what the Heat have. But it won't be until how they figure out to play together that they'll get their ring. And the first step is a culture shift. Until they truly embrace basketball as a team game, I predict I'll be posting "King Nothing" more or less the same time every year.

***

Hey Doc, where you been?

Nearly two months without a post, which means I missed the entire playoffs. My apologies. I got busy with graduation, and, frankly, I think the Perk trade broke my spirit a bit. I was absolutely convinced, before the Perkins deal, that we were going to win the championship, and I believe in my heart that without the trade, we would've.

I had written, in my head, an end-of-the-season, "this is a dark chapter in Celtics history" post, but it didn't feel right to post it. I considered ceasing this blog altogether, letting its lifespan last as long as Boston's real championship window. But then Doc re-signed, and quitting didn't seem appropriate. But now that I'm studying for the California bar exam, I haven't had a lot of time -- or any time -- to blog.

I don't really know where I'm headed in life at the moment. I'm taking the bar in July, but I don't have a job lined up yet. Assuming I get one, I may very well have to stop blogging, or severely cut back on my game-watching and writing frequency. If I can't find one right away, on the other hand, I may try to create a more comprehensive basketball site and fold this one into that one. And, of course, there's a real chance of a shortened season, or even no season, next year. We'll just have to see.

In the meantime, I'll probably check in with a post or two before and/or after the NBA Draft, since I'm such a sucker for it. Other than that, barring big news, I probably won't update this site, at least not until August, when the bar is over. Thanks for following me this season.

"Bad Guys Wear Green"

2011-04-21T01:37:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on Games 1 and 2 coming later on Thursday, when I need a break from my Securities Regulation casebook.

Living in Los Angeles, as I do, I get my fair share of negative comments when I wear any Celtics gear around town. I have not, as of yet, been spat at, as my friend Phil was during last year's playoffs when he wore an Antoine Walker jersey to the mid-city bar we were watching a game at. (Who would expectorate on Employee Number Eight?!?) But I get plenty of dirty looks, plenty of "Go Lakers!" and plenty of "Celtics fucking suck!"

It's become common enough that I don't really think twice when it happens. Wednesday, though, was a story I thought worth sharing.

I was lounging on a couch in the law school lobby, waiting for class to start in a well-worn green t-shirt with the number 9 on the front and the word "Rondo" on the back. A middle-aged black man, unknown to me but apparently a professor at the school, exited his office and began to walk directly toward where I was sitting. He walks in a slow, painful shuffle, and he was able to catch my eye and deliver the following words, or something to their effect, on his way across the room:

"Twenty-five years ago," he said, "my son was two years old. We were walking through a department store and saw a bunch of green jerseys for sale. I pointed to them and said 'Son, bad guys wear green.'"

Viewing Alert

2011-04-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

Hey gang --

I know it's been a couple of weeks since I last posted. Once the regular season ends, I'll have a post explaining why.

In the meantime, you can catch the Celtics on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on ABC. The game is in Miami against the Heat, and could be the difference between a second-round playoff series in Boston and a second-round playoff series on the road in South Beach. By virtue of its three wins over Miami earlier in the season, Boston has the tiebreaker between the two teams. Both sit at 55-24. A win for the Cs would put their magic number at one -- meaning that either a Boston win or a Miami loss in the season's final two games would give Boston the second seed in the East and home-court advantage over the Heat if the teams were to meet in the Eastern semis. A Heat victory means that they control their own destiny, in terms of playoff seeding, with a magic number of two.

Boston 96, New York 86

2011-03-22T02:20:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-19T00:46:00.000-07:00

[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

2011-03-17T02:28:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-13T19:51:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-05T09:26:00.000-08:00

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

2011-03-03T00:17:00.000-08:00

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

2011-03-02T02:07:00.000-08:00

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.

Boston 107, Utah 102

2011-02-28T23:01:00.000-08:00

Deron Williams or no Deron Williams -- he was traded to New Jersey right before the deadline for Devin Harris and Derrick Favors -- beating the Jazz in Utah is always good.

[recap] [box score]

Feeling like some bullets tonight:

The biggest shot of the night came from Ray Allen, who hit a 23-foot fadeaway over Andrei Kirilenko to put Boston up 103-99 with 53 seconds left. But the second-biggest shot came from Rajon Rondo, who hit a pullup 15-footer on the next Boston possession, answering an Al Jefferson bucket. Sure, there was no Jazz defender in sight, but that's the point. If he hits a few more of those in crunch time, teams might re-think their defensive strategy. Sagging off of him would almost certainly still be the correct play, but there aren't too many NBA coaches who are going to be comfortable letting an All-Star point guard shoot wide-open jumpers inside the three-point arc with a playoff game or series on the line. And that, in turn, will open things up for the rest of the Celtics.
I have to assume that part of the reason Danny Ainge was willing to trade Kendrick Perkins is that Glen Davis had been playing the crunch-time minutes at the power forward position, with Kevin Garnett sliding over to center. But Davis has been so bad offensively lately -- missing open jumpers, taking impossible shots in the post, committing turnovers -- that he isn't an upgrade over Perk at that end, at least not right now. All the chatter lately has been about Nenad Krstic and Jeff Green and the (hopefully) eventual return to health of Shaquille O'Neal, but the real key come playoff time is who is on the floor at the end of the game. And right now Davis is a liability on both ends; offensively for the reasons just mentioned, defensive if for no other reason that he forces Garnett to guard the opposing team's 5.
"The opposing team's 5" tonight was old friend Al Jefferson, jettisoned to Minnesota in the Kevin Garnett deal, then shipped to Utah this past offseason to make room for ... Darko Milicic. (Really.) Big Al J had a monster game, with 28 points and 19 rebounds, drawing fourth-quarter doubles that created open three-point looks, which -- thankfully for the Cs -- his teammates couldn't knock down. I love watching Al play well. He's really become the focus of the offense in Utah, and it's good to see him in a situation where he can succeed.
Boston isn't going to run into Jefferson and the Jazz in the playoffs, but they could very well see Orlando's Dwight Howard and the Lakers' Andrew Bynum. And watching Jefferson go to work on Boston tonight was cause for concern. Shaq and Krstic can't guard elite centers. Jermaine O'Neal might be able to, but his health is no sure thing. Garnett can do it for stretches, but it's hard to imagine it working for a full series, at least not without serious adverse effects to Garnett's offense. A recurring theme among the things I don't like about the Perkins trade will be how Danny and Doc have really gambled on not having to deal with those two teams during the playoffs.
Speaking of The Trade That Shall Live In Infamy, Krstic impressed me, again. He's got a nice little offensive game and is much more active on the boards that I thought he'd be. He's not very good defensively, but considering I wasn't expecting anything out of him when we got him, he's been a pleasant surprise.
Green, on the other hand, struggled, again. He's obviously (and understandably) still very uncomfortable in his new surroundings, but he put up a couple bad- to atrocious-looking shots -- jump hooks jumpers, stuff that should come naturally and not be affected due to lack of familiarity with the offense. Defensively, he had a nice block (his second in two games) but he also was taken to school by Kirilenko. Again, there's time, but it's only about a month.
Delonte West didn't play after spraining his ankle in a light workout on Sunday. (Can the guy please get a break?) Rookie Avery Bradley came in and did a nice job backing up Rondo, including a made jumper and a nice and-one drawing contact from Favors on a drive (he missed the free throw). Six shots in six minutes is probably a few too many for a guy who struggles with his J, but it was a good performance.

Back home Wednesday night against Phoenix. The next national TV game is Sunday afternoon against Milwaukee, and if you don't have League Pass, it's one you'll want to catch. Boston doesn't play on national TV again until the end of the month.

Boston 99, Los Angeles Clippers 92

2011-02-26T23:06:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

Boston won in LA against the Clippers for the first time in three seasons, in large part due to a terrific defensive effort in the second half. Of course, that's not something to crow too much about, given that the Clippers are a) the Clippers, and b) without either part of their starting backcourt. So I'm going to limit my discussion of this game to the first impression of the new guys.

I should stress first impression, because it'd be unfair to judge them based on one game 48 hours after being traded.

Jeff Green looked lost, which is understandable, given the circumstances. Most of his touches on offense came in the post, as Doc tried to get him comfortable despite his unfamiliarity with Boston's sets. He didn't do too much to impress me down there, but again, it's one game. His ability to operate down there will come in handy, and it's better than him shooting threes at a 30 percent clip, but it's imperative that he get integrated into the offense quickly. Between him and Glen Davis, the ball stopped an awful lot. Green's effectiveness for the rest of the year will depend on how quickly he can get comfortable, so that Boston doesn't have to run specific plays for him.

Nenad Krstic made the bigger impression. He had nine points and six rebounds, with all of his boards coming on the offensive end. He was much more active and agile then I thought he'd be, and though he did all of his scoring around the rim, I know he's got range out to 15 feet or so. He had a nice-looking turnaround J from the baseline from about ten feet that didn't drop, but it's a shot I'm comfortable with him taking.

I remember liking Krstic early in his career, when he averaged 10 points and 5.4 boards per game as a rookie in New Jersey, then 13.5 and 6.4 in his sophomore campaign. His third year got off to a great start; he scored in double figures in all but three of the Nets' first 26 games in 2006-07, averaging better than 16 points along the way. But he tore his ACL against the Lakers that year, and he only played a combined 91 games the next two seasons. He did get manage 76 games last season with the Thunder, posting averages of 8.4 points and five rebounds per game.

The point is, maybe Krstic isn't just a throw-in. He's still youngish (he's had that same thinning hair since he's been in the league), his injury problems may be behind him, and he's much more skilled offensively than Kendrick Perkins was. His rebounding and especially his defense are going to be an issue, particularly against teams like Orlando and Chicago and the Lakers, but he's an offensive upgrade. So, while the expected payoff of the trade was that the Celtics could go small at crunch time, Krstic's presence means that they can go big, too, without having to worry about Shaquille O'Neal's free throw shooting.

Goodbye, Perk

2011-02-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

Last night, a make-shift Boston Celtics team went scoreless in the final six minutes, ceding the final 16 points in an 89-75 loss to the revamped Denver Nuggets.

Why make-shift? Boston only had nine active players, including D-League call-up Chris Johnson, who scored six points and blocked three shots after being signed to a ten-day contract earlier in the day. And why were the Celtics so depleted? Thursday was the league's trade deadline, and the Celtics were unexpectedly active. The carnage:

Marquis Daniels, who reportedly was going to miss the rest of the season, was sent to Sacramento, along with cash considerations, for a protected second-round pick in 2017.
Semih Erden and Luke Harangody were shipped to Cleveland for a second-round pick in 2013.
Kendrick Perkins and Nate Robinson were traded to Oklahoma City for Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic.

Giving Celtics GM Danny Ainge the benefit of the doubt (something I'm having a hard time doing right now) requires that we recognize that the picture is not yet complete. A bunch of guys are about to have their contracts bought out by their teams, and some of them may show up in Boston. That possibility explains away the trade of Erden and Harangody, promising rookies who were each worth at least a second-rounder themselves.

But this post is not about Erden and Harangody. It's not about Troy Murphy or Rip Hamilton or anybody else who may become a Celtic in the coming days. And be warned: It's not entirely about basketball, either.

***

We'll start with basketball, though, because when all is said and done, there's still a season to be played, a championship to be won, redemption to be earned. Green is the big piece coming to Boston. He's a three who's played the whole of his four-year career out of position as a four, because the Thunder already have a pretty good small forward. I liked him a lot when he was at Georgetown, because of his terrific passing in John Thompson's Princeton offense. I'm less bullish on him as a pro, not so much due to what I've seen (I don't watch OKC very much), but from what I've read and heard from people whose basketball opinions I trust. SI.com's Zach Lowe:

Green is not as good as most folks believe he is ... [He] grabs a lower percentage of defensive rebounds than [Paul] Pierce, and [his] presence on the court has consistently turned the Thunder into a porous defensive team.

My buddy Colin:

Jeff Green 100% sucks.

To be fair, not everyone shares these views. As Lowe himself points out, respected veteran writers Peter May, Ian Thomsen, and Bob Ryan all have higher opinions of Green. But the defensive and rebounding numbers don't lie. His scoring average in OKC (15.2 this season, 14.2 in three-plus career seasons) does lie, however, at least a little bit: He's shooting just 43.7 percent from the floor and around 30 percent from three-point land for the season, despite playing with supremely talented offensive players Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.

Of course, the system in which you play means something. So it's possible that Green won't be a defensive liability in Boston, and that his offensive efficiency will improve in his new environment. I have more confidence in the latter than in the former; the Thunder have been a good defensive outfit with Green off the floor, but Boston's got some pretty good offensive players of their own and from what I've seen OKC does a fair amount of standing around shooting jumpers.

Krstic is okay; a decent shooter for his size, but below average on defense and on the glass.

***

The stated rationale for the trade is that with Daniels out (and possibly even if Daniels were healthy), the Celtics desperately needed wing help. In addition to now having someone to spell Pierce, Doc Rivers pointed out that the addition of Green allows him to go "go small" the way he did in the championship year, with Green taking the place of James Posey.

That's true, but the key to that lineup in 2007-08 was James Posey's defense. Offensively, Posey did little more than stretch the floor with his three-point shooting. Green has a more diverse offensive game, but his three-ball is suspect. But more importantly, there's little evidence that Green can have anywhere near the defensive impact that Posey had.

Relatedly, ESPN's John Hollinger and others have theorized that this move was made with the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs in mind, which is noteworthy for the reverse implication that it means that Boston is no longer concerned with the Orlando Magic or Los Angeles Lakers. The Heat and Spurs are perimeter-oriented, and the thought is that Kevin Garnett can handle Chris Bosh and Tim Duncan in a small lineup that would allow Boston to match up better 1 through 4.

Whether that's true, it's not as if having an elite defensive center like Perkins is a liability. And what happens if Boston does have to deal with Orlando and Dwight Howard, or the Lakers -- the two-time defending champions, after all, with Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum inside -- wake up in the playoffs? And, for that matter, what about Chicago's formidable tandem of Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah?

We don't know who is going to be bought out just yet, but we do know the rumors, and the rumors say that there are a lot more wing players about to become available than there are true centers. I've got to think we'd have been better off with adding a wing that way (or via trade -- we really couldn't get anybody for Semih and some draft pick?) and keeping Perk.

Ainge also defended the trade thusly:

The numbers show that he's been better with our starters. We beat all the good teams in the league while Kendrick was out, and that gives you a little more comfort.

I'm not sure exactly what numbers he's talking about, but I have the following problems with this argument:

The regular season and the playoffs are different animals. Doc and Danny should know this. Beating Miami and Chicago and the Spurs in October, December, or January is a hell of a lot different than being them in best-of-seven series' in May and June.
We beat the Lakers, Heat, and Magic with Perkins in the lineup.
We won a championship with Perk in 2007-08, and probably lost one in 2009-10 because we didn't have him for Games 6 and 7.
Whatever comfort Danny takes in how the team has played with Shaq should be tempered by the fact that Shaq's availability is hardly a sure thing. Right now, he's sitting out with injuries more or less related to being nearly 39 and in his 20th NBA season. He's not hurt so much as he's hurting. And the odometer isn't running backwards. If Danny and Doc have taken his availability for granted, then they've made a grave mistake.
Some of Danny's comments seem to suggest that at least some of the motivation was that Shaq is better with the starters than he is with the second unit. I have my doubts about the truth of that statement, as Shaq's inability to play help defense without fouling is exacerbated when he's on the floor against the opposition's elite scorers, but even if it's true, trading your starting center is a weird way to solve the problem of your backup center being ill-suited to being a backup center.

***

This isn't a move for the long-term, either. It's true that Boston was likely to lose Perkins to free agency in the offseason. He had previously turned down Boston's offer of a contract extension worth $22 million over four years, which is basically the limit of what Boston could offer him under current rules. He was likely to be overvalued in the offseason, and someone else was going to pay him more than we could.

But Green doesn't necessarily fit into Boston's long-term plans, either. Green has always been a favorite of Doc's and Danny's, but his contract extension talks with the Thunder broke down in October and he'll be a restricted free agent after this season. Assuming some team will want to give Green starter's money, the Celtics will have to give Green something similar to what they offered Perk if they want to keep him, and at the expense of re-signing someone like Glen Davis. It's a high price to pay for someone who plays Paul Pierce's position. And while Green may provide more sign-and-trade options than Perkins would have, there's also less chance that Green takes a discount to re-sign with Boston, whereas Perk at least theoretically could have changed his mind.

Also, while Boston did receive a first-round pick in the trade, it's the Clippers', and it's top-ten protected through 2016. The Clips are on the way up, but the franchise has a history of mismanagement and it may be a long time before we see any payoff from that pick. We've spent so much to win as many championships as possible in this window. I don't care, and neither should anyone else, who we might get with that first a few years from now.

***

That leads us to a discussion of the collateral damage from the trade. From a pure basketball standpoint, it puts home court advantage in the East in real jeopardy. Boston's depleted roster lost to the Nuggets Thursday night, but Chicago's loss to Toronto on Wednesday and subsequent defeat of Miami preserves the status quo atop the East. For now. Boston has two more games on this road trip without Shaq, meaning that they must play the Clippers and Jazz with Krstic as their only center. Hopefully Shaq will be back after that, but who knows. Additionally, Boston will be shorthanded until the buyouts happen. And then those players, along with Green and Krstic, will have to be integrated into our system. (Let me point out, to those who think Green will provide a nice offensive boost, that Doc couldn't get Robinson integrated into the offense last year, and while some of this has to do with Robinson's negative basketball IQ, I'm not at all convinced that Green is going to blend in well any time soon.)

Secondly, this rips the heart out of so many of Boston's key players. Pierce, KG, Allen, and Rondo may be Boston's Big Four to the rest of the basketball world, but those aren't terms they use internally. Perk and Rondo were extremely close friends. Garnett spoke of it being like losing a family member, not a teammate. This was probably the closest starting five in the NBA, and now its gone.

Boston's vets, as professionals, will no doubt regroup and give it their all the rest of the way. Green and Krstic are teammates now, and no one is going to hold the loss of Perkins against them. But even so, there's very little chance that either will truly succeed this year. The prevailing attitude of almost every Boston fan I know was that the Celtics were going to win the title. Whether that was a reasonable expectation, as it now stands, if Boston fails in that goal, in everyone's mind it will be because of this trade.

***

Many times over the past few seasons, the tiny microphone Rivers wears during nationally-televised games has picked up him urging his charges to trust each other. That trust, which won Boston a ring and got them an injury or two away from perhaps two more, was built up over the course of an intense 2007-08 campaign. Upon what basis can the veteran Celtics be reasonably expected to trust Green and Krstic? And should they trust Doc and Danny that this move is in their best interest, after they more or less stabbed their friend Perk in the back?

Because that, truly, is what they did. After Perk signed a hometown-discounted exception four seasons ago, after Ubuntu and "Boston is a brotherhood" and "We not me,"after all the talk about Boston's starting lineup having never lost a playoff series together and them coming back for one more shot at a title, they traded Perk out of the blue.

Here's the brutal irony. Perkins, as you know, tore his ACL in Game 6 of the Finals last year. He had surgery in early July. The very optimistic target for his return to the floor was after the All-Star Break this year.

But that wasn't good enough for Perkins. He worked his ass off rehabbing his knee and came back even earlier than that original optimistic target, making his season debut on January 25 against Cleveland. His reward for all the hard work? Being traded away from his brothers at the deadline. Had Perk not worked so hard and returned after a more reasonable amount of time, Oklahoma City never would have had enough confidence in his health to pull the trigger on this trade. Perk's loyalty to the franchise paved the way for the franchise to betray him.

I've long understood, or thought I had, that basketball is a business. There's been a lot of hand-wringing recently over how LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, among others, have manipulated which team they play for. I never liked it, either -- I guess I was latching onto whatever ideals I held about how professional sports should work. But this trade is a poignant example of why they do. If the Boston Celtics can break up this core, this way, in the middle of this season, then I'm not sure that loyalty from a team to a player does exist. And if there's no loyalty there, then I see no reason to hold the players to a higher standard.

***

I'm a relatively recent Perkins convert. Even during the championship run, his offensive ineptitude and occasional on-court petulance drove me crazy, to the point were I distinctly remember typing in an email or instant message to someone during that season: "If Kendrick Perkins were in front of me right now, I would punch him in the face."

But he improved and matured, and I started watching more closely and digesting more and more information about the team once I started writing this blog. And I came to appreciate not only his hard work and terrific defense, but his deceptively bright personality, his loyalty, and his value as a teammate.

It's taken me a day of reflection and four hours of typing to write this post. I've been fluctuating among hopeful optimism that I'm wrong, anger, and acute sadness. I still love the Celtics, individually and as a whole, even though my perception of the tradition of the franchise has been tarnished somewhat. I still love this year's team. I just love it a little bit less than I did yesterday morning.

Goodbye and good luck, Perk. We'll miss you.

Trade Deadline Blues

2011-02-24T15:53:00.000-08:00

Bottom line: Kendrick Perkins, Nate Robinson, Marquis Daniels, Semih Erden, and Luke Harangody are out. In are Jeff Green, Nenad Krstic, a couple of draft picks, and a whole lot of questions regarding who Danny Ainge plans to bring in once buyouts start happening.

I'll post substantively tomorrow. For now, this pretty much sums up how I feel.

Boston 115, Golden State 93

2011-02-23T03:03:00.000-08:00

We'll get to the game in a minute. First, a few words about Bill Walton.

[recap] [box score]

The former Celtic filled in as color commentator alongside play-by-play man Mike Gorman for Tuesday night's broadcast. (Tommy Heinsohn doesn't often make the West Coast swings these days.)

I've done a complete 360 in my opinion of Walton, the broadcaster. (I've always appreciated Walton, the player, though I've only been able live his career through listening to others talk about him, because I was just a little too young to remember him.) Like many, I grew tired of Walton's boorish exaggerations ("John Stockton is one of the true marvels, not just of basketball, or in America, but in the history of Western Civilization!") and forced catchphrases ("Throw it down, big fella, throw it down!"). Over time, however, I came to appreciate him. He's still over the top, but he knows he's over the top. I don't want to use the term "schtick" because Walton's enthusiasm is genuine, but he certainly has a modus operandi.

One of his tendencies is to poke fun at middling NBA players, either by insulting them outright ("The only way Danny Schayes is getting into the Hall of Fame is if he pays the admission fee") or by so exaggerating their abilities that you know his tongue is planted firmly in his cheek ("If Eric Piatkowski continues playing at this level, he's going to replace Jerry West on the NBA logo.")* Tonight's target? Warriors starting center Andris Biedrins, who has fallen off a cliff -- he went from averaging 12 points and 11 rebounds two seasons ago to five and eight last year -- despite not yet turning 25. In the first quarter alone, Walton dropped the following gems:

After Biedrins fouled Kevin Garnett: "You don't want fouls on Biedrins, if you're Boston. You want him in the game."
A few moments later: "What does this Biedrins fellow do?"
After Biedrins bricked a pair of free throws when Delonte West, who had missed the last 39 games with a broken wrist, entered the game for the first time: "Biedrins is the one who looks like he has a broken wrist."
And finally, after Biedrins missed a layup: "He's playing scared. He's playing ... like his feet hurt."

No, I don't know what the last one means, either. And yes, it's probably unnecessarily mean to pick on Biedrins. But it's Walton, and we, as Celtics fans, can forgive him. His undying loyalty to the franchise probably colors my opinion of him.

Walton's playing career, of course, was abbreviated due to injury, and it appeared that his broadcasting career would similarly be cut short thanks to a debilitating back condition. Walton has taken a lot of time off from the microphone in recent years. I'm not sure if he's planning on making the rest of the trip with the Celtics or whether this was a one-shot deal because the Cs were in his native California -- and I won't be able to tell (the Celtics play on TNT on Thursday and at the Clippers on Saturday, which means I get the local broadcast here in LA instead of the Boston telecast on League Pass). But it's good to see him healthy enough to put on the headset, even if only for a few hours.

Bullets:

Walton and the numerous Celtics fans in attendance at Oakland's Oracle arena were treated to a vintage Rajon Rondo performance. 19/6/15 with two steals, and one of those nights where it just feels like he can get wherever he wants, whenever he wants.
Kendrick Perkins banged knees with someone in the third quarter and didn't return. It doesn't seem serious, and it's the left knee, which is not the one he ripped up in the Finals last year. Something to watch, but probably nothing to worry about long-term. The short term is a different story; Boston has to keep winning to stay ahead of Miami in the race for home-court advantage in the East, so even a brief Perkins absence -- especially with Shaq still out -- could be disproportionately costly.
This was Boston's first win in Golden State in seven years, which is fairly remarkable considering that the Warriors have made the playoffs once in the previous six seasons and compiled a combined record of 213 wins and 279 losses over that time (they are 26-30 this year).
One thing that makes playing the Warriors so difficult is that they have some really talented offensive players. After a poor defensive showing in a first half in which they surrendered 60 points, the Celtics held Golden State to just 33 second-half points.
Another thing that is difficult about playing the Warriors is their style. They have no conscience whatsoever, and opposing players can get caught up in the hoist-the-first-halfway-decent-shot-you-get mentality. Nate Robinson fell victim to this a couple of times, though at this point it might be safe to just assume that Nate will always do the wrong thing.
Fortunately, Golden State is really quite bad defensively (they are second in the league in steals, but that's due in large part to the pace of the game -- more possessions for the other team means more steals, and they do encourage more risk-taking on the part of the opposition's offense). Their deficiencies on that end allowed Boston to win handily despite a 14-point deficit at the free throw line.

Next game is at Denver on Thursday, at 10:30 p.m. Eastern on TNT. In their first game without Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups** -- and with the quartet of players from the Knicks not yet in uniform -- the Nuggets hung 120 points on Memphis Tuesday night in a comfortable win. It's still too early to say what the new-look Nuggets are going to be like, but my money's on a continued emphasis on running (Ty Lawson is better-suited to an uptempo game than Billups) and the three-point shot. Wilson Chandler, acquired from the Knicks, brings a little bit of a defensive mindset that was lacking in every key Denver player other than Arron Afflalo, so there might be some minor improvements there. But probably not enough to worry about, though I might well be underestimating the "We're out to show everyone that we don't need 'melo" factor.

*All the past Walton quotes come from this Web page, which has a great compilation of his hits.

** Thoughts on the Carmelo Anthony trade:

1) There was a time when I was pretty sick of all the trade talk, but by the time the deal was close to being done, I found the whole thing very interesting. It was really a staring contest between Anthony, the Nuggets, and the Nets, with the Knicks sort of lingering around the outside. The Nets had extended the Nuggets a Godfather offer: Very-good-but-not-great point guard Devin Harris, promising rookie big Derrick Favors, the third overall pick in last summer's draft, and an incredible four first-round picks. It was a better deal than the itself attractive package the Knicks were offering, which was breakout PG Raymond Felton, Chandler, sharpshooter Danilo Gallinari, and bruising Timofey Mozgov, plus a first and two seconds, but it came with a caveat: New Jersey wouldn't pull the trigger unless Anthony signed an extension.

Once the Knicks -- Anthony's preferred destination -- upped their offer to include Gallinari, it was good enough for the Nuggets to take, which effectively gave no teeth to New Jersey's insistence that Anthony sign an extension prior to a deal going through. Anthony could more or less insist he be shipped to New York under those circumstances by refusing to sign a contract extension, which I'm guessing he did (because I believe Denver would rather have taken Jersey's offer).

Of course, the Nets could have called Anthony's bluff. 'Melo didn't have a no-trade clause or something similar that they were trying to get him to waive; he was just using the extension as a tool to get what he wanted. New Jersey could have rolled the dice by doing the deal anyway, forcing 'Melo to decide between signing an extension with a depleted Nets squad and losing tens of millions of dollars in free agency.

Here's the thing. 'Melo signed an extension worth three years and $65 million. Because of rules that allow teams to pay their own free agents more, that's more than he would have made in the first three years of a new contract with the Knicks in free agency (my calculations have it at around $6 million more, but my understanding of this part of the CBA is severely lacking).

But that's the current CBA, which expires this summer. It's a near-certainty that the new agreement will restrict player salaries below what they currently are, and thus the difference between signing an extension and waiting for free agency could easily climb into the tens of millions of dollars. So the Nets could simply have called Anthony's bluff and agreed to the trade, banking on Anthony not wanting to give up that much money. The same holds true for the Nuggets; Anthony said he wouldn't sign an extension, but if Denver wasn't getting value for him, it might have been a good strategy to simply hang on to him and hope he'd stick around for the money. It's a lot of money to give up.

Instead, the Nets and Nuggets blinked and the Knicks and Anthony got what they wanted.

2. Or, at least, what they think they wanted. Anthony has non-basketball reasons for wanting to play in New York, and I can't criticize those. And I can't say that I think it's a bad move, necessarily, for the Knicks. But I do think it's hardly a sure thing that the Knicks will be materially better for it, both now and in the future.

For starters, I think there are serious deficiencies with a Anthony-Amare' Stoudemire core. There's no commitment to defense in either of those players, and head coach Mike D'Antoni is famously focused on offense. Even if we assume that Boston will be out of the picture after this year and that Orlando has irrevocably screwed up its team with its trades this year, the Knicks are still going to have to deal with Miami and Chicago for the next several years. Both are outstanding defensive teams that aren't slouches on the offensive end, either. You can't beat either of them in a seven-game series simply by being very good on offense, and at best, that's all the Knicks will be: very good on offense. Additionally, the pairs and trios of stars that have worked of late have worked because of complementary skill sets: The Big Three in Boston, for example, work because they fit together (Garnett on the inside, Paul Pierce as a slasher, Ray Allen as a shooter), because of Rondo, and because Garnett can affect a game so profoundly without doing much offensively; LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh have worked in Miami because of defense and James' uncanny passing ability. A couple of guys who need the ball a ton -- paired with a point guard, Billups, who isn't a traditional playmaker and might not be a great fit, at his age, for D'Antoni's offense -- don't really fit together all that well.

Secondly, if we think of these teams as engaging in some sort of arms race, the Knicks are already one star behind Miami. The new CBA might even make it all but impossible to build a core consisting of three studs the way the Heat have. But even if it doesn't -- even if, say, Chris Paul or Deron Williams makes it to New York the offseason after this one to take Billups' place -- they'll be a full two years behind in chemistry. And the way things are currently set up, with the draft and various salary cap exceptions, you can add a player or two per year to your core. That is, the Heat, having already assembled their "Big Three," can start adding role players to join Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem this offseason. The Knicks will have to make do with surprising rookie Landry Fields alongside Anthony and Stoudemire, saving their cap room until they can get another stud, and then adding free agents in the seasons following. So they'll be another player behind Miami because of that, too.

This all assumes that the model the Heat have followed is a successful one. Time will tell on that, though it certainly can be argued that competing with James/Wade/Bosh is too tall a task for Anthony/Stoudemire/whomever.

3. Again, I'm not saying it was a bad deal for the Knicks. They'd placated their fan base for two years by explaining that they were clearing cap room for a big move last year, and having missed out on James, they needed to do something. And they might not have wanted Anthony to go to the Nets, who are scheduled to move to Brooklyn in a couple of years. (I think this is overstated, though, as is the argument that Anthony will drum up interest in the team. That's a decent argument for most NBA franchises, but not the Knicks, one of the league's most popular outfits. They've got no problems selling tickets and merch at MSG.) But I don't think it gets tem any closer to contending for a title, this year or beyond.

Thoughts in Between the Lakers and the Heat

2011-02-12T15:10:00.000-08:00

First of all, congratulations to Ray Allen on becoming the all-time three-point king. Prior to his arrival in Boston, my exposure to Ray was more or less limited to his days at UConn. It wasn't until he came over from Seattle in 2007-08 that I truly appreciated what a beautiful shooter he is. Despite that, I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little emotional watching the Boston crowd salute him during the break after the first quarter. He helped us win at least one championship. He's one of us now.

Anyway, moving on, the Celtics lost to the Lakers on Thursday. Give credit to LA for playing a smart game, especially Kobe Bryant. In essence, they played the way I and so many others have repeatedly said they need to play in order to beat the Celtics: focus on their advantage in the post. What was especially impressive was how patient the Lakers were, not panicking as Boston built a 15-point lead. Bryant didn't try to do too much; he had faith in his teammates as they closed to within striking distance at halftime. Kobe came alive in the third quarter as the Lakers took the lead (and retook it after Boston briefly surged back ahead). But LA was able to extend the lead in the fourth quarter even with Kobe on the bench.

More than anything, I see Thursday's loss as making Danny Ainge think even harder about going out and getting another small forward before the trade deadline, with Marquis Daniels' return this season uncertain. Scott Foster hit Allen with his fourth foul on a dubious call midway through the third, and Doc Rivers' only real option on the bench was Von Wafer. Wafer's offense has really come around lately and he's worked harder on defense than I previously thought him capable of, but he's not going to be able to hang with Kobe. And while Delonte West may be able to help with that specific matchup, he won't be able to help with, say, LeBron James. And someone other than Paul Pierce is going to have to guard James for stretches should the Celtics meet the Heat in the playoffs.

What that move might be, I don't know. I don't know who's available, and I don't know what we're willing to offer. We don't have many attractive expiring contracts, and our rookies don't make enough money to bring in any significant salary. But both Doc and Danny suggested in the days after Daniels' injury that a move might need to be made, and Thursday night couldn't have done anything but strengthen that opinion.

The temptation, by the way, is to blame injuries on Thursday's loss. Boston started the game with just ten men in uniform, and in the second quarter, Nate Robinson joined West, Daniels, Jermaine O'Neal, Shaquille O'Neal, and Semih Erden on the list of unavailable players, victim of a bruised knee. But as a Celtics fan pointed out on a Laker message board after the game, Boston's starters played plenty of minutes, substantially the amount of minutes you might expect with a full complement of bench players. And the second unit actually did alright -- the game was lost with our starters on the floor.

I do think that simplifies things a bit, and not having a real backup for Allen is a problem that would be solved in this instance if either Daniels or West was healthy. But Boston's starters didn't play well enough for fans to complain that a healthy bench would have made a difference. It might on any one particular night, but it won't for a whole playoff series. If I was going to make an excuse, I'd point to the illness that kept Pierce out of practice on Wednesday. He didn't look to be close to 100% in the game.

As Sports Illustrated's Zach Lowe (a former Celtics Hub writer) pointed out, the Lakers were successful defensively by sagging Kobe off of Rajon Rondo, daring Rondo to beat them with jumpers while Kobe disrupted passing and driving lanes. (Read that Lowe article if you're interested in the Xs and Os.) LA has defended Boston like this for several years now, with varying degrees of success. (A flashback to the 07-08 Finals provides a good example. The Lakers used it to jump out to their huge lead in Game 4; Boston's historic comeback came with Eddie House on the floor. Rondo was similarly in effective in Boston's Game 5 loss, playing just 14:32, but was masterful in the Game 6 clincher in Boston.)

Clearly, there are offensive adjustments that can be made (and have been made in the past). For starters, Rondo can be more aggressive. Boston can bring its offense out higher, leaving more room underneath for Rondo to maneuver on penetration. Rondo can attack the defense from somewhere other than the top of the key, forcing the Lakers to pay more attention to him (if, say, he starts closer to the basket). And I'm sure Doc has plenty of other ideas.

But I'm not sure we'll see such adjustments any time soon, even if another team picks up this strategy. The lack of adjustment in the Lakers game suggests to me that perhaps Doc doesn't want to tip his hand. The Lakers' defensive strategy isn't new. Surely, he has a plan for it. But I can see how he wouldn't want to reveal that plan until necessary -- until the games count, in May and June.

Lowe also mentions the possibility that Miami, Boston's opponent on Sunday, also has the personnel to employ such a strategy, while a team like Orlando does not. Thinking about the Heat though, I'm not so sure. Matching up position-by-position across the perimeter, it would be Rondo-Mario Chalmers, Allen-Dwyane Wade, Pierce-James. Los Angeles executes the strategy by switching Derek Fisher -- a strong, crafty veteran -- on Allen, with Kobe playing free agent. While I think Wade can be effective in the Kobe role, I'm skeptical that Chalmers (or Carlos Arroyo) can handle Ray the way Fisher can.

The other option, and the think the one Lowe had in mind, is to have James sag off Rondo with Mike Miller checking Pierce (and Wade staying on Allen). Miller was unavailable during the teams' first two meetings, but with James and Wade, the Heat don't need a true point guard. I'm honestly not sure of Miller's defensive abilities, but thing that weighs in Boston's favor here is that unlike Allen, whose game is largely based on running off a maze of screens, Pierce is plenty comfortable with the ball in his hands. Therefore, Boston could iso Pierce on any part of the floor that it wanted, keeping the extra defender as far away from him as possible. Pierce excels at the pull-up jumper, too, which is perfect for this kind of situation, because he can get off a good shot before the help gets there. The one thing he needs to be careful of is his tendency to turn his back; that's just asking for James to swoop in for a steal and dunk.

Something to watch for, anyway. And you better be watching. Sunday, 1 p.m. Eastern, ABC. First place in the East is on the line.

Charlotte 94, Boston 89

2011-02-08T02:49:00.000-08:00

Excuses, anyone?

[recap] [box score]

The most obvious excuse for the loss is that Monday's contest was a classic "trap" game, the day after a big game with Orlando, with the Lakers and Heat on the horizon. Throw in the fact that this was a road game on the second night of a back-to-back -- CelticsBlog reports that the Cs are now 2-7 in such situations this season -- and yeah, we should have seen it coming.

Another possible excuse is that five Boston bench players -- fully one-third of the roster -- were out with injuries. Sure, we've gotten used to life without Delonte West and Jermaine O'Neal, but this was the first game since Marquis Daniels' freak neck injury, and the team was missing a couple other centers, too (Shaquille O'Neal and Semih Erden -- by the way, is there another NBA team that has four centers?). We can't expect to win games at the same rate we were winning -- even against the Bobcats -- with such limited personnel. Right?

The thing is, Boston's bench was okay tonight. Not great; just okay, and admittedly, we'll need better than "okay" from the second unit now and in the playoffs if we're going to reach our goals of another chip. But it was the Celtics starters that lost this game, not the bench. What's even more interesting is that Boston's starting five -- a group that includes four Eastern Conference All-Stars -- was outplayed down the stretch by Charlotte's reserves.

Gerald Wallace was the only Charlotte starter to play meaningful minutes in the fourth quarter. Running the point was 6-7 Shaun Livingston, whose size made him a much tougher matchup than the man he backs up, D.J. Augustin. Livingston finished with 18 points. At the shooting guard spot, Gerald Henderson -- yes, the son of that Gerald Henderson -- replaced Stephen Jackson (abruptly ejected in the second quarter for protesting too much) and used his size and fresh legs to repeatedly burn Ray Allen on his way to 15 points on a variety of pull-ups and drives to the basket. Eduardo Najera came in for Boris Diaw (who was having one of those inconsistent, nearly invisible nights that make him Boris Diaw) and in addition to providing his trademark toughness, hit a huge three-pointer that pushed the lead from three to six in the closing minutes. And Nazr Mohammed manned the pivot in place of Kwame Brown. Mohammed didn't do a whole lot, but one of the things he didn't do was shoot one-for-nine, which Brown did do. At one point in the second half, Brown airballed an unconsted ten-foot jumper, missing left by at least a foot; at another point, he managed to leave a one-foot jump hook short. It's called addition by subtraction. (To his credit, Brown did grab 12 rebounds -- though this isn't much of an accomplishment for someone 6-11 who played in a basketball game in which 91 shots were missed.)

So, you know, all credit to the Bobcats. They responded well to the Jackson ejection, even though Captain Jack had carried the scoring load in the first quarter. Henderson and Livingston were mighty impressive. And credit coach Paul Silas, too. Under Silas, the Bobcats have gone 13-10 after a 9-19 start doomed the fate of Larry Brown. I like Silas, in part because he's a former Celtic (albeit a former Celtic I'm not old enough to have seen play), but mostly (and relatedly) because he's a fairly random basketball person that my mother recognizes when she sees him on TV. It's always unexpected when Mom pulls out an "Is that Paul Silas?"

From Boston's perspective, they lost this game because they weren't aggressive on offense. Rajon Rondo looked to be picking up where he left off against Orlando, scoring ten points in the first period, but then didn't score again. Paul Pierce and Ray Allen settled for too many jump shots. For whatever reason, it was a lazy offensive performance.

At any rate, the Celtics should be well-rested by the time the Lakers take to the parquet on Thursday, though they'll still be undermanned. (Of the sidelined Celtics, Erden is the only one about whom I have not heard anything that suggests that he won't be available on Thursday (or Sunday against the Heat, for that matter.) It's safe to say that the Lakers will be fired up and looking for a measure of revenge for Boston's win at their barn last month. Yes, Boston will need a stronger performance from its bench for that game. But it will also need a better, more focused performance from the starters, as well.

Boston 91, Orlando 80

2011-02-07T13:18:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

Precious little time to blog about this game, as my Internet cut out right around kickoff time yesterday and I couldn't get it restored until this morning (with a lot on my plate today).

Bullets:

Marquis Daniels' freak injury -- a bruised spinal cord -- is going to have him out at least a month and quite possibly longer. Daniels' personal long-term health is of course the most important concern and in that regard the news is good -- given how long he stayed on the court, it could have been a lot worse. On the court, his absence means that four of Boston's top reserves -- him, both O'Neals, and Delonte West, will likely be out of the lineup this week when Miami and the Lakers come to Boston. Thankfully, Von Wafer has played a lot better of late -- maybe he can fill some of the void Daniels leaves. Expect to see more of Luke Harangody than we have of late. The other big question will be how much Doc is willing to play Paul Pierce and Ray Allen in some of these "big" games. The Heat are bearing down on us for home-court advantage in the East.
Rajon Rondo was spectacular, playing as aggressively as we've seen him all year. It was the kind of game we need from him offensively against the strong defensive teams in the league. Opponents have their hands full with Pierce, Allen, and Garnett, and are willing to let Rondo beat them if he can. There'll be plenty of opportunities for Rondo to take over games like this in the playoffs, and we'll need him to do it from time to time if we're going to win a title.
I don't know what to make of Orlando these days, though I'm leaning heavily -- as I have been since the December trades that shook up their roster -- towards worrying less and less about them. Gilbert Arenas, plucked from Washington for Rashard Lewis, has been a disaster. He didn't score on Sunday. The other new key additions, Hedo Turkoglu and Jason Richardson, have been decent, though inconsistent, and not a huge upgrade over Vince Carter. And the loss of Marcin Gortat, as I've said here before, gives the Magic zero reliable big man depth behind Dwight Howard -- whose petulant elbow to Kendrick Perkins' sternum on Sunday led to his 14th technical foul on the season, just two away from suspension. Getting back Brandon Bass, who is having an excellent year, will help some, but it's still a three-man rotation at the 4/5 spots (Howard, Bass, and Ryan Anderson). It's enough to win a game or two, but a whole series against a team like Boston? I don't think so.
Boston's at Charlotte tonight, then has the Lakers on Thursday (on TNT) and the Heat on Sunday (ABC).

Dallas 101, Boston 97

2011-02-04T21:22:00.000-08:00

Friday's game was one of those where I was legitimately surprised that the Celtics couldn't finish the job.

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It's not even that we played that well; we didn't. Our defense was terrible in the first half, as was our offensive execution over the game's final two minutes. But it just seemed -- hmm, how do I say this without taking credit away from the Mavs? -- it just seemed like we were making far more plays down the stretch than they were. Yeah, we didn't score for the final 2:42, but we came up with a bunch of great stops defensively, whereas it seemed like we were just missing shots on our end, rather than being stopped.

Anyway, I can't be too mad at the key play, a Jason Kidd three that put Dallas up two with just seconds left. The Mavs ran Jason Terry off a Dirk Nowitzki screen, with Action Dirk rolling to the basket. Boston's defense was in place; Nowitzki was free to catch the ball, but he would have had a contested shot. Terry's pass was low and Nowitzki booted it. The ball was loose just long enough for Ray Allen to react to it, leaving Kidd open in the process. Dirk recovered quickly enough to beat everyone to the ball, kicked it to Kidd, who patiently waited for Allen to fly by before knocking down the game-winner.

Allen was pretty magnificent tonight, actually, coming alive offensively in the third quarter. He also contributed a huge block of Tyson Chandler in the fourth, and battled Chandler for the rebound on a Dallas miss that ended up out of bounds to Boston. These were all things I was prepared to write about in more detail had the Celtics won. Instead, because the Cs lost, I'm forced to question the quick three-pointer Allen took under a minute to go. It would have iced the game and frankly I'm perfectly fine with him taking that look, but I'm sure some will question the shot selection.

Kendrick Perkins started tonight in place of Shaquille O'Neal, who is out with some sort of Achilles injury and probably won't play Sunday against Orlando, either. Perk was great, with 13 points and 12 boards, including a couple of tip-ins and another bucket in the fourth. He looks terrific out there, and I think it's safe to say we have our starting center back. Just in time, too; in addition to Shaq's latest malady, word came after tonight's game that Jermaine O'Neal had knee surgery and is expected back in six to eight weeks -- in other words, expected back in time to mess up the rotation. More likely, because Doc Rivers is sensitive to these things, he'll be back in time to be available in absolute emergencies. But I'm not expecting anything out of JON the rest of the year.

Kevin Garnett started really hot and then missed something like nine of his last ten shots, including a long jumper that went in and out on the possession before the Kidd dagger. He also got hit with a technical foul for pushing J.J. Barea, which isn't that big of a deal. However, during the minor fracas with Barea, he also pushed away the arm of official Eric Lewis, drawing a reprimand of sorts from ESPN play-by-play man Mike Breen.

I doubt very much it's something the league is worried about, and therefore I don't bring it up in the context of it possibly costing him some money or even a game. KG did the same thing when Steve Javie was trying to keep him away from Channing Frye in the dustup in Phoenix last week. I mention it only to draw attention to what I thought looked like unprofessional conduct from Lewis: It sure looked to me like Lewis pushed KG back after Garnett swatted his arm away.

Generally speaking, I think it's a bad idea to put your hands on someone who is fired up. This is an accepted practice in breaking up NBA scuffles, however, so I'm not going to criticize Lewis for that. And if the rule is a player, KG in this case, can't swat an official's arm away, than I guess I have to live with that, too. But part of the officials' job is to keep a cool head when tempers flare, the same way, say, players aren't supposed to run into the stands when someone throws a beer at them. Lewis obviously didn't go after KG, but he reacted poorly. After KG pushed Lewis' arm away and Lewis responded by shoving KG's arm, Lewis then gestured with his thumb while talking with fellow official Bob Delaney -- at Garnett, perhaps, or perhaps suggesting that Garnett be shown the exit. It was as if Lewis was saying to Delaney: "You deal with him." That's not an acceptable mindset for an NBA official to have, and Lewis' actions were inappropriate.

As for Dallas, they're a pretty strong team. They're dealing with the loss of their starting small forward, Caron Butler, as well as a nagging ankle injury to Nowitzki that caused him to miss nine games earlier in the season. (It speaks to how talented Nowitzki is offensively that he scored 29 points against one of the league's best defenses while being far less than 100 percent healthy.) They've got DeShawn Stevenson in their starting lineup, which is okay as long as he doesn't finish games, and he nearly cost coach Rick Carlisle the win Friday night before Carlisle took him out. They also have a ton of scoring punch off the bench, with Shawn Marion, Barea, and Jason Terry, and they may get Rodrigue Beaubois back in time to contribute down the stretch. They're certainly deeper than the Lakers and Spurs, but I'm not sure they have the horses to beat those teams in a seven-game series. I wouldn't overlook them, though.

Boston 95, Sacramento 90

2011-02-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

Ray Allen does a lot of things I wish I could do. After last night, you can add tearing into Boston's second unit to that list.

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The Celtics starters had played a sloppy but effective first quarter, turning the ball over too much but keeping the clamps on the Kings for a 27-20 lead at the end of the period. The second unit promptly squandered that lead, and Boston went into the locker room down down by nine. Among the biggest transgressions: Surrendering 13 points to backup forward Donte' Greene in the quarter; Nate Robinson blowing the simplest play in basketball by not giving the ball back to Marquis Daniels on a two-on-one break, charging into Pooh Jeter instead; and Glen Davis getting blocked by DeMarcus Cousins, retrieving the ball, then trying a fadeaway 10-footer in traffic that was blocked by Omar Casspi. I certainly would have had a few choice words for the guys myself after that type of performance.

Actually, I have no idea what, exactly, set Ray off, but something did, and it kept Boston from dropping an obvious "trap" game at the end of a road trip. Robinson struggled with his offense in the second half, but was huge on defense, diving for loose balls and accumulating five steals. He played well enough to earn the nod over Rajon Rondo in crunch time, Doc Rivers electing continuity rather than bringing Rondo back in the fourth quarter as the Celtics put the game away. And Davis responded with ten points in the period.

Lest Allen's rare appearance as a vocal leader outshine his play, I should point out that he backed up his words with another outstanding game. He's been dialed in all year, now shooting nearly 51 percent from the floor overall and nearly 46 percent from behind the arc. Watching him play, Allen looks more like he's got shooting down to a science than anyone I've ever seen, and it's most noticeable when he puts the ball on the floor and then takes a pullup in the lane. Allen hangs on the air on these shots, calibrating himself and seemingly calculating the exact arc and power his shot needs. He's been the most fun Celtic to watch this season, and given that two of his teammates are having perhaps career years and a third has resurrected a career that seemed headed downward due to a knee injury, that's saying something.

Rondo had a strong game, too, going into attack mode early and supplementing Allen's scoring in the first half. Kendrick Perkins was solid inside off the bench, and I imagine it won't be terribly long before Doc Rivers installs him as the starter. After the All-Star break, perhaps?

Boston 109, Los Angeles Lakers 96

2011-01-31T00:20:00.000-08:00

Revenge? Hardly. But a satisfying win nonetheless.

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For one game, at least, the Celtics solved all the problems that doomed them in the second half of Game Seven last June. Rather than getting stagnant in the second half, the offense ran smoothly and effectively, first through Paul Pierce (32 points), then through Rajon Rondo (16 assists, including 15 in the second half). Instead of getting killed on the boards, Boston came away with a with a decisive 43-30 rebounding advantage. Sure, Kobe Bryant had a relatively efficient 41 points on 29 shots, but he wasn't what beat Boston last season. And while looking ahead to a possible Boston-LA rematch in this year's Finals is putting the cart well before the horse (not to mention the Heat, Magic, and Spurs), should the teams meet again in June, Kobe won't beat Boston himself, either.

My power went out, of all things, during the second quarter, and I retired to a local cantina with my girlfriend, Liz, for the remainder of the contest. We joined a growing group of similarly situated folks in our neighborhood, and as the restaurant grew more and more packed, we spotted a couple along one of the walls who hadn't found a seat. She was wearing a Celtics jacket, he a Pearl Jam sweatshirt, and figuring that people so attired couldn't be that bad, I invited them to join us at our table. Amanda and Colby were two of only a handful of Boston fans at the bar, a group which included a young black woman in green-and-white striped socks who got off her bar stool to kick up her heels after literally every Celtics bucket. I generally try to avoid bars for important games, because I don't like to be distracted, but it was a fun way to watch.

Anyway, back to the basketball, with some bullets:

Pierce was just outstanding today. Historically, Ron Artest has guarded him fairly well, but The Truth got off early, then tore the Lakers apart in the third quarter, scoring 14 points in the first seven minutes of the period. His hot hand forced the Lakers to switch Kobe on to him, which meant taking him off Rondo. The Lakers are one of the few teams that guard Rondo by sagging way off of him, a strategy that seems to perplex Boston's young point guard more on the road than at home. When Bryant guards Rondo, he's available to help and clog the lane, while his length counteracts some of the head start Rondo gets on penetration. With Bryant on Pierce, Rondo penetrated freely, finding the open man and an occasional layup for himself.
Ray Allen fought off early foul trouble to score 21 points. Ray was 8-for-11 from the field and 3-for-7 from beyond the arc; the Celtics shot better than 60 percent from the floor and 52 percent from three for the game.
Kendrick Perkins came off the bench for the fourth straight game. Many think he was the missing link -- that his torn ACL in Game 6 last year cost Boston the title -- but the big difference inside, from a Boston perspective, was Kevin Garnett. KG had 18 points, 13 rebounds, and five assists, but looking long-term, the major point is the one we've been making all year -- he's back to something close to his pre-injury form.
Nate Robinson had his first decent game in a while. He still took one or two questionable shots ("A heat check," I explained to Liz when she objected to one of his hoists, to which Colby added: "Every shot Nate takes is a heat check") but he scored 11 valuable points.
The only other bench player who did much of anything was Glen Davis. Big Baby has something of a reputation on showing up in big games, in part due to his playoff performances in KG's absence two seasons ago. He did seem to play with more focus today than he has in recent games, taking fewer long jumpers and patiently carving out space underneath before going up. By virtue of his extra-wide body, Davis has always had the ability to finish inside, but has often failed in that regard, going up quickly without using his body to protect the ball, seemingly forgetting that he's a lot shorter than most of the defenders who tend to hang around the basket.

After the game, Phil Jackson apparently had this to say: "It's not the playoffs yet. We're still playing regular season games. We'll get there in time."

On the one hand, Jackson's right: It is still the regular season, and Celtics fans should temper their reactions to Sunday because of that. And the Lakers succeeded with the ramp-it-up-in-the-postseason strategy last year on the way to their second title, a tactic that nearly got the Celtics a ring last season, too.

And yet this season has a number of things that last season didn't. The list starts with the San Antonio Spurs, the first team to 40 wins this season and current holders of a seven-and-a-half game lead over the Lakers. I'm still stumped as to how, exactly, the Spurs are doing this, but they are, and there's no reason to think they'll slow down enough to be caught. LA is facing the possibility of a conference finals series without home court advantage, something that really wasn't a concern last year.

The Lakers are also now four games behind the Celtics in the loss column, which could be meaningful should they meet in the Finals. If Perkins' absence in Games 6 and 7 wasn't the X-factor last year, than home court advantage might well have been, and at this pace, Boston would have it. (Again, I know I'm getting ahead of myself talking about a Boston-LA Finals. But I guarantee you the players are thinking about the same thing.)

At any rate, I just don't buy it. If Jackson wasn't concerned about the regular season, why switch Bryant on to Pierce? Why play Bryant, in his 15th NBA season, 40 minutes against the Heat? Why play Pau Gasol, wearied by playoff and international ball the last several years, 40 minutes or more on 15 occasions already?

Even if Jackson is telling the truth and doesn't care, his players do. Kobe, one of the all-time competitors (though perhaps a touch over-rated in that regard) certainly does. And Gasol and Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom looked, to me, more intimidated than disinterested in Sunday's second half.

In the big picture, Sunday's win means little more than my being able to wear a Pierce shirt tomorrow and talk a little trash with my friends here in LA. But for me, each win like this one means a little something. I think last summer had a profound effect on me; the outcome of the Finals shaking the very foundation upon which many of my ideas about basketball are built. Seeing these Celtics in form -- in 2007-08 form -- restores some order to my brain.

Phoenix 88, Boston 71

2011-01-29T09:25:00.000-08:00

Friday was one of those nights in the NBA.

[recap] [box score]

It was somewhat predictable, really. The second night of a road back-to-back is always tough, and Phoenix' up-tempo style is particularly difficult to deal with. In addition, Boston's got a huge game coming up on Sunday against the Lakers. And the Celtics had struggled in Thursday night's win against Portland.

Some quick bullets:

Doc Rivers got thrown out in the second quarter after Steve Javie hit him with two quick Ts. The first was probably justified -- the second came awfully quick thereafter.
The AP wire story linked above focuses quite a bit on an allegedly low blow that Kevin Garnett laid on Channing Frye. It wasn't nearly as bad as the story makes it sound. Earlier in the game, Garnett had closed out on a Frye jumper and gotten a little too close, and Frye landed on KG's foot and tweaked his ankle a bit. Late in the game, the same sort of thing happened, with KG subtly trying to jab Frye in the stomach, a fairly common tactic to distract a shooter. He missed, but the contact to Frye's groin area wasn't what set Frye off. The ensuing melee -- for which Garnett was thrown out merely, it appeared, for talking -- was caused by Frye's belief that KG was purposely getting underneath him and endangering his knee and ankle.
Boston was actually in the game at that point, having been energized by a flagrant foul on Phoenix's Mickael Pietrus. Pietrus ran through a Garnett screen with his arms up, catching KG in the neck and jaw area. It was a much bigger cheap shot than what Garnett did to Frye, unless you believe that KG was actually trying to hurt Frye by sticking his foot out for Frye to land on. I don't.
Basketball-wise, there isn't much to talk about. Boston couldn't shoot and couldn't hang on to the ball. No one played well offensively. Defensively, they weren't horrible, but the bigs got pushed around by Robin Lopez and Marcin Gortat, and that kind of set the tone.
Glen Davis didn't play in the second half after straining his hamstring in the first. I hear it's not serious, but I'm unsure if he'll play Sunday against the Lakers.
Speaking of the Lakers, as bad as we were on Friday, at least we didn't lose to the Kings at home.

Boston 88, Portland 78

2011-01-28T10:04:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

The Celtics kicked off a four-game road trip with a chippy, sloppy win over injury-depleted Portland.

The Blazers, playing without Brandon Roy, Marcus Camby, and (of course) Greg Oden decided from the opening tip that they weren't going to be intimidated or pushed around by Boston, and Boston, for its part, seems to relish the opportunity. The result was a physical, ugly contest for three quarters. But some solid work on both ends of the floor from the second unit gave the Celtics a 15-point lead with 4:22 remaining, which proved to be enough of a cushion to protect against missed free throws and Portland suddenly getting hot from three-point range.

Things actually got really dicey when Marquis Daniels stepped to the line with Boston up 82-77 with 42 seconds left and promptly missed both free throws. But Kevin Garnett simply outworked LaMarcus Aldridge for the rebound, and Glen Davis was able to knock down a pair from the line to seal the victory. It was the final stamp on a terrific all-around night from KG, who put up a Rondo-esque ten points, nine boards, and nine assists.

Kendrick Perkins looked great again, with ten points and nine boards in nearly 21 minutes, a little bit more floor time than what we've been told Perk will be playing at this stage. Von Wafer also had a strong game off the bench, and I have to admit I'm starting to talk myself into him. He replaced Nate Robinson in the rotation in the second half and had a couple of nice buckets and a steal. I still think Nate's our guy at the backup 2 when Delonte West returns, but for now, as Nate continues to struggle to define his role, we may see more Wafer.

Boston 112, Cleveland 95

2011-01-26T00:50:00.000-08:00

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The Celtics sent the Cavs to their 18th straight loss blah blah blah blah...

Kendrick Perkins returned to the lineup!

Forgive me for skipping to the important part. But a win against the hapless Cavs, even one that avenges, as this one does, an early-season loss, is nothing to write about. The return of big number 43, just seven months after tearing his ACL in the opening minutes of Game 6 of the NBA Finals, is.

I knew Perk was close to coming back; reports had established February 4 against Dallas as his target return date. But seeing him suit up Tuesday night, a week and a half early, was certainly a surprise.

Perkins' return has to be considered a big success. First and most importantly, he showed no real ill effects, physically, from the injury or the surgery to repair it. He moved laterally. He ran hard up the floor -- his familiar, loping gait providing reassurance that all was well. He challenged shots, fought for rebounds, and finished at the basket.

He played so well, in fact, and the atmosphere surrounding his return was so positive, that one has to pause to remind oneself that this is Kendrick Perkins we're talking about. No one recognizes the value of what Perkins brings to the floor more than Boston fans do, but he doesn't suddenly make the Celtics an unstoppable force. He had eight points and six rebounds in limited minutes against a pathetic and undersized Cavs front line, and those totals are more or less in line with what we can expect from him as he works himself into better shape and plays against stiffer competition.

But Perkins is a big piece of a title contender, and it's reassuring to have him back out on the floor. His absence may have cost the Celtics a title last year. His return may win them one this season.

Washington 85, Boston 83

2011-01-23T10:16:00.000-08:00

The Celtics followed up an inspired blowout of Utah on Friday night with an embarrassing loss to the Washington Wizards.

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After an easy first period in which the Cs raced out to a 35-20 lead, the ball simply stopped going in the basket for Boston. If you watched the game or are any good at math, you'll already have figured out that after that first quarter, Boston scored just 48 points the rest of the way. Jumpers stopped falling, the bench didn't really contribute, and by and large the whole team just looked disinterested.

For their part, the Wizards didn't look much better. The matchup everyone was excited to see coming into the game was John Wall vs. Rajon Rondo, Wall being the top overall pick in last year's draft who didn't play due to injury in Washington's trip to Boston on November 17 (a 31-point Celtics win). Wall stole the headlines by banking in a three-pointer with less than a minute left to put the Wizards up three, but that seems to be because sportswriters don't seem to want to admit what a lucky shot that was. (To his credit, Wall recognized what they didn't: "I knew it was going to hit backboard, but I thought it was going to be a hard brick. It could've broken the backboard. Luckily, it went in.")

Other than that prayer, Wall's biggest play was a layup in transition with 2:34 to play that gave the Wizards their first lead of the game, after coming up empty on no fewer than eight fourth-quarter possessions with the score tied or Washington down a single point. Rondo wasn't spectacular, but he was quite a bit better than Wall all night. Had Paul Pierce been able to knock down the game-winner over Andray Blatche, all anyone would be talking about today was Rondo's strip of Wall on Washington's last possession that gave Pierce the chance to win the game. Don't get me wrong, Wall is going places and I really like the way he handles himself. I just want to temper everyone's reaction to the game by pointing out that Rondo more or less kicked his butt all night.

Shaquille O'Neal sat out after injuring his hip on Friday night against the Jazz, a game in which he played just six minutes. The injury may be related to when Shaq fell on some ice around Christmastime. With Jermaine O'Neal out for the next month or so to strengthen his legs and hopefully be able to play down the stretch, Semih Erden got the start. Doc, at least, doesn't think Shaq's injury is serious, but with the Lakers looming at the end of the week, it's something to keep an eye on.

Glen Davis got the most minutes of any Boston frontcourt player -- give Doc credit for not riding Kevin Garnett too much, which would have been easy under the circumstances -- and seemed to fall back into his habit of relying on jumpers. It seems that this becomes Davis' MO when Shaq is out and he feels he needs to be a bigger part of the offense. Hopefully, he can be broken of that habit.

The Next Lamb: The Utah Jazz

2011-01-20T16:43:00.000-08:00

Game 42: Utah (27-15) at Boston (32-9)

Friday, January 21

7:30 p.m. Eastern

NBA League Pass

Boston finishes up a stretch of nine home dates in ten games (including six home games in a row) against the Utah Jazz, themselves in the middle of a five-game road trip that has begun ominously with losses to Washington and New Jersey (combined record: 23-59).

Utah is led by the excellent Deron Williams at point guard, one of the few at the position who can be said to be better than Boston's Rajon Rondo. Williams is big and strong, shoots the jumper well coming off of ball screens, and excels at getting to the line on penetration. Williams is also an excellent passer who is again among the league leaders in assists, as he has been for all but the first of his six professional seasons. Rondo seems to find something a little extra for his battles with the league's elite, so expect a fun matchup here. Williams was more or less average in two games against Boston last year, but his size and strength bring to mind Derrick Rose, who the Celtics have had a fair amount of trouble with in this and recent seasons.

Williams' old partner in picking and popping, Carlos Boozer, left in the off-season for Chicago, leaving a spot open at power forward for Paul Millsap, a RwH favorite from his college days at Louisiana Tech. Always an outstanding rebounder, Millsap turned heads with his early season offensive outburst, including a 46-point explosion in a dramatic road victory over the Miami Heat. He's struggled in the last three games, apparently with some foul trouble, but he's definitely a guy Kevin Garnett has to pay attention to.

Utah center Al Jefferson's season has followed something of the opposite pattern to Millsap's. After coming over from Minnesota in the offseason, the hard-working Jefferson really struggled to find his rhythm. He's started to come around, shooting at least 50 percent from the field in each of the last six games. Jefferson, of course, spent the first three years of his career in Boston before being thrown to the Wolves in the Kevin Garnett deal. He's an earnest, humble guy who loved being a Celtic and the fans recognize that, so I expect a warm reception for Big Al J from the Garden crowd -- if not from Shaquille O'Neal.

Boston 86, Detroit 82

2011-01-20T15:58:00.000-08:00

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A few laurels to hand out on what was an otherwise ugly game:

Shaquille O'Neal was all over the court, rebounding on both ends, blocking shots, and diving for loose balls. I'm not sure what motivates Shaq to play like this -- or, to phrase the issue a bit more pessimistically, what prevents him from playing this way all the time -- but it's good to see he has it in him. The Celtics should have gone to him more on the offensive end; nine shot attempts is not enough for man his size going up against the likes of Chris Wilcox and Greg Monroe. Boston has had no qualms about riding the hot hand of Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and even Marquis Daniels in recent games. There's no reason why they should be shy about going to the big fella until the other team figures out how to stop it.
Ray Allen's confidence -- and the confidence the team has in Ray Allen -- never ceases to amaze me. Despite the fact that the soon-to-be all-time leader in made three-pointers was cold all night (even missing a pair of free throws), the Celtics still went to him in crunch time, running him off a screen on the right wing with the score tied at 82 and maybe half a minute left. To the surprise of no one, Allen buried a jumper -- though he did have his foot on the three-point line, another sign he was just a bit out of calibration all evening.
Glen Davis seems comfortable back in his bench role, and he's continuing to see minutes at the end of games, which I think we can expect all season. He's looking for that 18-foot jumper a lot less now, instead preferring to quickly reverse the ball and keep the offense moving. His biggest play Wednesday night came on what was effectively Detroit's last possession, going straight up to bother a Ben Gordon drive with the Celtics up two. Most guys would foul there, but Davis maintained his verticality and forced Gordon into a tough shot, which he missed. Gordon actually could have easily been whistled for an offensive foul himself for discarding Davis with his left arm while laying the ball up with his right.

Boston 109, Orlando 106

2011-01-17T23:14:00.000-08:00

Welcome back, Kevin.

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Sidelined by a right calf injury since December 29, Kevin Garnett returned to the Boston starting lineup Monday night and scored 19 points, grabbed eight rebounds, and brought the Celtics alive with his trademark energy and chatter. His biggest contribution, however, was a game-sealing steal of a Jameer Nelson pass in the final seconds. After deflecting the pass and securing the ball, Garnett flung out to a streaking Ray Allen, who dribbled off some clock before getting fouled and icing the game at the free throw line.

It was, more or less, a perfect return for KG in the eyes of Celtics fans. Garnett played 31 minutes and moved well for each and every one of them. Call me paranoid if you wish, but I know I wasn't the only Boston fan waiting to see KG in action before I believed that this most recent injury wasn't serious. The memory of two seasons ago, when Garnett and/or the team hid the severity of his knee problems for weeks, is simply too fresh.

This game was about far more than Garnett's healthy return, however. Doc Rivers, as expected, had the fellas play Dwight Howard more or less straight up. No double teams, no putting him at the line at every opportunity. Just straight-up defense, following the philosophy the Cs have been successful with over the past three-plus seasons: Let their best player get his and worry about shutting down the other guys.

The other guys, in the case of the Magic, are good enough to beat you on many nights, and they almost did. Howard had 33 points and 13 rebounds, and his teammates made 11 of 27 three-point shots in support. But they cooled down just enough in the fourth quarter for the Celtics -- who shot 60 percent from the field but just 3-for-10 from behind the arc -- to avenge the Christmas Day loss.

The one issue I had with the way the Celtics handled Howard was that they didn't attack him on the offensive end. Shaquille O'Neal drew a foul on Howard within the first two minutes of the game, but only took seven shots the whole night. Indeed, Howard ended the game -- after nearly 44 minutes of court time -- with just that one foul. Howard is more than capable of playing defense, and I get that Doc is loathe to change the game plan because of just one guy. But Shaq had a couple of buckets early, and it would have been worth it to see whether he could have kept rolling and/or gotten Howard into foul trouble. During one second-quarter sequence, Howard drew Shaq's second foul on an extremely dubious call, getting to the line simply by bringing the ball into Shaq's forearm. It looked bad when the ref called it and a replay on the Jumbotron confirmed that it was a bad call. The next Celtic possession was a perfect opportunity to go to O'Neal and give the officials an opportunity for a makeup call. Instead, Boston went to Paul Pierce. It didn't cost the Celtics any points, as Pierce hit a jumper, but Shaq picked up his third on the next Orlando possession, sending him to the bench. Had Boston gone to O'Neal, it might have been Howard headed to the bench for the rest of the half, rather than Shaq.

Speaking of Howard and the officials, I yelled at my television enough during the game that I feel obligated to mention the officiating, which was horrible in my estimation. In addition to the O'Neal foul mentioned above, Howard was the beneficiary of a bad call on Garnett's third foul late in the second period. Howard was trying to seal Garnett in the post, and Garnett fought throw Howard holding him off with his left arm to steal the entry pass. Danny Crawford apparently thought that KG grabbed Howard's arm to accomplish this, when in fact it was Howard, if anyone, who committed the foul. For someone who constantly complains that he doesn't receive enough protection from the officials, Howard certainly got plenty of it Monday night.

It wasn't just Howard; the Magic shot 36 free throws to Boston's 26, despite taking 27 three-pointers to Boston's ten and despite the fact that Boston scored a ton of points in the paint. Free throw discrepancies in favor of Orlando are rather commonplace given some teams' preferred strategy for defending Howard, but as I mentioned, Boston wasn't wrapping him up every time he caught the ball in a dangerous position the way some teams do. There's just no way Orlando should shoot that many more free throws while also shooting that many more jumpers. And I haven't yet mentioned what I considered to be the most egregious call of the game, a moving screen on KG that nullified a Ray Allen three with less than two minutes to play. I get that KG moves on screens, like basically every NBA big man, but under two minutes in a tie ballgame is a wacky time to start making that call, especially when Howard had been stepping into screens on the other end all night. The inconsistency drove me crazy.

Not to ramble on and on about Howard, but this game underscored for me the reason why I'm not overly concerned with the Magic, at least not as currently constructed. By giving up center Marcin Gortat in the Vince Carter-Jason Richardson trade with Phoenix, Orlando has left itself with no viable backup for Howard. And while Howard is young and fit and fully capable of playing as many minutes as he did, he's also foul prone and if the game had gone differently, Orlando could have found itself in some trouble -- and that's with Kendrick Perkins and Jermaine O'Neal out with injuries. Even so, there were a handful of occasions that Howard didn't challenge easy shots around the basket, and he didn't block a shot in a game for the first time since Game 2 of the Boston series last May. I have to think Howard is more conscious than ever about foul trouble, which negates some of his shotblocking ability and makes Orlando's defense that much less effective.

In order to get a backup, however, Orlando would probably have to part with either Ryan Anderson or J.J. Redick, young players who, like seemingly everyone else on the team, are real threats from downtown. Anderson entered Monday's game late in the first quarter and promptly hit four threes to bring the Magic back from an early ten-point deficit, and while Redick spent much of a crucial second-half stretch being taken to school by Ray Allen, he has -- against all odds -- became a vital role player that I know Orlando doesn't want to part with. Given that Gilbert Arenas has not emerged as much of a threat since arriving from Washington in the trade for Rashard Lewis, the loss of either one of those guys would be a major hit to their depth. And yet it's hard to see the Magic getting through Boston and the Lakers in the postseason without a backup center.

There was more to this game -- Pierce patiently waiting as Boston rode Allen's hot hand until the final minute, when he calmly sank a jumper after being fouled by Richardson to put the Cs up three; Glen Davis finally refusing to settle for jump shots; Nate Robinson's continued struggle to find his role in the absence of Delonte West -- but that's enough for now. The focus shifts to Detroit -- surprise blowout winners over the reeling Mavericks on Monday afternoon -- on Wednesday, with Utah coming in on Friday and road games in Portland, Phoenix, and Los Angeles against the Lakers to finish out the month.

Muy Beno: A Lesson in Karma

2011-01-13T08:33:00.001-08:00

Two nights ago, the Cleveland Cavaliers put together one of the sorriest performances in NBA history against the Lakers, losing 112-57 in LA. Afterward, the following message apparently appeared on LeBron James' Twitter account: "Crazy. Karma is a b****. Gets you every time. It's not good to wish bad on anybody. God sees everything!"

"Every" it turns out, actually does mean "every." So when you twist the knife into an already suffering group of ex-teammates, invoking karma all the while, don't be surprised if your team goes out the next night and gives up 44 first-quarter points to the 12-24 Los Angeles Clippers. Don't be surprised if your team eventually loses that game. And don't be surprised if you sprain your ankle in the process.

(Not that I'm wishing bad on James or reveling in his loss and/or injury, 24 hours before I myself step on a plane. Just clearing karma's good name.)

Boston 119, Sacramento 95

2011-01-13T08:33:00.000-08:00

It took a whole half, but a game that should have been an easy win finally became an easy win.

[recap] [box score]

The Kings aren't very good to begin with, didn't have Tyreke Evans, had lost to the Wizards in overtime the night before, and arrived in Boston around 4 a.m. thanks to the winter storm in the Northeast. Even so, despite a quick 8-0 Boston start, Sacramento hung around during the first 24 minutes.

The Celtics shot well, plain and simple, which they should do against a bad team like the Kings. They hit 12 of 20 three-point attempts, shot 52 percent overall, and with the exception of Glen Davis (who wasn't horrible, at 6 of 14), knocked down more or less every open jumper they got. All eleven Celtics who played scored, and with the starters resting the entire forth quarter, eight Celtics reached double figures. (The ones who didn't were Luke Harangody, Avery Bradley, and Shaquille O'Neal, who, according to Mike Gorman, predicted before the game that he'd get into foul trouble, which he did. Apparently, Bob Delaney has it out for him.)

Jermaine O'Neal didn't play because his knee swelled up right before the game. This is a concern; as well as Semih Erden played in extended minutes last night, we'd rather have JON ot there.

The Next Lamb: The Houston Rockets

2011-01-09T11:02:00.000-08:00

Game 37: Houston (16-21) at Boston (28-8)

Monday, January 10

7:30 p.m. Eastern

NBA League Pass

As NBA injury stories go, the story of Yao Ming certainly rivals that of Portland's Greg Oden in terms of basketball tragedy. Yao missed all of last season with a foot injury, came back for the first few weeks of this season, then suffered a stress fracture in his foot while rehabbing a strained tendon in his leg. Another season gone, and there are very real concerns that he's played his last NBA game.

Trying to re-incorporate Yao into the offense at the beginning of the season (while dealing with his minutes cap and unavailability on the second night of back-to-backs) cost Houston at the start of the year, as the Rockets dropped their first five games. After Yao got hurt, the team struggled through the end of November, in part due to an ankle injury to point guard Aaron Brooks.

They seemed to be turning things around at the end of 2010, going 11-4 in December and winning five of their final six games of the calendar year. But a brutal schedule -- five games in seven days, all against current playoff teams -- combined with a more minor ankle injury to Brooks has the Rockets slumping, losers of their first five games of 2011.

When Brooks is healthy, he's the Rockets most dangerous offensive weapon, a true scorer with no fear and great range. He's not healthy, though; he never made it into the starting lineup after his injury (coming off the bench for 20-25 minutes per game in the six games he played before getting hurt again) and clearly isn't the same player yet. So even if he does play, Boston's defensive focus should be on shooting guard Kevin Martin, a wispy shooting guard with an uncanny knack for getting to the line, and Luis Scola, their terrific power forward. Kevin Garnett may be back for Boston, which would be a huge boost. I'm assuming the Rockets took notice of the way that Chicago's Carlos Boozer took advantage of Glen Davis in the post last night, and if KG is out of the lineup, I would expect a heavy dose of Scola.

In the absence of Yao, 6-6 Chuck Hayes was getting the majority of starts at center, but he's out until later in the month with an ankle injury of his own. Second-year player Jordan Hill has been getting the starts with Hayes out, but veteran Brad Miller -- an old favorite of coach Rick Adelman's from their glory days in Sacramento -- has been getting the majority of the minutes. Miller is a hard-nosed center with great passing ability and good range for a man his size, but his lack of mobility means that Shaquille O'Neal shouldn't have as much trouble with him as some other centers in the league. Hill might give Shaq more trouble, at least on the glass, but his lack of polish will hurt him, and he's not as aggressive as some of the other young bigs in the league. Rookie Patrick Patterson has made his way into the rotation due to the injuries and provides rebounding and a little bit of scoring.

Houston's starting point guard is Kyle Lowry, a brawny six-footer who isn't flashy but gets the job done on both ends of the court. He's a passable three-point shooter at 37.1 percent, but his overall field goal percentage is just 39.2 percent, so I imagine Boston will be more than willing to let him get his own shot rather than deal to Martin and Scola. The Rockets have a variety of effective perimeter players, including veteran Shane Battier and young guns Courtney Lee and Chase Budinger. Defending the three-point line will be a big key for Boston.

In conclusion, I love watching Houston because of how hard they play. There's no team in the league that brings it every night harder than the Rockets do. Boston's had a tendency to sleepwalk through games in past years. It's not as big a problem this year as it has been, but they better be ready to play from the beginning, or they might find themselves slapped with an unexpected home loss -- despite all of Houston's injuries.

Shaquille O'Neal Needs to Stop Fouling

2011-01-09T10:08:00.000-08:00

On a second-half drive in Saturday night's Bulls-Celtics game, Chicago's Derrick Rose drove left and took off from the left block. He sailed under the basket, actually hovering in midair over the endline, looking for a way to squeeze the ball through a tangle of limbs attached to green jerseys. He was trapped; to score, he would need to pull off an incredible shot (which he is capable of doing, of course, but that's not the point).

Shaquille O'Neal bailed him out by fouling him and sending him to the line for two shots.

I've said it before, but Shaq needs to stop fouling. It's not that we don't have the bodies to replace him; even when we're not completely healthy, it's not like he can handle playing a bunch of minutes per night. But for a team whose (highly effective) defense over the past three-plus seasons has been predicated on forcing the other team to make tough shots, Shaq's attempts to "protect the rim" amount to so much sabotage.

In addition to having an excellent defensive point guard (Rajon Rondo), one of the best team defenders in the game (Kevin Garnett) and an underrated defensive center (Kendrick Perkins), Boston has been successful on the defensive end in recent seasons by deciding, in a sense, which shots they are most happy with the opposition taking, and forcing said opposition to win the game that way. Lebron James wants to shoot long jumpers? Fine; better than him taking the ball to the rim. Kobe Bryant wants to go one-on-one? Great; he'll get his, but it keeps the ball out of Pau Gasol's hands. So on a night when Garnett wasn't around to help on Rose or guard Carlos Boozer, Boston should have been more or less okay with Rose beating them, if he was going to beat them, with circus shots. Instead, he took 19 free throws and had 36 points and the Bulls won by 11.

I don't know if it's laziness on Shaq's part or that he's not able to recognize his diminished athleticism (which seems unlikely; he's been playing at his current weight for several seasons now). Perhaps it's something else. But fouling a guy who is trying to shoot with his back turned to the hoop is just bad basketball. It's okay to clobber a guy to save a sure two points; it's dumb to clobber a guy who has a very slim chance to score.

At his size, it should be very difficult to score over Shaq, and the opposition, generally speaking, isn't all that willing to create contact with the big fella. Thus, while he's no longer a big shotblocking threat, O'Neal should be able to affect his share of shots simply by getting in the way. By fouling, he bails the opposition out (and puts his team in the penalty earlier in the quarter, leading to even more points, potentially).

Chicago 90, Boston 79

2011-01-09T09:40:00.000-08:00

The Bulls were missing Joakim Noah. The Celtics were missing Kevin Garnett. The Cs missed Garnett a lot more.

[recap] [box score]

Despite the fact that Chicago was without its young starting center (who hasn't played since December 15 after undergoing thumb surgery), they outrebounded Boston 48-27 and blocked nine shots (including four each by Kurt Thomas and Taj Gibson). Carlos Boozer, the man Garnett would have been guarding, had 22 points on an efficient 9-for-15.

The Bulls' biggest offensive contribution came from point guard Derrick Rose, who scored 36 in part due to 19 trips to the free throw line (where he made 15 shots). Rose is big and quick and too much for any NBA point guard to handle. Without Garnett around for help, Rose wreaked havoc on the Celtics at the rim. Even when Garnett comes back, Chicago is going to be tough for Boston, because KG will have his hands full with Boozer. The return of an effective, if not completely healthy, Kendrick Perkins might be the biggest key to having less trouble with the Bulls in the future.

All in all, it was a pretty awful performance for the Celtics, which I'm willing to forgive against a good team on the second night of a home-road back-to-back. But the Cs are now in a dead, uh, heat with Miami for the best record in the East. With home dates this week against the Rockets, Kings, and Bobcats, it may be a good opportunity to get a little separation, as the Heat finish up a five-game road trip that began with an overtime win in Milwaukee Friday night with dates with Portland, the Clippers, Denver, and Chicago.

Boston 122, Toronto 102

2011-01-08T00:04:00.000-08:00

Friday night was about as easy a win as you'll get in the NBA.

[recap] [box score]

The Celtics had a torrid first half, scoring 67 points, and appeared capable of scoring at will against the overmatched and depleted Raptors. Doc Rivers seemed to know it, too, pulling Rajon Rondo with Boston up 76-55 three minutes into the third quarter. The League Pass broadcast was the Toronto broadcast and their guys didn't seem to notice, but I worried that perhaps Rondo was hurt. Fortunately, it appeared that Doc was just hoping to get Rondo some rest (and perhaps boost the confidence of the struggling Nate Robinson, who came in for Rondo) -- Rondo returned later in the game. All in all, Glen Davis was the only started who played more than 30 minutes, a key statistic with the Celtics in the midst of a busy stretch and a game in Chicago on Saturday night.

The blowout gave some extended playing time to the bench. Rookie Luke Harangody took the most advantage, notching his first career double-double. Harangody actually got going in the first quarter and never really stopped on his way to 17 points and 11 rebounds.

Not too much to say, really. The defense could have been better -- the Raps made more than half their shots -- but the guys can be forgiven for letting up a little bit on that end in a blowout at this stage.

No "Next Lamb" posts for a bit as my computer usage is limited due to a hard drive crash, but briefly, the game on Saturday should be a good test. Boston has beaten the Bulls twice already this season, but the first win came with Carlos Boozer out of the Bulls lineup and the second was Boozer's second back from a preseason hand injury. He's averaged a 20/10 since returning December 1st, and will be a handful for Boston without Kevin Garnett. The Bulls will be hungry, too, having lost its last two games, to 10-26 New Jersey and 15-21 Philadelphia.

Boston 105, San Antonio 103

2011-01-05T21:57:00.000-08:00

Even without the dramatic ending, this would have been a pretty good basketball game.

[recap] [box score]

If you didn't watch it -- and many couldn't, since it wasn't on national TV despite the fact that ESPN didn't have an early game in its early Wednesday night slot -- the end was bizarre, almost surreal. Up nine with 56 seconds left, the Celtics first allowed a tough three-pointer to Manu Ginobili. After Ray Allen was fouled (the Spurs weren't in the penalty), Paul Pierce was mugged on the sideline as he brought the ball up. No call, and Tony Parker drove for an easy layup to the cut the lead to four. After a Boston timeout, Nate Robinson subbed in and caught the inbounds pass in the backcourt, dribbled around a bit too nonchalantly, then threw a weak bounce pass to Rajon Rondo that Ginobili intercepted while knocking Rondo over. Richard Jefferson was fouled at the rim, and knocked down both free throws. Just like that, it was a two-point game, and Boston had to shoot, rather than wait to get fouled (not that the officials were going to call it). Pierce ran the screen and roll with Allen at the end of the shot clock, missed, but the rebound bounced to Robinson, who handed it to Ray, Mr. Automatic, who has promptly fouled. But Ray missed both free throws, and it wasn't until Pierce snuffed out a Ginobili three-point attempt that would have given San Antonio the game that the win was solidified.

In the end, though, the final score was probably right. Boston was just a couple of points better than San Antonio on this night. It was nip and tuck most of the way, and then the Spurs kind of ran out of steam, until the final minute, when the unexplainable began to happen. (The first play was an obvious foul; the second was closer, but still probably a foul; and how often does Allen miss two free throws?)

I have to be on a plane back to LA in a few hours, and I'm without my usual computer, so I'll be quick. Rondo was brilliant, dishing the majority of his 22 assists in the first three quarters, then scoring eight of his 12 points in the fourth period. He added ten rebounds for a triple double and also had six steals. Allen's shot was falling from the beginning; he finished with 31 points on 13 of 16 from the field. Glen Davis made 10 of 18 shots for 23 points, and Pierce fought through some, um, physical defense from the Spurs to finish with 18 points on seven for ten shooting.

Give credit to the Spurs, too, who played a hell of a game the night after a track meet with the Knicks. You have to assume that the Lakers will come around sooner or later, but even if they do, the Spurs are going to be a real threat to them in the West.

The Next Lamb: The San Antonio Spurs

2011-01-04T21:49:00.000-08:00

Game 34: San Antonio (29-5) at Boston (26-7)

Wednesday, January 5

7:30 p.m. Eastern

NBA League Pass

At the end of last season (prior to Boston's run to the Finals, anyway) a lot of NBA people were saying the same thing about the Spurs as they were about the Celtics; namely, that these were two former heavyweights whose championship windows had closed. Now, with the halfway point of the 2010-11 season approaching, the Spurs have the league's best record and have been the surprise team thus far.

What's so fascinating about San Antonio is that they've resurrected themselves among the NBA's elite by completely changing their style of play. For years, the Spurs have been associated with slow-paced, defense-oriented, and (to some) boring basketball. This offseason, however, the coaching staff decided to change to a more up-tempo attack -- and with Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker healthy, the team has flourished. The 72 points the Spurs gave up to the Knicks in the first half on Tuesday night aren't exactly par for the course, but it isn't going to give Gregg Popovich a heart attack the way it might have in recent years. (The fact that San Antonio scored 69 points themselves in the first half helps.)

What this means is less reliance on Tim Duncan, arguably the best power forward ever to play in the NBA. Statistically speaking, the 34-year-old Duncan is having the worst season of his 14-year career, with his stats -- including his minutes -- at career lows almost across the board. But he's by no means been put out to pasture, and with Kevin Garnett out of Boston's lineup, it wouldn't surprise me to see a heavy dose of Duncan on Wednesday.

Parker is the point guard, but in my mind it's Ginobili who is the true key to San Antonio's success. The improvisational Argentine has often drawn the ire of Popovich with his freelancing ways, but he has more freedom in this system and his ability to score and to create for others isn't matched by too many players currently in the league.

Another key to the Spurs' winning ways has been the re-emergence of Richard Jefferson, one of the front-runners for Comeback Player of the Year. He signed a pretty big free agent contract with San Antonio two offseasons ago, then drew the ire of many Spurs fans with a poor performance. He got some personal instruction from Popovich this offseason, and has been much more effective this year. His statistics look almost exactly the same, except for one key area: three-point shooting. Last season, he shot 31.6 percent on 2.3 attempts per game; this season, he's at 43.2 percent on more than four attempts per game.

The long ball is a big part of the Spurs' attack. They were 11th in the league in attempts last season, but that's moved up to fifth this season, and they are near the top of the league in percentage from behind the arc. It a major component of Ginobili's arsenal, and perhaps the only weapon of note for backup center Matt Bonner and rookie reserve guard Gary Neal. Boston is among the best teams in the league at guarding the three-point shot, so that will be a big key.

Inside, in addition to Duncan, the Spurs start second-year player DeJuan Blair, who is very short for the center position but is active, skilled, and strong as an ox. He struggled to start the year but put together a very nice December. Given Shaquille O'Neal's recent struggles, Blair is a guy to worry about, especially on the offensive glass.

San Antonio started with a very easy schedule, and most people assumed they'd come back down to earth a bit during this difficult stretch of games. Although they did suffer a loss to Orlando on December 23 (foreseeable, on the second night of a back-to-back), they won five in a row before losing to the Knicks, including big-time blowout wins over the Lakers and Thunder, and a tight win in Dallas over the Dirk Nowitzki-less Mavs. Wednesday's game in Boston, on the second night of a road back-to-back, is another potential measuring stick for the Spurs. But Popovich has always played the regular season with an eye toward the playoffs, so there's a chance this marquee matchup could turn into a dud. Otherwise, it should be a good game.

Also, my beautiful girlfriend (who celebrated a birthday today) wants me to mention that she's a Spurs fan. A big Spurs fan. A scream-at-the-TV-even-though-it's-the-first-quarter-of-a-regular-season-game, will-forever-carry-a-grudge-against-Roger-Mason-Jr., forgives-Tony-Parker-even-though-she-loves-Eva-Longoria Spurs fan. I know what you're thinking, and yes, it's tough to take, especially given the fact that we were the ones supposed to get Duncan all those years back (which would have made her a Celtics fan; her allegiance to San Antonio comes from liking Duncan in college). But given that I met her in Los Angeles, it could be a lot worse, no?

Boston 96, Minnesota 93

2011-01-04T11:23:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

I caught this one with my cousin and a good friend at the Dominion Brew Pub in DC, over many Oak Barrel Stouts. I was watching the game, but also talking and eating and drinking, so I have only a few thoughts:

As expected, Kevin Love was a handful, scoring 12 points to go with 24 rebounds. I couldn't hear the sound at the bar, but I checked the stats on my phone at halftime and at the break, Love had 15 rebounds. Boston as a team had 14.
Rajon Rondo had 16 assists against just three turnovers, but even bigger was the 14-foot jumper he hit to put the Celtics by three with 44 seconds left. It's not a shot we want him taking all the time (indeed, he missed a 17-footer with 11 ticks left on the next possession after Michael Beasley had cut it to one), but I do like to see him growing more and more confident with the jumper.
Von Wafer played really well, scoring ten points and tying for the team lead in boards (with Paul Pierce) with six. I still don't see where he fits into the healthy rotation, but the least I can do is give the man his due when he comes up big in the interim. With Delonte West out and Nate Robinson continuing to struggle, Wafer's contributions on Monday were invaluable.
Shaquille O'Neal scored nine points in 30 minutes, but also grabbed just two rebounds (though to be fair, Love made it so that no Celtic's rebounding numbers were impressive). Jermaine O'Neal looked decent off the bench and blocked four shots. So far, it seems clear that he's better at protecting the rim than Shaq, when healthy.
Glen Davis continued to emerge from a shooting slump, making seven of 15 shots. A little more consistency would be nice, but at least he's got a somewhat reliable offensive weapon in his arsenal now.

The Next Lamb: The Minnesota Timberwolves

2011-01-03T00:22:00.000-08:00

Game 33: Minnesota (9-25) at Boston (25-7)
Monday, January 3
7:30 p.m. Eastern
NBA League Pass

You may remember that last year, I wrote a lot about the T-Wolves, and in particular their rookie point guard Jonny Flynn, one of my favorite college players ever and a guy I was convinced could be a terrific NBA player (I still am convinced, by the way). You may also have noticed that I've not written a single thing about Minnesota this season.

Part of it is that Flynn was hurt for the first month-plus, having aggravated over the summer a hip injury that cost him the final game of his rooke campaign. I have very little interest in the Wolves aside from Flynn, particularly with their front office having its collective head up its collective you-know-what and Kurt Rambis, the worst head coach in the NBA, at the helm. I appreciate super-rebounder Kevin Love, I'm interested in seeing what rookie Wesley Johnson has to offer, and Michael Beasley is on my fantasy team, but these are just secondary interests; my real focus is on Flynn.

But TMJF (The Marvelous Jonny Flynn, for those who don't remember) hasn't gotten much burn since he's been back in uniform, relegated to a backup role in favor of offseason acquisition Luke Ridnour. And without Flynn on the court, I just can't get myself to spend two-and-a-half hours three or so times per week watching the Wolves. There's too much good basketball to waste time watching bad basketball. (Though I'd still rather watch bad basketball than football or hockey.)

And yes, the Wolves are bad. Their record speaks for itself, but that 9-25 mark includes wins in three of their last four games. Whether this marks a real improvement in the team or is merely a momentary blip remains to be seen, though my hunch is that it's the latter.

I had planned to write, at some point this season, a post defending Flynn, talking about how he would have averaged a couple more assists per game last season if he had decent teammates on the wing; how Rambis' offense didn't take advantage of Flynn's abilities (or the abilities of any of their best players, for that matter); and how can make a pretty good case that Flynn was just as effective as Brandon Jennings, everyone's favorite rooking point guard, last season. I may still do that; I may not. But the writing seems to be on the wall for Flynn as far as Minnesota goes. Ridnour is ensconced as the starter (though I'd point out that the team is still 9-25) and the Spanish phenom Ricky Rubio is supposedly coming over after the lockout. Flynn's name often pops up in trade rumors, and I expect he'll be moved sooner or later -- though not if Minnesota doesn't give him some run to showcase him and increase his value (again, you're 9-25; what exactly do you have to lose?) When -- and if -- that happens, I'll start writing about Minnesota again regularly.

Anyway, on to the Wolves (who may be without Flynn on Monday, anyway; he missed Saturday's win over the Nets with a sprained ankle). Love is leading the league in rebounding at like 15 per game, including a ridiculous 31/31 game back in November. He's also averaging around 21 points per night, though on offense he's not what you expect from that kind of rebounder. He does his share of scoring inside, but he also hits three-pointers at around 44 percent. He's going to be a very tough cover for Glen Davis, and as will be the case with Boston's next opponent (San Antonio), the Celtics will miss Kevin Garnett quite a bit on Monday night.

Beasley was the biggest offseason addition. He went on a scoring binge earlier in the season and is probably the most dangerous Wolf (that looks and sounds funny, doesn't it?) with the ball in his hands. He still settles for too many long jumpers, and I suspect Boston will be perfectly happy to see him launch to his heart's content.

The infamous Darko Milicic has actually resurrected his career somewhat in Minnesota, though the thing he's really lacked is consistency. His shooting percentage is terrible for a big guy, but he's put up some big games. He's played poorly of late, and it seems like foul trouble has been a big problem. One area he has been fairly consistent in is shot-blocking; he's erased 2.4 shots per game this season, so Boston will want to be aware of that when going to the hole when he's in the game.

As for Ridnour, he's a good shooter and playmaker, a veteran who knows how to run an offense. On the defensive end, to my knowledge, he hasn't improved much since the day he was drafted in 2003, when Jay Bilas said that Ridnour couldn't guard the chair he (Bilas) was sitting on. Hopefully, Rajon Rondo shook off some rust Sunday in his first game back and can be an offensive weapon for the Cs on Monday night.

Boston 93, Toronto 79

2011-01-02T21:59:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

Bullets tonight (and lots of 'em):

Rajon Rondo returned from his ankle injury. He picked up two fouls in the first six minutes, and didn't really have too big of a direct impact on the game. Jose Calderon got the better of him on both ends of the court, but it was good to see number 9 back in action.
Rondo's return freed Paul Pierce to move out of the facilitator role he's been playing the last several games and into the cold-blooded assassin role he's more accustomed to on offense. Pierce led the way with 30 points, including 20 in a first half in which all of his fellow starters struggled. His second-half buckets included a ferocious dunk on the entire Raptors frontcourt and a breakaway jam inside the final two minutes in which he appeared to tweak his ankle when he landed. We can't afford an injury to another starter, even with Rondo back, so hopefully it's not serious and The Truth will be in uniform Monday night against Minnesota.
Glen Davis had a fairly miserable first half shooting the ball, which is in line with his last several games, in which (it goes without saying) he's been fairly miserable shooting the ball. He picked it up in the second half, however, and was just two assists shy of logging one of the more unlikely triple doubles in NBA history.
Shaquille O'Neal had a subpar game, two days after a subpar game against New Orleans, four days after a subpar game against Detroit, five days after a subpar game against Indiana, and eight days after a subpar game against Orlando. Actually, compared to the previous four, Sunday was a pretty good game for Shaq: he had six rebounds, compared to five combined against the Magic, Pacers, Pistons, and Hornets. And yet Joey Dorsey kicked his butt most of the game. I thought at first that O'Neal might have been dogging it, but he challenged shots when they were in his area and even dove for a loose ball at one point. Dorsey is young, athletic, and energetic, the kind of guy who is going to make Shaq look bad, but I wonder if Shaq isn't completely healthy.
Fortunately, Jermaine O'Neal looks healthy enough to fill in, should he need to. This was Jermaine's fifth game back. He didn't do much against Orlando and I hadn't seen any of the three games previous to Sunday's, but I was encouraged by the way he moved around. I hope he gets a bit stronger on the boards and finishes better on offense as the season progresses, but the good sign is that he's not moving cautiously or with an obvious limp.
Marquis Daniels was basically a complete no-show, which I could have predicted because he'd had a couple of good games in a row. If Daniels could be consistent, he'd be such a valuable player, but right now, I just don't trust him as much as I would like.
Von Wafer actually did a couple of nice things in 14 minutes of action. What I liked most was that both of his shot attempts were at the rim, and I remember at least one nice wraparound pass on another drive that I think led to a foul. He's a good three-point shooter and I don't mind it if he takes those shots when he's in the game, but it's good to see flashes of a more complete player. He'll hopefully be mostly irrelevant when Delonte West gets back, but as an insurance policy, any development is good.
Luke Harangody works hard, hustles, and isn't afraid to bang, but he is just overmatched against other NBA post players right now. Even fellow rookie Ed Davis, who has gotten burn of late with the Raps' frontcourt injuries and is thus slightly less green than Harangody, pushed him around quite a bit. When he was drafted, everyone thought that Harangody, a power forward in college, would need to become a small forward to crack the rotation this year, because Boston had so much depth in the pivot. Now, it seems that he may need to play the wing because he's not big or strong enough to play inside. It will be interesting to see which way his career goes.
DeMar DeRozan again led the Raptors, this time with 27 points. His explosion (recall that he had 37 Friday night against the Rockets) coincides with Andrea Bargnani's absence from the lineup, and can be attributed to the offense now running through him, and not Il Mago. I assume this is a temporary state of affairs, and things will go back to the way they were when Bargs gets healthy, but DeRozan is showing that he is capable of carrying more of a load offensively. This development surprises me: I saw DeRozan in person a couple of times when he was at USC, and have followed his brief career somewhat closely, and while he's always good for a couple drives and/or jumpers per game, he lacked the aggressive disposition and consistency you need to be a real scorer at this level. Frankly, he just didn't seem good enough to get "hot" and take over a game the way he took over in the second half against Houston and for stretches against Boston. But he apparently is. What's interesting about DeRozan is that he's the rare NBA shooting guard for whom the three-pointer isn't really a weapon; he does almost all of his scoring at the rim, at the line, and with the mid-range jumper. Fortunately, he hits that mid-range J at a good enough rate that his efficiency isn't terrible, and he knows the limit of his range (that is, he doesn't take a bunch of threes even though he can't hit them). Anyway, it will be interesting to keep an eye on DeRozan when Bargnani returns. Can he emerge as a consistent second banana, or is he an all-or-nothing guy who needs to be the first option?

The Next Lamb: The Toronto Raptors

2011-01-01T18:10:00.001-08:00

Game 32: Boston (24-7) at Toronto (11-21)
Sunday, January 2
6 p.m. Eastern
NBA League Pass
Last meeting: @Boston 110, Toronto 101 (11/26/2010)

Happy New Year, all. I apologize for not keeping up with the team for the last week; my hard drive crashed and it's been a bit difficult to watch games or blog.

Since the Christmas Day loss to Orlando, the Celtics have played three games, beating Indiana before losing to Detroit and then New Orleans. I was unable to watch any of those games, but it appears the team played pretty poorly in each. Even the win over the Pacers required a big fourth quarter surge. (The bench gave a similar surge in the fourth against the Hornets, going on a 16-0 run to turn a nine-point deficit into a seven-point lead, but the team couldn't hang on.)

The big story coming out of Boston this week is that Kevin Garnett left in the first quarter of the game against the Pistons with what the team is calling a strained right calf. He's expected to miss a couple of weeks, and with Rajon Rondo still nursing his sore ankle (among other assorted injuries), the story heading into Sunday's game with Toronto may be just as much about who isn't playing as who is.

Fortunately for Boston, the Raps have some serious injury issues of their own. Their starting center and best player, Andrea Bargnani, has missed the last three games with a calf injury of his own and won't play on Sunday. Small forward Sonny Weems, who was enjoying something of a breakout year after moving into the starting lineup, hasn't played in six games and remains day-to-day with a back injury. Jose Calderon -- the undisputed starter at point guard now that Jarrett Jack has been traded to New Orelans -- missed Saturday's practice with a foot injury, and his understudy, Jerryd Bayless (acquired from the Hornets in the Jack trade) has an ankle injury that limited him to eight minutes on Friday against the Rockets. Amir Johnson, starting at power forward in place of Reggie Evans, who broke his foot in the last meeting of the Celtics, is also nursing an injury, though he and Calderon probably will play. The point is, though Boston is banged up, there will be no excuses if they lose to a depleted Toronto team that is mediocre, at best, when healthy.

One Raptor who is healthy is DeMar DeRozan, who scored a career-high 37 points against Houston on New Year's Eve. DeRozan is an athletic young shooting guard in his second year out of USC, and does most of his damage going to the basket. He's not a threat from behind the arc, but he loves to put the ball on the floor and spin to the hoop. He's been getting to the line a bunch lately, which has contributed to his improved scoring of late.

Given all the injuries, the most dangerous Raptor, from an offensive standpoint, is probably sixth man Leandro Barbosa. Despite the fact that he plays the same position as DeRozan, he managed 17 points against the Rockets (it appears from the box score that the Raptors went small for much of that game). Controlling those guys should be a priority.

The Raptors are not particularly good defensively or on the glass, and it would be nice to see Boston try to take advantage of their depleted frontcourt by going inside and getting Shaquille O'Neal and Glen Davis involved early. Johnson is foul-prone, and so is Joey Dorsey, the guy starting in Bargnani's place. After those two, the bigs are a couple of rookies: Ed Davis (who has showed flashes in limited minutes this year) and Solomon Alabi, who has played something like ten minutes and three seconds over the course of three appearances this season. Particularly since Rondo's absence has made offense a bit of a chore at times for the Celtics, taking advantage of our size should be a priority.

Orlando 86, Boston 78

2010-12-26T21:55:00.000-08:00

Caught the first quarter and second half of this one sandwiched around Christmas dinner.

[recap] [box score]

Saturday's game was an ugly, low-scoring affair, which was a pattern when the Magic and Celtics met last year -- during the regular season, anyway. I could say that the Cs would have won had they made a bunch of shots they usually make, but the same is true of Orlando. It was one of those games where both teams played pretty good defense, and the effort on that end was magnified from some pretty poor shooting from both sides.

From a Boston perspective, we lost this game because we didn't have Rajon Rondo, plain and simple. Nate Robinson had his worst game as Rondo's understudy, making just two of 15 shots, the majority of which were good looks. The Magic basically could leave Robinson alone on offense, the same way opponents do against Rondo -- but Rondo provides much more playmaking and doesn't use as many possessions as Nate does shooting jumpers. And while Robinson did a nice job keeping Jameer Nelson in check for most of the game, he lost him on a screen on a key possession late, as Nelson hit a three that I believe gave the Magic the lead for good.

While the Celtics probably would have won with Rondo, Robinson wasn't the only Celtic who had a bad game. Ray Allen mad just three of 13 shots, and Shaquille O'Neal had just two points and fouled out despite playing fewer than 13 minutes.

Of course, the Magic have some "we would have won easily ifs" of their own, most notably the fact that Dwight Howard scored just six points against a depleted Celtics frontline (Kendrick Perkins is of course out, and Jermaine O'Neal made his first appearance since November 8). More disturbing is the fact that Howard took just four shots. He was in a bit of foul trouble for most of the game, but his teammates weren't looking for him much even when he was on the floor.

This will be something to watch with Orlando's new look. While some of the departed Magic players -- guys like Rashard Lewis and Mickael Pietrus -- weren't exactly shy about hoisting shots, they were mostly spot up guys (or run off of screen guys). On the other hand, the new Magic players -- guys like Hedo Turkoglu and Gilbert Arenas -- tend to pound the ball a bit more and look for their own shot.

Howard is a really important offensive weapon. He's improved his arsenal this year, and because he's a poor free throw shooter, teams send him to the line a ton -- so he gets the opposition into foul trouble and helps put his team in the bonus situation fairly early in the quarter. But he's not so polished as to consistently demand the ball in the post, and the new additions may make it easier, in a sense, to forget about him on offense. That wasn't the case leading up to the Boston game (Howard had big offensive nights in those) but the Celtics have been very good over the past few seasons at taking away one part of your offense and forcing you to rely on another part (usually outside shots). It will be interesting to see if the Magic make Howard a focal point against the Celtics in future meetings (including, potentially, the playoffs). While the Celtics have generally done a decent job on Howard the past couple of seasons, I'm sure they'd rather have Brandon Bass (21 points on Sunday) try to beat them.

The Next Lamb: The Orlando Magic

2010-12-23T23:17:00.000-08:00

Game 28: Boston (23-4) at Orlando (17-12)

Saturday, December 25

2:30 p.m. Eastern

ABC

If you are but a casual observer of the NBA, you are probably surprised to see the 17-12 record next to the Orlando Magic. Over the past few seasons, the Magic have emerged as an Eastern Conference rival, reaching the conference finals last season and beating Boston and Cleveland on the way to an NBA Finals loss to the Lakers the season before. When this current season opened, not much had changed, and Orlando was expected to make another deep playoff run. After consecutive wins at Chicago and Detroit in the first three days of December, the Magic were 15-4, and everything seemed hunky-dory.

But Orlando lost its next four games, beat the Clippers, then lost to Denver, and the front office decided to shake things up. They sent Vince Carter, Mickael Pietrus, and Marcin Gortat to Phoenix for Jason Richardson, Hedo Turkoglu, and Earl Clark, and shipped Rashard Lewis off to Washington for Gilbert Arenas. They promptly dropped three more -- to Philly (the day of the trades, so they were shorthanded), at Atlanta, and to Dallas -- before snapping San Antonio's ten-game winning streak Thursday night.

More thoughts on this rather shocking attempt to rebuild on the fly in a moment. In terms of the Christmas Day game, it's tough to know what to expect. Sure, the Magic still have Dwight Howard, who has put up gaudy numbers the last four games and looks to have developed a little bit more of an offensive game in the offseason, and they still have Jameer Nelson, their sharpshooting point guard. But Carter and Lewis were starters, and Pietrus and Gortat were rotation players. It's going to take some time for them to jell, and so it's hard to use Saturday's matchup as any sort of measuring stick. They certainly looked impressive in putting up 123 points against San Antonio, but the Spurs were on the second night of a back-to-back and haven't been nearly as good defensively this season as we're accustomed to.

Looking toward the rest of the season and beyond, it's certainly a bold move. Frankly, it seemed to me that the front office panicked a bit: No one likes to lose five out of six, but four of those losses came on the road to possible playoff teams (Milwaukee, Portland, Utah, and Denver) and the fifth was to a solid division rival (Atlanta). Obviously, the goal in Orlando is a championship and you have to be able to beat those types of teams, even on the road, to win a title, but it seems like an over-reaction to turn over so much of the roster in response to a little slide. My hunch is that Orlando perhaps wasn't happy with its roster heading into the season and had been looking to make moves, and that this is the time that a deal to their liking materialized.

From an Xs and Os perspective, one glaring hole this leaves on the Magic roster is backup center, of which Gortat was one of the league's most effective (and highest-paid). It's especially glaring given the makeup of the various title contenders. That is, if the Magic are to win the title, then they have to plan, at least, on beating Boston and the Lakers. That means going through Kendrick Perkins, Shaquille O'Neal, and Jermaine O'Neal (who should return to action Saturday, by the way) in the former case, and Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum, and Lamar Odom in the latter case. The loss of Gortat leaves Howard and the undersized Brandon Bass (a Glen Davis-ish player) as Orlando's only viable bigs, which you have to think isn't going to be sufficient to beat the Celtics or Lakers. The team has said that it will look to add another big via trade before the trade deadline in a couple of months, but one would be justified in wondering where that player will come from and at what price he will come.

As for the other losses and additions, Richardson should fill in reasonably well for Carter. A little more consistent, perhaps, a little less injury prone, but not as dynamic as Vince, and not as a good a passer. He can fill it up, though, and is a threat beyond the arc. Clark is a non-factor for the foreseeable future; Phoenix didn't pick up his contract option for next year and it's hard to see him breaking into the rotation this season. The key to this deal is Turkoglu and Arenas, and how well they make up for the departure of Lewis and Pietrus (plus whatever they have to give up to get a replacement for Gortat).

Turkoglu was a key part of Orlando's Finals run two years ago, then bolted to Toronto for a hefty contract. He was miserable as a Raptor (both in mood and in performance), lobbied for and got a trade in the offseason, and was basically as ineffective in 25 games in Phoenix as he was in Toronto. He's moved into the starting lineup in Lewis' place in three games with the Magic, going 3-for-15 in his first two outings before bouncing back with a respectable 5-for-10 against the Spurs.

When he's at his best, Turkoglu is a catalyst. He would take some of the ballhandling responsibilities away from Nelson the way he did in 2008-09, when Nelson shot a career-best 50.3 percent from the floor and 45.3 percent from three. (Recall, too, that Orlando made its big postseason run that year with Nelson out of the lineup due to late-season shoulder injury). I, for one, am not at all sure that Turkoglu is, or ever will be, close to his best, but it's possible that his decline in effectiveness over the past season-plus was due to unhappiness. Even if his best days are behind him, he won't be much of a downgrade over Lewis, a fairly one-dimensional three-point shooter with similar career percentage behind the arc to Turkoglu.

Arenas is a huge x-factor. With his recent injury history, it's easy enough to think of him as washed up, but he's only 28, and if he regains his form, he's instantly one of the most dangerous men in the NBA with the basketball in his hands. It appears that he's taking on a role with the second unit, and that strategy has to be right: No matter what you think of Nelson, both Turkoglu and Arenas need the ball to be effective, and they cancel each other out a little bit if they have to share it. But if he is playing well, he's a sixth man of the year candidate type player, injury/foul insurance for Richardson and Nelson, and another option late in the game. Of course, who knows how often he'll play well. I've only seen him once this year, when the Celtics pasted the Wizards, and I wrote then that Arenas did nothing but stand around shooting three-pointers all night. Gil was clearly unhappy with his situation in Washington, though, and perhaps his play will change with a change of scenery. Orlando's certainly counting on it.

As for Arenas' much-publicized off-court issues (you know, the gun in the locker room thing), most reports suggest that once the hammer came down, he put that stuff behind him. (Indeed, it may have contributed to his melancholy demeanor this season). Still, Arenas has always been a peculiar, unique character, and a guy like that -- particularly one who likes to shoot as often as he does -- is always capable of disrupting a locker room. I'm not saying that I think Arenas will try to stir things up, but if he does, I'm not sure Orlando has the personalities required to prevent it from becoming a big distraction. I think Stan Van Gundy is a good coach, but he's high-strung; Dwight Howard is an easy-going guy, but he's young and sensitive. No one in that locker room has won anything, and Arenas was brought in as part of a plan to put the team over the top. The ingredients are present for a bit of a meltdown, though I expect Arenas to behave.

I haven't even addressed defense, in part because it's always a little difficult to tell how individual defenders will fit in with specific defensive schemes. I can say with certainty that Turkoglu's a pretty bad on-ball defender and that while Arenas has been a big steals guy throughout his career, he's not a lockdown type of guy. Howard is perhaps the league's premier shotblocker and he can erase a lot of mistakes, but he's also foul-prone, a characteristic that is magnified by the fact that he doesn't have a backup, at least while the team looks for a replacement for Gortat. Pietrus was a pretty good defender, too, and there isn't anyone on the roster that immediately comes to mind as someone to fill that role.

In short, the Magic have taken a big risk here. Once the team gets acclimated with itself, they've probably done no worse than tread water offensively -- with a chance at great improvement on that end -- but they've probably gotten worse defensively, a big deal for a team coached by Van Gundy that has hung its hat on defense. In theory, they're less reliant on jumpshots -- a big criticism I've had with them -- but now they're more reliant on "outscoring" opponents, as opposed to winning games on the defensive ends. They've also taken some risks with their team makeup.

Moreover, it's unclear whether this team will come together fully this season, and, if it does, whether it's even enough to beat the league's elite. The best they can hope for is probably something akin to their 2008-09 team, and that squad needed seven games to beat the Kevin Garnett-less Celtics in the Eastern semis and never really challenged the Lakers in the Finals. With the Celtics certainly better this year and the Lakers, Spurs, and Heat hanging around as well, it's tricky to see this team getting it done -- particularly if it needs to sacrifice a player like J.J. Redick to pick up a backup pivot. While some may applaud the Magic for making this kind of bold move in the middle of the season, it says here that it won't be enough to push them over the top.

Boston 84, Philadelphia 80

2010-12-22T23:33:00.000-08:00

To call Boston's 14th consecutive win a struggle would be an understatement.

[recap] [box score]

The Celtics battled two things all game Wednesday night (in addition to the Sixers): poor shooting and the officiating.

To the former point, you could tell from the get-go it was just one of those nights. Several early shots -- particularly off the fingertips of Paul Pierce -- rattled in and out, and after serious foul trouble hitting the starting unit and the bench came out cold*, it was only the excellence of Ray Allen that allowed the Cs to score even the 38 points they did score in the first half. The team got it going for brief stretches in the second half, but shot 38.8 percent from the floor for the game -- which I'm fairly sure is a season low.

To the latter point -- the officiating -- the box score doesn't tell the entire story. Philadelphia had 31 free throw attempts to Boston's 21, but until the late stages of the game, the discrepancy was much larger. In fact, the Celtics shot the game's final 12 free throws, which means that after Tony Battie missed an and-one with 4:48 remaining in the game, the Sixers had taken 31 shots from the line to Boston's nine. Some of that differential was justified, but it's a peculiar circumstance, indeed, where one team deserves 22 more free throw attempts than its opponent.

For their part, the Celtics did a nice job down the stretch of forcing the refs to give Boston the calls they had been giving Philly all night. The officials had been calling it close, and the Celts really looked to create contact in the final five minutes or so. After the aforementioned Battie miss it was 74-70, Sixers; Boston closed on a 14-6 run, getting ten points from the line. (The two lone misses from the line in the waning moments came courtesy of Shaquille O'Neal. I was surprised to see him in the game late for precisely this reason, and even more surprised to see the team use him in the screen-and-roll on a couple of late possessions.)

Boston won this game because of excellent defense and because of a champion's knack for winning close games on its less-than-great nights -- the second time in a couple of weeks Boston's pulled this latter trick on Philadelphia. Of course, so many of these games went the other way last season, and it was around this time that last year's regular season started to become disappointing. I heard tonight that Boston is now 94-14 in pre-Christmas games over the past four seasons. The post-Christmas (well, post-pre-Christmas) portion of the schedule begins Saturday, and it says here that Boston continues its winning ways in January and beyond.

*To be fair to the bench, they actually played pretty well -- other than scoring. Glen Davis shot 2-for-9 but had seven rebounds; Marquis Daniels shot 2-for-7 but had four boards and five assists. Semih Erden grabbed five boards. Von Wafer actually hit a couple of shots, and Avery Bradley had a big steal and basket early in the second quarter. Pressed into a little bit of extra duty as three starters were hit with three fouls apiece in the first half, the second unit held things together -- especially on the defensive end -- to keep the game winnable.

The Next Lamb: The Philadelphia 76ers

2010-12-21T21:38:00.000-08:00

Game 27: Philadelphia (11-17) at Boston (22-4)

Wednesday, December 22

7:30 p.m.

TV: NBA League Pass

Last meeting: Boston 102, @Philadelphia 101 (12/9/2010)

I'm writing this just a couple of hours after Philadelphia went into Chicago and lost by 45 -- yeah, 45. Obviously, if that's the Philly team that shows up Wednesday night in Boston, than the Celtics don't have much to worry about.

But I wouldn't expect that. Philly -- despite Tuesday night's loss and despite a mediocre record -- had won eight of 11 before the debacle against the Bulls, looking to turn around a season that they started 3-13. One of the three losses during their recent strong stretch came against Boston, a game that the Celtics stole on their final possession with a wonderfully drawn-up play that resulted in a Kevin Garnett layup off an alley-oop from Rajon Rondo.

I watched that game, but didn't have time to record my thoughts afterwards in a blog post, so I'm left to try and dig anything out of my memory that I can. (I know it was less than two weeks ago, but I've got a lot of stuff moving in and out of my brain during final exams.) Offense wasn't Boston's problem in that game; the Cs shot nearly 56 percent against the Sixers -- who are actually second in the league in opponents' field goal percentage at 43.5 percent (but who surrendered like 64 percent shooting to the Bulls Tuesday). One area of concern, offensively, is that Rondo had one of his bigger offensive outputs that night (19 points, 14 assists) and while his ankle rehabilitation seems ahead of schedule, it's unlikely that he'll be available Wednesday night to carry any sort of offensive load. His absence should be offset somewhat by the presence of Shaquille O'Neal, who missed the Philly game but returned to the lineup on Sunday against the Pacers. Shaq should also help on the boards, where Philly held a 39-33 advantage, including a 15-5 edge on the offensive glass.

Defensively, Boston had real trouble defending the three-point arc in the previous matchup; Philly was nine for 19 from deep, with Jodie Meeks (4-for-4) and Louis Williams (4-for-5) doing most of the damage. Paul Pierce did a nice job on Andre Iguodala last time (though Iggy made a couple of very tough shots that almost won the game down the stretch), but Pierce's job is tougher now that he's taken over ballhandling duties with Rondo out of the lineup.

It's the second half of a back-to-back for the 76ers, but the starters didn't play as much as they usually would against Chicago because of the blowout -- so fatigue shouldn't be as much of a factor, even though the Celtics haven't played since Sunday afternoon. How the 76ers respond to such a dreadful performance is an interesting question. On the one hand, they could come out eager to prove themselves and erase the memory of the previous night's performance. On the other hand, less than 24 hours may not be enough time for a young team to regroup. I'm not sure how Philly will react, but if the Celtics can jump on the Sixers early and get the crowd into the game, it could be another early night for Philly's starters.

The Garden Has A Championship Feel

2010-12-20T22:53:00.000-08:00

Back in November, I attended a wedding at which Jeff Clark, founder of Celtics Blog, was also a guest. Jeff was kind enough to spend a few minutes talking blogging and ball with me, and one of the things he had to say was, essentially, that there was a different vibe around the Celtcs this year than there was last year. (See this post from earlier this month, particularly the last three paragraphs.) I had sensed it, too, but hearing it from someone who has actually spent some time around the team affirmed it. Maybe it's hard to put a finger on it, but Boston doesn't seem like they are going to let off the accelerator the way they have after fast starts in each of the past two seasons. It just feels like these guys are out to prove a point -- to make a statement -- every time out. It's the same sort of attitude the 2007-08 team took on its way to the franchise's 17th title banner.

Sunday marked the fourth consecutive year I've made the trip to Boston to catch a Celtics game the weekend before Christmas, and I can tell you that the fans at the TD Garden are also in championship form.

Full disclosure: I didn't grow up in Boston and never made it to the old Garden. In fact, I've only been to seven Celtics games in Boston that I can recall. I've therefore never experienced a true "Garden" crowd, and of all the Celtics bloggers out there, I'm perhaps the least qualified to testify as to what a true Celtics championship crowd is (though I was fortunate to be part of the crowd at Game 1 in the 2008 Finals). But I can tell you that the Boston fans know that something special is happening on the hardwood in their series.

The place was packed, well before tip, for a 1 o'clock start on a Sunday against the Pacers. (Okay, maybe it helped that the Patriots were playing the Sunday night game.) When Shaquille O'Neal jogged out of the tunnel as the rest of the team warmed up -- signifying he was going to play for the first time in five games -- the place went bananas (thought not as bananas as when Shaq caught an alley-oop from Paul Pierce in the first quarter, slammed it through with one hand while being fouled by Jeff Foster, then covered the distance between the bucket and the sideline in four giant strides -- "Fee Fi Fo Fum!") The players were met with thunderous chants of "DE-FENSE! DE-FENSE" in the third quarter despite a listless, disjointed performance from the Cs on the offensive end during the entire period. And the crowd, like the team, rose to the occasion in the crucial fourth quarter, helping to put the Pacers away by creating an overwhelming atmosphere.

I know how good Boston fans are, and I'm not saying that the crowd was "bad" in each of the last two seasons when I want to see a game. But it's different this year; it's like it was in 2007-08.

I'm not guaranteeing that we'll win the title. I'm not even guaranteeing that we won't suffer through the same mediocre stretch of mid-season basketball we saw last season and the one before. But our current 13-game winning streak will end, perhaps sooner rather than later, and at some point, we'll lose a couple in a row and people will start to talk about how it's the same old thing from the same old Celtics. But I'm here to say that I think things are different this year -- and that the fans in Boston do, too.

Boston 102, Atlanta 90

2010-12-16T21:01:00.000-08:00

One night after an emotional, up-and-down win in New York over the Knicks, the depleted Celtics returned home and beat the Hawks.

[recap] [box score]

Rajon Rondo missed the game with the ankle injury he suffered in the fourth quarter on Wednesday. That makes five missed games and counting for Rondo this year, who missed four games earlier with hamstring and foot injuries. In each of those games, Nate Robinson has gotten the start in Rondo's stead, and until tonight, he had performed well in each -- much better, in fact, than he's been most of the time coming off the bench this season. He reached double figures in scoring in three of those contests, and it seemed that he was more comfortable with the first team -- when he could focus on scoring -- than with the second unit, where he has had to create for others in the absence of Delonte West.

Robinson struggled a bit on Thursday, and I lead with a sour note on an otherwise satisfactory evening because it appears that Rondo will miss a few games and Boston will need to figure out what to do with Nate in the starting lineup.

Nate's problem tonight was, quite simply, that he tried to be too much like Rondo. Steve Kerr and Kevin McHale, announcing the game for TNT, noticed this in second half, when Robinson threw a flashy, left-handed, lookaway pass to Semih Erden on the break, but Robinson had forced a pass early and had really tried to do too much the entire game. Robinson has never been a traditional point guard, and never will be; he's a scorer trapped in a point guard's body. (Height-wise, anyway, he's actually trapped in a ballboy's body.) When Boston got a comfortable lead in this game in the third quarter, it was with Paul Pierce assuming ballhandling duties and Nate Robinson and Ray Allen playing off the ball.

I really like Nate (not that I always have) and think he's been a great addition to the team. And he's played well this season. And it definitely feels weird to say that Nate was looking to set other people up too much when he took 15 shots. But he's a better player when he's being Nate than he is when he's trying to be Rondo. If he can't just be Nate, then we can expect to see more of Pierce initiating the offense (which was a smart move by Doc, by the way).

A few bullets:

Pierce, by the way, responded to his playmaking duties with ten assists. And he did a great job -- with help, of course -- on Josh Smith, which in theory should be a really tough matchup for him.
It was nice to see Erden bounce back with a good game. The rookie has been forced into action far too early, and he's had his ups and downs. Wednesday night in New York was definitely one of the down notes. Given the impossible task of stopping Amar'e Stoudemire, Erden got lit up early, and you could tell from his body language that he wasn't going to be a factor the rest of the night. Thursday, he picked his head up and scored ten points.
Points-rebounds double-doubles for Kevin Garnett (17/14) and Glen Davis (18/10). We need those guys to keep rebounding well, particularly with so many of our centers on the sidelines. (Erden didn't grab a rebound in nearly 24 minutes against the Hawks).
Luke Harangody got seven-plus minutes of playing time and didn't play half badly. At this point in his young career, he's solely a pick-and-pop guy, Matt Bonner or Brian Scalabrine, perhaps without quite as much range. Whether he develops into something more remains to be seen, but I do think he has potential in at least that limited role. His shot is still really weird-looking, but he's got a smooth, quick release on his jumper -- much quicker than I've seen out of anyone else who played power forward in college. I'd prefer that he not turn and run downcourt immediately after releasing the ball -- maybe he's just confident, and thinks everything he puts up is going in. I hope that we don't need him to contribute this year, but I think he'll become a serviceable rotation player in time, which isn't bad for the 52nd pick in the draft.
I would be remiss to not mention the fact that Atlanta was shorthanded, too, with Joe Johnson and Jamal Crawford missing the game. Johnson and Crawford are the Hawks two best scorers, and, indeed, the two Hawks who most tortured the Celtics last season, when Atlanta swept the season series 4-0. Without those two, the Hawks -- particularly the starting five -- were impotent on offense, with the exception of Marvin Williams (which makes sense, considering that he's a three and therefore a tough cover for Allen). Josh Smith, in particular, should be ashamed of his performance, as he played with a peculiar blend of apathy and being out-of-control on his way to 0-for-8 on the floor. He didn't make his presence felt on the glass or on defense, either. Johnson and Crawford are key guys, but Smith and Al Horford are too talented to combine for nine points against a short-handed opponent.

The next lamb is the Indiana Pacers, who will be led to the slaughterhouse on Sunday in a 1 p.m. game. I will be at said slaughterhouse, making my fourth annual mid-December trip to Boston to see the Cs. Looking forward to the weekend, and I'll post again on Monday.

Boston 118, New York 116

2010-12-15T22:42:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

My thoughts are all over the place, so here's a bunch of bullets:

When Paul Pierce hit what proved to be the game-winning shot with four tenths of a second left on the clock, I joked that he had gone a tenth of a second too early. I was referring, of course, to the rule that you can't catch and shoot with three tenths of a second left, while four tenths gave the Knicks the chance to tie or win. The way Amar'e Stoudemire and Danilo Gallinari were going, New York really did seem dangerous, even with the clock as low as it was. Even though I had been up and out of my chair for most of the final few minutes, I have to say that I didn't react at all when Stoudemire's three-pointer snapped cleanly through the net and Madison Square Garden erupted. It just wasn't that surprising. That's how well the Knicks were going offensively.
Of course, the officials went to the monitor and determined that Stoudemire had not gotten the shot off in time. The clock was just a formality; I don't need a stopwatch to know that Amar'e Stoudemire can't catch and shoot in four-tenths. If the guys with the fastest releases can't do it in three-tenths, then Amar'e can't do it in four.
While I normally don't really like the Pierce isolation at the end of games, I liked it tonight. Pierce was sharp from the beginning, alerting swiping the opening tap and laying the ball in for the game's first points. He had scored 30 points by the time Doc drew that final shot up for him, and the Knicks don't have a guy who can guard him. He had earned the right to show the Madison Square Garden crowd what he had told the world hours earlier: that Celtics-Knicks isn't a rivalry -- not currently, anyway.
Rajon Rondo and Kevin Garnett got into it a little bit in the third quarter, though everything appeared fine by the fourth. More troubling is the left ankle sprain that Rondo suffered on the first possession of the fourth quarter. He returned to the floor but was hobbled and it appeared as though he had to talk Doc into letting him stay on the court. If he doesn't go Thursday night against Atlanta, I won't be surprised.
There's probably some concern about the defense and how we match up with the Knicks moving forward. Before anybody panics too much, let's remember that our top three centers were out with injuries. We didn't even have a third-string center last season; this season, our fourth-string guy -- a Turkish rookie, no less -- is trying to check Amare Stoudemire.
That doesn't explain the trouble we had with the screen and roll in the fourth quarter, when Erden was safely on the bench. I can't explain it for sure, but I will offer one possibility: Glen Davis, who is supposed to help on the roll, was preoccupied with whoever he was guarding at the three-point line. Davis doesn't have to deal with good long-distance shooters very often, but the Knicks surrounded Stoudemire with four three-point marksmen. Davis seemed hesitant to leave his man, which left the lane wide-open for Stoudemire and Raymond Felton.
Give Doc credit for making the right personnel adjustments most of the night. Generally speaking, you want to dictate the matchups rather than have the matchups dictate you, but the Knicks weren't going to worry about Erden and the depleted Celtics just don't have anyone that would compel D'Antoni to go big. He played Rondo-Marquis Daniels-Ray Allen-Pierce-Garnett during the second quarter and used Nate Robinson well.

No time tonight for a "Next Lamb" post, but Boston puts its 11-game winning streak on the line Thursday night against Atlanta on TNT. Tip's at 8 p.m.

The Next Lamb: The New York Knicks

2010-12-15T00:33:00.000-08:00

Game 24: Boston (19-4) at New York (16-9)

Wednesday, December 15

7 p.m. Eastern

ESPN

Last meeting: @Boston 105, New York 101 (10/29/2010)

Long time, no talk. Another semester of law school is in the books, and I've got little to do until Friday other than recycle the mountains of empty TaB cans that have accumulated in my apartment over the last several weeks. So it's time to talk a little Cs.

Last time I posted a game recap, Boston had nearly blown a big lead late against Portland before hanging on for its fifth straight victory. Since that game, the Celtics have continued their winning ways, stretching the streak to 10 with wins over Chicago, New Jersey, Denver (sans Carmelo Anthony), Philadelphia, and Charlotte.

That ten-game streak marks the longest active streak in the league. Second is Miami, with nine straight wins.

Third? Eight games. The New York Knicks.

That's right, after starting off 8-9, the Knicks have run off eight in a row and certainly seem like a different team than the one we beat in the season's first week. "Different" might not be the right word, actually. These Knicks are doing the same thing they've always done under coach Mike D'Antoni -- namely score points and not play defense -- but they're doing it much more effectively this season. Amar'e Stoudemire, in particular, has hit a groove (he's scored 30 or more points in a franchise-record eight straight games) and point guard Raymond Felton has brought a little bit of scoring punch along with his playmaking prowess, a double Chris Duhon never could pull off. Felton's no Steve Nash, but he's grown comfortable in D'Antoni's system rather quickly. Wilson Chandler got off to a great start on the wing for them and has put up solid numbers all year; just as he started to cool off, it seemed like Danilo Gallinari shook off his slow start and began to heat up.

Where the Knicks are vulnerable is on the interior. Stoudemire's been starting at the five with Chandler and Gallinari alongside in the frontcourt. If Shaq plays, it'll either force Stoudemire to work on defense or D'Antoni to bring in one of his real centers, Timofey Mozgov and Ronny Turiaf -- both of which are good things for Boston. But Shaq's missed the last two games with a sore calf and is questionable for Wednesday. If he can't go, the start will likely fall to Semih Erden, who has done a nice job of late but who isn't going to force D'Antoni into any lineup changes.

As well as the Knicks have been playing during this streak, they've won only two games against teams I would describe as anything other than "bad": at New Orleans against the suddenly struggling Hornets, and at home against the Nuggets in Carmelo Anthony's shameless showcase after sitting out two nights before in Boston. Basketball, when you boil it down, is just offense and defense, and the Knicks are pretty good at offense and pretty bad at defense. If you can pretty well on both ends -- not just okay, but it doesn't have to be spectacular, either -- you have a good chance at beating them, winning streak or no winning streak.

TV Game Tonight!

2010-12-08T11:35:00.000-08:00

7 pm Eastern against the Nuggets on ESPN. Denver coach George Karl is looking for his 1,000th career win against a depleted Celtics team.

Bear with me here, folks. A week from now, I'll be done with final exams -- but I have four to take before then.

The Next Lamb: The Chicago Bulls

2010-12-02T12:03:00.000-08:00

Game 19: Chicago (9-7) at Boston (14-4)

Friday, December 3

8 p.m. Eastern

TV: ESPN

Last meeting: @Boston 110, Chicago 105 (OT) (11/6/2010)

Last time we played Chicago, we blew a 16-point lead, sweated out a potential game-winning possession for the Bulls at the end of regulation, and then won in overtime.

The big difference between the Bulls team we'll see Friday night and the one we saw last month is that power forward Carlos Boozer, Chicago's big offseason acquisition from Utah, will be in the lineup. Boozer broke his hand before the season and returned to game action on Wednesday, logging five points in 22 minutes in a 107-78 throttling by Orlando. While Boozer is a good player, it's safe to assume he won't have found his groove by Friday, given that he's just now returning from injury and is playing with a new team. Moreover, Taj Gibson, who started in Boozer's absence, had a very strong game against Boston the first time around, so the Celtics might not be too upset to see Boozer back in the lineup. His return does give a boost to the bench (since Gibson has moved back to the second unit), which was pretty non-existent in the first meeting between the two teams.

Last time out, Boston held Derrick Rose and Luol Deng more or less in check -- each shot 8-for-19 from the field -- but gave up 26 points to center Joakim Noah. Jermaine O'Neal played that night and Shaquille O'Neal didn't, and the reverse will be true on Friday; JON's out, Shaq's in. What effect this will have on Noah's production, I'm not sure. I seem to recall Noah getting a fair number of points with his screwball jumper, and I doubt very much that Shaq is going to bother Noah 15 feet from the basket. Shaq's size, however, should be able to keep Noah off the boards a bit better than Jermaine could. (Odd stat of the day: Noah was held without a rebound in last night's loss to the Magic).

Chicago had been playing well before Wednesday night, and I wouldn't be surprised to see coach Tom Thibodeau pull Boozer early if he's ineffective, delaying Boozer's integration into the team by a game for a chance to beat the defending conference champions (and his old team) in their barn. Chicago always plays us tough, and Thibodeau knows a lot of what we do, so this should be a good game.

Boston 99, Portland 95

2010-12-02T11:41:00.000-08:00

They say basketball is a game of runs.

[recap] [box score]

On Wednesday night, then, Boston started the game on a 96-80 run, which is about the time I stopped paying close attention to the broadcast I was watching on my computer at school. Portland reeled of the next 15 points, however, and it took a Ray Allen three-pointer -- his first make in six attempts -- to seal the victory.

Allen's game-long struggles aside, Boston won by shooting extremely well, something that's becoming a trend. The Celtics' team field goal percentage of 50.7 percent leads the league, and by a lot: Atlanta's second at just under 48 percent. While it's nice to see this kind of execution on the offensive end, you do have to wonder what happens when the team's shooting comes back down to earth a bit, assuming it does. (It's not unheard of for a team to make half its shots on the season, and Boston's been in the top five in the category throughout the Big Three era, but have never shot better than 48.6 percent over a season during that time.) The defense is still pretty good, though not as good as it has been -- though to be fair, the extended absences of Jermaine O'Neal and Kendrick Perkins surely have something to do with that. It will be interesting to see how well Boston does moving forward on nights when the offense doesn't come easily.

I don't have time for a lot of notes on the game, but I do want to note that if I were a Portland fan, I'd be awfully frustrated at what a good look Ray got at the game-clincher. Allen was just hanging out in the corner, and Paul Pierce had the ball at the top of the key. The Blazers were in a zone, and Kevin Garnett (I think it was KG, anyway) came up to set a high screen. The entire Portland team reacted, and Pierce didn't even use the screen -- he fired a pass to a now-open Allen in the corner before the screener even got to the top of the key. I know Allen had been struggling, and Pierce was having a magnificent game, but Allen's about to become the most prolific three-point shooter in the history of the game. You can't lose him in that spot.

Next game is Friday on ESPN. I'm sorry for the short post -- this is the way it'll be for the next few weeks, until exams wrap up.

The Next Lamb: The Portland Trailblazers

2010-11-30T18:57:00.000-08:00

Game 17: Portland (8-9) at Boston (13-4)

December 1, 2010

7:30 p. m. Eastern

TV: NBA TV

You really can't talk about Portland without talking about injuries. Greg Oden is the most well-publicized absent Blazer, done for the year with yet another knee problem. But he's not the only one. Joel Przybilla is also out and the team had to cut promising young big Jeff Pendergraph in the preseason because of injuries, so the team is really thin up front. (Of course, the Celtics have their own frontcourt problems, being -- as they are -- without Kendrick Perkins and Jermaine O'Neal). The bigs left standing are Marcus Camby and LaMarcus Aldridge. At 36, Camby is still an elite shotblocker and rebounder, but he's no longer much of an offensive threat. At the same time, he has the capability to hit jumpers if he's given the opportunity. If he's going to do any damage offensively, then, it will either be on the glass or in the pick and pop. Aldridge is a versatile big who has more or less consistently had his average game in six meetings with Boston over the past three seasons.

The other big injury to Portland is to Brandon Roy, who has now played the last three games after missing the previous three. He returned with two strong games against the Hornets and Nets (both losses), but was rather quiet in Tuesday night's defeat in Philadelphia. As he's struggled, second-year player Wes Matthews has emerged as a legitimate scorer on the wing. Matthews -- who went undrafted out of Marquette but started 48 games as a rookie in Utah before coming to Portland in the offseason -- is going to give Ray Allen a bit of trouble on both ends of the floor. Allen will need to show up ready to work, which isn't usually a problem for him.

Portland is really struggling, having lost four in a row now, including most recently to lowly New Jersey and Philadelphia. Boston will be the third game of a four-game road trip, and on the second night of a back-to-back, with a presumably easier task ahead of them on Friday at Washington, some teams might be tempted to take the night off, especially if things don't go their way early. I wouldn't expect that out of the Blazers, but I do think Boston are heavy favorites.

Boston 106, Cleveland 87

2010-11-30T18:34:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

I didn't get a chance to watch this game because I was at school and forgot to tape it, and it was on NBATV, so I couldn't watch it via League Pass Broadband. It looked from the gamecast that after a slow start, we got rolling in the second quarter, then put it away in the third. Rajon Rondo had a bunch of his points in the first, and it looked like he took over the game for a stretch in the third, as well, driving for a couple layups before assisting on three straight baskets.

Those of you looking at the box score may be a bit alarmed by Paul Pierce's lack of minutes, but fear not: It was due to early foul trouble and the fact that he wasn't needed in the fourth quarter. He did play and contribute in the key stretches in the second and third quarters.

It also looked like we got some good performances in extended minutes from the bench. Nice to see that.

Portland tomorrow night. I'm going to try to watch that one, so I'll have a little more substance.

The Next Lamb: The Cleveland Cavalieres

2010-11-29T18:07:00.000-08:00

Game 17: Boston (12-4) at Cleveland (7-9)

Tuesday, November 30

7 p.m. Eastern

NBATV

Last meeting: @Cleveland 95, Boston 87 (10/27/10)

The last time the Celtics faced the Cavs, it was the night after the big opening win over Miami -- looking back, it doesn't seem so big, does it? -- and after Boston blew a double-digit second half lead, everyone was quick to blame the hangover from the night before.

Since that time, however, the Cavs have played a bit better than nearly everyone expected they would, emerging as a contender for a low playoff seed in the East. They play hard and are well-coached, and teams with those characteristics are tough to beat.

J.J. Hickson did the most damage to the Celtics in the earlier meeting, and he's again the guy to watch -- he's mobile, active, and has a good jumper. I mentioned last time that offensively, he reminded me a bit of Kevin Garnett, and that's the kind of player that can give Boston trouble if Garnett doesn't stay at home.

The ever-pesky Anderson Varejao mans the middle for the Cavs, and his mobility could give Shaquille O'Neal trouble. Varejao is the kind of player whose value you don't recognize until he goes off the floor and you realize how much easier everything is without him on it. As such, I'd like to see Boston try to ride Shaq's recent hot hand in the early going and maybe get Varejao in foul trouble.

Mo Williams is the starter at point guard. He didn't play in the first Boston game, and while he adds some scoring punch, he's missed five games this year and it's not at all clear that Cleveland suffers too much with him in street clothes. The other change in the lineup is that Joey Graham has recently replaced Jamario Moon in the starting lineup, which really matters very little in the grand scheme of things.

Cleveland's bench had a nice game the last time we played them. They've got some pretty good second-unit weapons, as second-unit weapons go. The most obvious is former All-Star Antawn Jamison, a versatile forward who we can hope decides to content himself with launching perimeter shots. Daniel Gibson is legitimate three-point sniper. I'm not a Ramon Sessions fan, but he has his moments; a big key to defending him is letting him take all the crazy shots he seems willing to take, rather than over-reacting to his penetration and leaving someone else open or by bailing him out with a foul call. None of those guys has a reputation for defense, however, and while the other two bench guys -- Ryan Hollins and Moon -- are decent on D, I think the Celtics bench could do some damage.

It's a game Boston should win, but to reiterate, they'll have to do more than just show up.

Metal Monday: Faith No More

2010-11-29T17:14:00.000-08:00

Not quite metal, but heavy nonetheless. Faith No More broke up in 1998, but have recently reunited for shows here and there -- including two at the Hollywood Palladium this Tuesday and Wednesday. Unfortunately for me, school is preventing me from attending either show -- a decision I struggled mightily with, especially because I skipped Metallica two years ago to study for my Civil Procedure exam and did terribly on it.

You probably know Faith No More from "Epic," the most popular track off of 1989's "The Real Thing." ("Epic" may be responsible for the majority of rap-metal out there, something I, at least, am willing to forgive the band for.")

"The Real Thing" is one of the albums I remember the most from my adolescence. I had the cassette, and I remember I made a mixed tape consisting solely of songs from it, Peal Jam's "Vitalogy," Soundgarden's "Superunknown," and Stone Temple Pilots' "Purple." All of the Faith No More songs I put on that tape were from Side A of that album. It was months, at least, before I bothered listening to Side B -- and when I did, it was like a whole different album. Contrast "Falling to Pieces" (Side A) with "The Real Thing" (Side B), below, and I think you'll see what I'm talking about.

Focusing only on one album doesn't do the band justice, because experimentation and variety are what Faith No More is known for. But it's the album I know best, and it's the one that fits best here. In addition to the two songs mentioned above, I've also included a cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" (which also can be found on that album), as well as a collaboration with the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. from the Judgment Night soundtrack, a great soundtrack that pairs up alternative bands with rap groups (if you like this sort of thing, check the album out).

Boston 110, Toronto 101

2010-11-26T20:47:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'm just being ornery, but I would've liked to have seen a bit more out of the Celtics on Friday night.

[recap] [box score]

Early on, Boston sure looked like it was out to avenge Sunday's 102-101 loss to the Raptors in Toronto. Rajon Rondo, who didn't play in that game or the two games immediately following it, dished out eight assists, Ray Allen hit a trio of three-pointers, and the team barely missed on the way to a 31-20 lead at the end of the first quarter. But the bench let the Raptors back into it in the second quarter -- then let the Raps back into it again in the fourth after Boston led by 19 at the end of three.

I know the second unit is missing two key pieces in Jermaine O'Neal and Delonte West, but that can't become an excuse all season long. West is going is going to be out a while, and even when Jermaine gets back from whatever knee problem that's currently bugging him, he'll still probably going to be game-to-game with the nagging injuries that have plagued his whole career. Semih Erden had one of his better games, but he's still a project at this point, and other than Glen Davis -- who plays a big chunk of his minutes with the first unit -- no one else made any sort of contribution off the bench. Nate Robinson and Marquis Daniels are capable of much more than they showed tonight, and more than they've showed consistently this season.

Kevin Garnett was simply superb Friday night, connecting with Rondo on a number of those 35-foot alley-oops that seem to be the pair's signature hookup. Shaquille O'Neal also had a big game, as he should whenever he spends part of the evening being guarded by Andrea Bargnani. Paul Pierce was pretty quiet for most of the game, but did a nice job stopping the bleeding in the fourth quarter. Allen went quiet after his hot start, and Rondo started well but then got a bit careless with the ball (the man is entitled to need a game to find his rhythm).

The Celtics are off until Tuesday, when they'll have an opportunity to properly avenge the first loss of the season, in Cleveland.

Boston 89, New Jersey 83 - Delonte Breaks Wrist

2010-11-24T21:04:00.000-08:00

[recap] [box score]

Sad news tonight for the Celtics despite the win, as Delonte West broke his right wrist in the second quarter trying to brace himself. As of this writing, I don't know of a timetable for his return. However, the wire story has Doc Rivers saying it's a compound fracture. I'm not a doctor, but I think that means that Delonte's bone broke through his skin. (If you're at all squeamish, do not Google "compound fracture.") Sports announcers always say they hate to speculate, but I, as a blogger, love to speculate -- it's part of why I blog -- and I'm speculating that Delonte's season could be over. Even if it isn't, it'll be a long while before we see him in uniform again.

It's difficult to say what the effect of losing Delonte for the foreseeable future will be, given that he'd only played a few games this season and hadn't had a chance to really gel yet with the second unit. I, and everyone else, hoped that he'd become our most valuable bench player, someone to come in and organize the offense, letting Nate Robinson play off the ball while our starting backcourt sat. I hoped he'd come in and be able to defend both guard positions and knock down the three when the defense left him open. Delonte West is capable of doing all of these things. Whether or not he actually was going to do them, of course, remains an open question, but it's safe to say that this is no minor loss.

Short term, things appear bleaker than they actually are, because Rajon Rondo missed his third straight game with a hamstring injury. That leaves Robinson and rookie Avery Bradley as our only healthy point guards, though Rondo's expected back soon. Even when he does return, however, West's absence will likely mean increased minutes for our starting perimeter guys as they take turns running with the second unit -- unless Doc has unreasonable confidence in Von Wafer or uncharacteristic confidence in Bradley. The other option would be to go out and get someone, but I don't know who that someone would be.

So sad. Delonte seemed on the verge of rejuvenating his career, then breaks his wrist four and a half games into his season. (Recall that he sat out the first ten games on a suspension.) There is, of course, a big elephant in the room that I feel neither comfortable nor qualified to address -- let's just say that I hope that whatever physical therapy program awaits him, it keeps him busy. Time for the Celtics family to look after one of its own.

Touching ever-so-briefly on the game itself, Shaquille O'Neal was a monster tonight, playing better than I've seen him play in years and much better than I ever thought I'd see him play in a Celtics uniform. I'm still worried a bit about his defense, but he's really throwing his weight around on offense and his teammates have been great at finding him.

The other player who merits attention for his performance Wednesday night is Marquis Daniels. Paul Pierce and Ray Allen put this game away down the stretch -- with a surprising assist from Shaq at the free throw line -- but Daniels, pressed into extra duty due to the West and Rondo injuries and the fact that Robinson was in foul trouble, had a strong game. His stat line was modest, but he did a lot of the little things on a night where Boston couldn't find a rhythm. If he can consistently play well, it will go a long way toward easing the sting from the loss of Delonte.