Boston 86, Detroit 82

[recap] [box score]

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.

The Next Lamb: The Detroit Pistons

Game 4: Detroit (0-3) at Boston (2-1)

Date: Tuesday, November 2

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

TV: NBA League Pass

In many respects, the Pistons are off to a frustrating start to the 2010-11 campaign. Three times this young season, the Pistons have taken to the hardwood. Three times, they've held a lead late in the fourth quarter. And all three times, they've left the arena without a win.

And yet in some ways, the Pistons can be encouraged by their start. Detroit went 27-55 last year, and are not projected to do much better this year. So to be within a possession of beating Oklahoma City, then come back the very next night and build a 21-point lead in Chicago -- well, it's frustrating to blow those games, but there are good things to be taken from the fact that they were in a position to blow them. Of course, that's little consolation to Pistons fans, and it won't matter much if the team doesn't start closing out some of these games, but it's something to build on.

Detroit's a unique team in that its best scorer, Ben Gordon, comes off the bench. Gordon went crazy on the Celtics during the 2008-09 playoffs when he was with the Bulls, but the Celtics -- like most of the league -- didn't get his best shot last season, his first with the Pistons. He's a feast-or-famine type player, and it may be that as he goes, so go the Pistons. Against the Bulls, Gordon scored 21 points in the first half as Detroit built a 63-44 lead at the break. But Gordon went scoreless the rest of the way -- and the Pistons didn't fare much better, tallying just 28 points in the final 24 minutes.

The other real player of note for Detroit is point guard Rodney Stuckey. At 6-5, 205, Stuckey is a lot to handle -- something he showed on January 20, when he stepped up in Gordon's absence and scored 27 points (to go along with 11 boards and six assists) in a 92-86 Detroit win. But Stuckey had trouble containing Rajon Rondo in that contest (21/8/7) and in Boston's 105-100 win on March 2 (15/4/11 for Rondo; 13/3/6 for Stuckey). Stuckey's off to a nice start offensively, but he's been torched by opposing point guards. Granted, he's not the first guy to get burned by Devin Harris, Russell Westbrook, and Derrick Rose, and he won't be the last, but Rondo's arguably a cut above those guys. If they key to stopping the Celtics is stopping Rondo, then Detroit looks ill-positioned to do so.

Ben Wallace still starts at center for the Pistons, which means that for the fourth straight game, Boston plays an opponent without an offensive presence in the pivot. The timing is good; there's at least an outside possibility that both O'Neals sit for Boston, which would leave rookie Semih Erden (himself nursing a sore shoulder) as the team's only active center. The health issues at center become a problem starting Wednesday at Milwaukee, but for now, it doesn't look like it will hurt the Cs.

Finally, keep an eye out for Greg Monroe, the rookie center who was a RwH favorite when he was at Georgetown -- provided that he gets into the game. He got the DNP-CD in the first two games, then had a minimal impact in seven minutes against the Bulls. He's a terrific passer, with the chance to be every bit as good as a KG, say, in that department. Once he starts getting regular run, expect his dimes to show up frequently on highlight reels.

Boston 118, Chicago 115

I'll admit, a little shamefully, that whiile I wasn't ready to give up, I was feeling pretty despondent at halftime of tonight's game.

[recap] [box score]

Boston was only down three, but consider what the Celtics had already lost: Kevin Garnett to a knee injury suffered before the playoffs; home court advantage in the series with Chicago in Game 1; Leon Powe to a knee injury early in the second quarter; and Rajon Rondo for the final five minutes of the first half, to an ankle injury that looked pretty bad. Ray Allen still hadn't broken out of his slump, Boston's already paper-thin front line had been reduced by one, and Rondo, the team's best offensive player through three halves of playoff basketball, wasn't sure to return.

But over the next 24 minutes, in stops and starts, the Celtics showed that if they weren't the same team that won the NBA title last year, they were still the defending champs -- defending champs that weren't going to go down without a fight. Allen caught fire, scoring 28 of his 30 points in the second half, including the game-winning three-pointer with two seconds left. Rondo gamely hobbled around on his bad wheel, a shadow of the player he was in the first quarter (when he helped send both Derrick Rose and Kirk Hinrich to the bench with foul trouble), finishing with 19 points, 12 rebounds, 16 assists, and five steals. Glen Davis and Kendrick Perkins contributed huge games of 26/9 and 16/12, respectively. And so, despite giving up 42 points to Ben Gordon and having 14 shots blocked on the other end, Boston pulled out a crucial victory.

Where the team goes from here is still up in the air. There's no word yet on Powe, but TNT reporter (and former RwH sports journalism professor) David Aldridge hinted from the sideline that it could be more than just a one-night thing. And while Rondo seemed to gain mobility as the second half wore on, that's not all that uncommon with ankle injuries. It's often easier to play on a sprained ankle the night you sprain it than it is a day or two later, when you've cooled down and it's had time to swell up.

Losing Powe would be a blow to an already thin frontline, but losing Rondo would be the death knell. He's been the team's best player in the first two games of the series, by a fairly wide margin.

A few tactical notes:

-Boston did a much better job of containing Rose tonight on the pick and roll. Rose is a bit easier to stop on this play than he will be a bit later in his career, for two reasons: 1) he'll probably develop a more consistent jumper; and 2) he's still kind of a reluctant scorer, which he'll presumably grow out of. He's not quite as bad as Rondo was his first couple of years, but he still wants to defer to his teammates. So the man hedging the pick and roll needn't necessarily "sell out" the way he might against a player who looks for his own shot. A quick show is often enough to spook Rose into picking up his dribble, or slow down just long enough for his defender to recover. The day will come when this won't work. Hopefully that day is sometime after this series.

-Fourteen blocked shots for Chicago, and 21 offensive rebounds for Boston. These statistics are related. The Bulls' young bigs, Joakim Noah and Tyrus Thomas, are so eager to register the highlight-reel rejection that they vacate their posts recklessly. Any shot they don't get has a great chance of being rebounded by Celtics on the weak side.

-Allen had a very tough time guarding Gordon, evoking memories of similar struggles checking Joe Johnson during last year's first-round series with Atlanta. While Gordon is a terrifyingly streaky shooter, in the mold of Vinnie "The Microwave" Johnson, his heating up isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's better, I think, than having Rose play the way he did in Game 1, for the simple reason that Gordon has never met a shot he didn't like, and no matter how hot he is, he can't hit everything. The shot he made to tie the game at 115 came over Allen and Davis, who had committed to the double and left a man open. It was a very tough shot, one Gordon should get all the credit for making, but it's also one I don't think Boston minds him taking.

-Tonight marked the second time in as many games that Bulls had the ball with under three seconds left needing a basket to either tie or win and didn't have a timeout to advance the ball to halfcourt. Rookie head coach Vinny Del Negro has come a long way in his first season on the bench, but in the NBA, unlike college, timeouts have a practical purpose other than resting players or drawing up plays. I'd be surprised if he gets caught without one in his back pocket again.

Game 3 is Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern on TNT.