Boston 78, Miami 66

[recap] [box score]

Our bench is better than Miami's bench, which we knew. That's all that's worth saying about a hideous game in which LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh sat for Miami, and Rajon R-ndo, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen sat for Boston. Paul Pierce played 18 minutes (I'm not really sure why), and the only other regular starters -- Mario Chalmers and Dexter Pittman for the Heat, Avery Bradley and Brandon Bass for the Celtics -- played between 26 and 30 minutes apiece. Sasha Pavlovic and Marquis Daniels were the stars for Boston, putting together nice second halves after Boston trailed by 10 in the third period.

Boston stayed alive for home-court advantage in the opening round of the playoffs against Atlanta, but the Hawks beat the Clippers as well. That means the Celtics will need to beat the Bucks and have the Hawks lose to the Mavericks -- who are in full-on, rest-up-for-the-playoffs mode -- to get that home-court. It looks very likely we'll be opening the post-season at Philips Arena.

Let me use this otherwise boring post to go on record about something that I've been saying offline for a couple of weeks now: I'm not at all convinced we're going to see Ray Allen on the court again this year. He's got bone spurs in his ankle, and although he says they aren't as severe as the ones that required surgery a while back, he doesn't seem to be getting any better. Maybe I'm being paranoid -- I hope I am -- but the whole thing smells a lot like KG's knee in 2009: an injury, the severity of which we're not told until later, and then a return date that keeps getting pushed back. We know how that story went; here's hoping this one has a happier ending.