Boston 100, Minnesota 79

[recap] [box score]

On Wednesday night, the Celtics beat a Utah team featuring Al Jefferson, the promising young center who was the major sacrifice of the deal that brought Kevin Garnett to Boston. After three years in Minnesota, Jefferson was traded to the Jazz before last season. Through nearly five seasons with two different clubs, however, Jefferson is still searching for his first win against his old team.

On Friday, the Celtics traveled to Minnesota and beat Kevin Garnett's old team, the team with which the franchise-altering trade was made in the 2007 offseason. Like Jefferson, the Timberwolves were looking for their first-even win over a Celtics team featuring KG, and like Jefferson, they didn't get it.

I didn't watch the whole game, but did catch the better part of the first three quarters, during which Boston led comfortably most of the way. KG was predictably over-hyped playing in Minnesota, but once he settled down a bit, the offense pretty much clicked on all cylinders the whole way. Boston shot about 49 percent from the field for the game, but if you remove Sasha Pavlovic's 0-for-5 (he was way off all game), the Celtics' percentage jumps to over 51 percent.

Avery Bradley, playing in place of the injured Ray Allen, was once again excellent, making six of nine shots from the field and five of six attempts from the line. I'm amazed at his offensive development; he's become a viable option off the ball, though he certainly benefits from being a secondary option. Rajon R-ndo controlled the tempo from the getgo, picking up a dozen of his 17 assists in the first half. KG (24 points, 10 rebounds) and Paul Pierce (21 and 9) did much of the heavy lifting. The Celtics got 20 bench points, though Keyon Dooling and Greg Stiemsma contributed 10 of their combined 16 in a 31-point first quarter.

For Minnesota's part, it's a bit unfair to judge evaluate them with their current injuries. Rookie point guard sensation Ricky Rubio (aka The Other Woman) is done for the year with a torn ACL; young big man Nikola Pekovic, who exploded on to the scene in February and averaged close to a double-double that month, has been limited by bone spurs in March and has missed the last six games; sixth man Michael Beasley has been limited by a toe injury that is submarining one of my fantasy basketball playoff runs; and backup point guard J.J. Barea, who has battled injuries all season after coming over from Dallas as a free agent, suffered a thigh bruise while amassing a triple-double against Oklahoma City on March 23 and hasn't played since. All of this leaves precious little around power forward Kevin Love, a budding star.

For those unfamiliar, in his fourth season, Love has become one of the league's best players, a tenacious rebounder with legitimate three-point range. As far as I can tell, he's more effective facing up than with his back to the basket, which may be why he struggled so much against the Celtics. Love seemed to struggle with both with KG's length and KG's comfort level on the perimeter. He was simply off all game, and his 5-for-18 performance left him nine points short of having the most prolific month, in terms of combined points and rebounds, in NBA history.

With all the injuries, the only other T-Wolf of note was rookie Derrick Williams, the second overall pick in last summer's draft. With Pekovic out and Love playing the five, Williams has been playing the four, but he's more comfortable on the perimeter and is probably better suited to the three. He's had a difficult week, but he did have a decent game against the Celtics. What surprised me, however, is how poorly he finishes in traffic. Confronted with a Celtic defender on several drives to the rim, he neither assertively changed course to get to the basket nor tried to draw the foul by finishing through the defender. Instead, he wildly altered his shot, missing more often than not. Hopefully that part of his game will develop.

And now, the best news. Boston won, and Philadelphia suffered a stunning 21-point loss in Washington to the Wizards, the second-worst team in the NBA. As I detailed in an earlier post, the Celtics faced an uphill battle against the Sixers for the Atlantic division crown and the spoils that come with it: the fourth seed in the East and a playoff series against a team like Indiana instead of a team like Chicago or Miami. We now hold a one-game lead in the division, and the unexpected loss by Philly chips a way a bit at the schedule advantage they hold over the season's final month.

The Celtics are back in action Sunday at 3:30 Eastern, on ABC -- against Miami.

Boston 107, Utah 102

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.

The Next Lamb: The Utah Jazz

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.

Links of the Day (November 9, 2010)

(Programming note: Links posts have already slowed down in frequency, and they will continue to do so and may even die out. This is the busy time of the semester for me, and I'm trying to do more with the blog than I ever have before. The links get the short end of the stick because I want to make sure I'm getting enough of my own content up.)

• It was a great night in the NBA, not that I saw any of it. But my man Paul Millsap dropped 46 on the Heat to lead an improbable Jazz comeback in Miami, and Indiana hung 54 points on Denver in the third quarter, making 20 of 21 shots in the process.
• It looks like the Rockets are re-thinking the limitations they placed (no more than 24 minutes per game, no back-to-backs) on Yao at the beginning of the season. I wonder if Houston's tough start -- a 1-5 record and an injury to point guard Aaron Brooks -- has anything to do with it.
• I can't get enough stories like this one about Al Jefferson. Everything I've ever heard suggests that Big Al J is a great teammate and a real easy guy to coach.
• Lamar Odom is suing the IRS. Without doing any research, it seems to me that he at least has a colorable argument.
• The above paragraph is not legal advice.

Boston 109, Minnesota 101

[recap] [box score] [highlights]

So it turns out that I was completely wrong, and that flagrant-twos do not result in an automatic suspension. So while Kendrick Perkins' foul on Jason Maxiell Friday night cost him ten grand, it didn't cost him a game, and he was in action Sunday. That turned out to be a very good thing, indeed, as our frontcourt rotation was nonetheless shortened, as Kevin Garnett missed this game, as he is apparently suffering from the flu -- an illness that may keep him out of Tuesday's matchup with Philly.

(That's a striking example of too many ases - as'? Can't be! - that I'm going to leave intact as a reminder to continue to work on my writing.)

I overslept and missed the first 18 minutes or so of this one, but it appears that after a fast Wolves start, the Cs jumped all over the young visitors with a 33-20 second quarter that resulted in a 62-44 halftime lead. Minnesota came back valiantly, but Boston hung on behind 36/8/6 from Paul Pierce, assisted by 22 points from Ray Allen, 14 points (including a dozen in the first half) from Tony Allen, and 12 points from Glen Davis, who started in Garnett's stead.

Al Jefferson is a monster, by the way, and his 34 points and 11 rebounds kept an overmatched team's faint hopes alive. Anyone who thinks that Celtics GM Danny Ainge ripped off Wolves coach/GM Kevin McHale (a former Celtics teammate) is crazy. KG was the key player to last season and I don't think Boston wins the title with Jefferson in his place, but in locking up a 23-year-old (22 at the time) power forward who is a 20/10 machine, McHale got good value for an aging superstar who was too long in the tooth to be the centerpiece of the franchise. This isn't anywhere close to as bad as the trade the Lakers pulled off with Memphis to bring in Pau Gasol last year.

Speaking of the Lakers, the Gasol deal was in response to the season-ending knee injury suffered by Andrew Bynum last January. In a cruel twist of fate, Bynum was injured Saturday night during a win over Memphis, when Kobe Bryant fell on Bynum's other knee after a drive to the basket. Bynum underwent an MRI on Sunday, and the results should be known some time on Monday.

I think ESPN's Stephen A. Smith overstates the case a bit -- as he so often does -- in the link above when he says that if Bynum is done for the year, their championship hopes end. It certainly weakens them, but without Bynum, they are still by and large the team that made the Finals last year. Lamar Odom should flourish stepping back into his starting role, and the Lakers should still be the favorites to come out of the West even if Bynum is on the shelf for the rest of the season.

Even if Bynum comes back at some point during the 2008-2009 season, however, there are implications for the rest of the league. He is bound to miss at least some time, and the Lakers will undoubtedly lose some games they would have won had he been healthy. Those few games could be crucial, as the team with the best overall record in the league gets home court advantage throughout the playoffs, including the Finals. The Lakers have nine losses, tied for fewest in the league with Boston and Cleveland (Orlando is one back in the loss column, with ten). While Los Angeles probably can hang on to home court advantage throughout the Western Conference playoffs even if Bynum misses the rest of the year (San Antonio is currently five games back), they are in serious danger of losing home court advantage to whatever East team they might meet in the Finals. Home court isn't everything, but when teams are evenly matched, as they are this year, it can often be the deciding factor (Cleveland, for example, hasn't lost a single game at home this season).

Such is the world of the NBA: one team's loss is every other team's gain.

Next game for Boston, as alluded to above, is Tuesday at Philadelphia. No national TV, though clear your calendar for Thursday night, as the Celtics host the Lakers at 8 p.m. Eastern on TNT.

Boston 86, Detroit 78

It's good to get a tough win like this one on the road after a string of blowout victories.

[recap] [box score] [highlights]

The win is going to cost Boston a game without Kendrick Perkins, however. Midway through the fourth with the Celtics up 70-65, Perk was sent to the locker room after committing a flagrant-two on Jason Maxiell. I don't think the big guy's intentions were bad, but as he challenged a shot, he ended up putting Maxiell in something of a headlock and throwing him to the ground. A clear flagrant two, which carries with it an automatic one-game suspension (though I imagine the league would have made Perk sit out a game even if the suspension wasn't automatic.

Maxiell had done his best to spark a Piston comeback to that point, although looking at the play-by-play after the fact, it doesn't appear that his performance had as big an impact as I thought at the time. He had five straight Detroit points and had grabbed three offensive rebounds in the quarter, but he couldn't convert those extra opportunities. Still, at the time, I was reminded of last year's lone regular-season visit to the Palace of Auburn Hills. The Celtics won that one in large part because of a breakout-type game for Glen Davis in his rookie year (I say "breakout-type" because Davis didn't really end up breaking out). Davis had 16 of his career-high 20 points in the fourth-quarter to bring Boston back from a three-point deficit.

Maxiell is more of a known quantity than Davis was at the time, but it sure looked to me like the same kind of thing was happening. But after Ray Allen missed a technical free throw (Maxiell got rung up for pushing Perkins after the play), Maxiell missed two at the line, and Rip Hamilton made a jumper to cut the lead to four, it was Davis who answered, scoring a tough finish over Maxiell on a nice pass from Allen, then grabbing an offensive rebound on the next possession which eventually led to an Eddie House three and a nine-point lead.

(A quick note about the fight: You can't see from the video highlights on ESPN.com (linked above), but it looked to me like Maxiell swung at Rajon Rondo and struck him with an open hand. The officials looked at the replay and determined that no punch was thrown, but I'm not so sure. After Maxiell pushed Perk, Kevin Garnett shoved Maxiell from Maxiell's right side, while Rondo tried to intervene a little more peacefully by reaching out to Maxiell on the left side. Rather than shove Rondo away with his left arm, Maxiell came across his body with his right arm and hit Rondo in the chest. I wouldn't be surprised to see the league dock him a game after reviewing the tape.

Also, the whole incident would have been avoided had the officials called an obvious push in the back by Maxiell on House on the rebound).

Anyway, in the grand scheme of things, this isn't a big deal. It does raise some concerns for our next game, though, when we host Minnesota on Sunday. The Wolves are a pretty miserable 16-29, but as recently as January 26, they were an NBA-best 10-2 in 2009 (they've since dropped two in a row to the Pistons and the Lakers).

What makes the loss of Perkins difficult for this particular game is that Minnesota's main weapon is none other than former Celtic Al Jefferson, who was, you'll recall, the main piece in the trade that brought Garnett to Boston last offseason. Jefferson is a monster, averaging 22.7 points and 10.5 rebounds per game this year, and he's the main snub on this year's Western Conference All-Star team (I'll have more on the All-Star selections this weekend). At 6'10", he's too tall for either Davis or Leon Powe to guard, and he's stronger than Garnett. And, despite his mild manner, he's not afraid of Garnett, either; he's woofed right back whenever Garnett tried to intimidate him by getting in his face.

Garnett did a nice job on the much stronger Shaquille O'Neal when Perkins was out with the shoulder injury earlier this month, and we'll need the same effort from him against Big Al J Sunday. The other issue is that this leaves our frontcourt rotation very thin, as Brian Scalabrine is still out after suffering two concussions in three days earlier in the week.

It's always fun to play the Wolves, as Jefferson and the Boston fans seem to have a mutual love for each other. Because of the trade, Minnesota also has a couple other former Celtics, including RWH faves Ryan Gomes and Sebastian Telfair, and it's fun to track their progress. Finally, this also marks the return of Celtics legend Kevin McHale to the parquet, as he added interim coach to his GM title in taking over for Randy Wittman 19 games into this season. The Wolves are 12-14 since that time, and there's some basis to think that McHale has something to do with that; this is his second interim stint in Minnesota, and he went 19-12 at the end of the 2004-2005 season.

There's no national TV for this noon Eastern game, so I'll watch on League Pass broadband and try to post some quick thoughts before the Super Bowl that night.

Boston 98, Detroit 80

Another trouncing of the Pistons, again keyed by our bench. This one wasn't even as close as the final score.

[recap] [box score]

I don't really know why our bench steps up in the games it does. The second unit was great against Detroit like two weeks ago, fairly ineffective in five intervening games, and then again the deciding factor tonight. But I love the fact that we're winning these big games against quality oppenents while getting rather pedestrian efforts from the Big Three. I don't like that we are relying so much on Pierce and Ray and KG to beat the Atlantas and Torontos, but as long as our bench is there when we need it to be, we should be okay.

Rajon Rondo has been fantastic the last two nights. I want to write a longer post about him sometime soon, so I'll keep my comments relatively short, but we're so much better when he's playing like he has the last couple times out, aggressive on offense, testing the defense, distributing. 15/8/7 the other night against the Knicks, and then 18 points and eight assists tonight against the Pistons. When he's playing like this, we're very tough to beat. How we can get him to assert himself every night out remains a mystery, but it should be a priority.

Next game is Friday night at Minnesota (8 p.m. Eastern, no national TV). I love when we play the Timberwolves. So many of their players are former Celtics, so it's fun to see those guys play. Al Jefferson is blossoming into the elite power forward we thought he could be, and Ryan Gomes is one of my favorite Celtics of all-time. I even like Sebastian Telfair. Looking forward to this one.