Boston 96, New York 86

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

[recap] [box score]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Next Lamb: The New York Knicks

Game 3: New York (1-0) at Boston (1-1)

Date: Friday, October 29, 2010

Time: 7:30 p.m. (Eastern)

TV: NBA League Pass (still free! Also free for the time being on League Pass Broadband!)

The Knicks have not been very good for the last several years, and Boston has had little trouble with them recently. New York plays the uptempo style that coach Mike D'Antoni ran with success in Phoenix, but he hasn't had the horses in the Big Apple that he had out in the desert.

During the offseason, however, the Knicks went out and got him one of those horses -- Amare Stoudemire -- from the Suns. They were hoping for LeBron James or Chris Bosh (actually, they were hoping for James and Bosh), but Stoudemire is a great consolation prize. Their other big move in free agency was to go out and get Charlotte's Raymond Felton to run the point. Felton is far from Stoudemire and D'Antoni's running mate in Phoenix, Steve Nash, but he's a significant upgrade over Chris Duhon and Toney Douglas at what is a very important position in the D'Antoni system.

The first look in the regular season at New York's new pieces was not terribly encouraging. The Knicks won, yes, and it was on the road, but it was against what is probably going to be a pretty bad Toronto team. And despite their frenetic pace, they scored just 98 points. Blame 43 percent shooting, including 7-for-24 from deep, for that. I didn't watch the game so I can't be sure, but last season, at least, the Raptors were not good defensively. So this may have just been a case of the Knicks missing shots.

Boston has not been a model of offensive efficiency in the early season, managing just 88 and 87 points in its first two games. The Knicks, however, will be a much easier team to unlock than the Heat and the Cavs were. Honestly, I think scoring against New York for a team like Boston comes down to things like mindset, energy, and effort. I'd like to think that after dropping that game to Cleveland, Boston will be hungry, particularly returning home. At the same, it is the third game in four nights at the very start of the season. We don't play again until Tuesday, however, so if it's necessary, Doc may play the starters a bit more than he normally would.

Defensively, Boston perhaps catches a break with Anthony Randolph's ankle injury keeping him out. Randolph, who came over from Golden State this offseason in the David Lee sign-and-trade, has only flashed potential in the early part of his career, but he's a skilled, mobile tall guy who would really put Boston in a tough spot if paired with Stoudemire up front. Instead of having to deal with Stoudemire while Kevin Garnett checks Randolph, Shaquille O'Neal will get the Russian rookie Timofey Mozgov, a banger who is more his style. (That's a great matchup for the Cs on both ends and I would expect to see us pound it to O'Neal in the post early.)

A quick note on the Celtics: As I was writing this, I got a flood of items to my RSS feed indicating that Delonte West punched Von Wafer after practice today. It's a developing story, and one you might hear about on tonight's broadcast if you watch the game. To be fair to Delonte, according to Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski, Delonte believes that Wafer was responsible for a comment, published by Alex Kennedy from an anonymous Celtic, that it was easy to tell when Delonte hadn't been taking his medication. (Delonte, if you don't remember, is bipolar.)

Boston 104, Phoenix 87

Shaq played, but it didn't matter. This one wasn't even this close; the second team played the entire fourth quarter, and while they played well earlier in the game, they didn't move the ball well in the last 12 minutes and the Phoenix's reserves cut into what was a 31-point lead after three quarters.

[recap] [box score] [highlights]

Everyone played well, but special consideration should go to Brian Scalabrine for the way he shut down Suns star power forward Amare Stoudemire. Scal actually outscore Amare 4-3, and consistently pushed Stoudemire away from the block, causing him to post up much farther from the bucket than he would have liked. Stoudemire missed all seven of his shots from the field. Credit to Ray Allen, too, for by and large shutting down Jason Richardson, something he had trouble doing when Richardson played for the Charlotte Bobcats.

Perhaps the highlight of the evening was a postgame interview with Rajon Rondo, in which TNT sideline reporter Cheryl asked the Celtics point guard about his "impactualness" on the game (she actually said that; I rewound my Tivo to check). That's a new one. And speaking of Miller, does she not have the exact same voice as her brother, former Indiana Pacer star and current TNT analyst Reggie? A little eerie having them on the same broadcast.

This is a good start to a tough week for the Cs, as they take a road trip to Florida. There's no national TV for Wednesday's game against the Miami Heat, but Thursday's showdown against Orlando will be broadcast on TNT at 8 p.m. Eastern.