Milwaukee 99, Boston 88

[recap] [box score]

Before anyone starts to panic about the Celtics being 0-2, let's take a deep breath. The Lakers, the presumptive Western Conference champions the moment the Oklahoma City Thunder shipped James Harden to the Rockets on the eve of the season, are 0-3 in the Dwight Howard/Steve Nash era. The Heat, the defending champs and odds-on favorites to repeat, got blown out Friday night by the Knicks in New York.

It's a long season. There's no reason to panic.

With that said, this was as bad a performance as we've seen from the Celtics in recent years, and a big step back from the season-opening loss on Tuesday. Against Miami, Boston at least played well offensively. Against Milwaukee, the Celtics limped to just 30 points at halftime, falling behind by double digits in the second quarter and never really challenging thereafter. A flurry of garbage-time points is the only thing that made the score respectable.

Defensively, though, Boston was at least as bad Friday as they were on Tuesday, and probably worse -- the Bucks are nothing close to the offensive outfit that the Heat are. The pick and roll defense was bad, and there were a ton of blown rotations. It's disconcerting to see a Boston team struggle this much on that end of the floor, but you have to think things are going to improve. The Celtics were good defensively last year, and while none of the key guys we added are known as outstanding defenders, none of the guys we lost are, either. Doc mentioned in the pregame interview with Mike Gorman that some of the guys are used to different defensive rotations/responsibilities due to having played in different systems last year, and it's actually something that Hubie Brown mentioned in the Lakers-Clippers telecast tonight with regards to former Celtic (and current Clipper) Ryan Hollins. So hopefully a lot of this stuff will clear itself up.

There isn't a whole lot to talk about for this game: Paul Pierce got into early foul trouble and never found a rhythm; Boston played with zero energy for most of the night (seemingly standard for Friday night games with this team); Kevin Garnett had an encouraging stretch in the third quarter where he was the assertive offense force we saw in the playoffs last year. Overall, on the offensive end, I think a lot of the new guys are trying to fit in too much. Courtney Lee, in particular, needs to be more aggressive offensively.

One thing I'm going to be watching closely is how the frontcourt rotation works itself out. Jeff Green was the first guy off the bench, replacing Garnett, but he struggled again and I thought Jared Sullinger was one of the few bright spots. The rookie struggled with pick and roll defense, which was the knock on him heading into the year, but he plenty of company wearing white uniforms in that regard. But he wasn't completely exposed the times he switched out on to a guard on the perimeter, and he drew two charges on Ersan Ilyasova in the first half -- a sure sign that he's buying into our defensive philosophy and that he's in the right place at least some of the time. He had a very productive first half, but played significantly less in the second.

I get that the team has a lot invested in Green, that Danny and presumably Doc believe in him, and that he's in dire need of some confidence. And I know that Doc is hesitant to give rookies major minutes. But if we're really not going to play any of our centers meaningful minutes -- Darko Milicic got a handful in the first half tonight, and Chris Wilcox came in during garbage time (he may get more time as the season progresses and he plays his way back into shape) -- then I don't think we can afford to play Green alongside Bass too often, particularly against a decent-sized frontline like Milwaukee's. Green is a notoriously poor rebounder for his size, whereas Sullinger has some real potential in that area -- he's already quite advanced at using his considerable width to gain position on the glass. And I would hate to see Sullinger's development delayed unnecessarily. I hope I'm wrong about Green, and obviously the team's not going to give up on him, but I'm thinking that everyone's interests would best be served with the young buck replacing KG first, bringing in Green afterwards to spell either Bass or Pierce.

Back at it Saturday night, 7 Eastern, at Washington.

Boston 87, Milwaukee 74

At this point in the season, the game is "whatever." Rajon R-ndo returned and notched double-digit assists again -- 15 of 'em, in just 25 minutes of court action. (Rondo took just one shot, an end-of-the-clock job, and was the only one of the 13 Celtics who played who didn't score.) The one thing I want to talk about is the fact that Paul Pierce suffered a mild toe injury in the first quarter. It's probably nothing serious, but I don't understand why Doc decided to play Pierce and KG tonight after sitting them last week against Atlanta. If the goal was home court advantage against the Hawks (which we would've earned tonight only by winning and having Atlanta lose at home to a Dallas team who is resting guys for the postseason), we should have played all out for it from the get-go. It doesn't make sense to do it now; no circumstances have changed. If, on the other hand, the goal was to get some guys in synch with R-ndo, then I guess I can buy that. Anyway, the first playoff game is Sunday night, 7 pm Eastern, in Atlanta, on TNT, the third game in the second consecutive quadruple-header in what is the NBA playoffs' version of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Atlanta's going to be without Al Horford for the entire series, and likely will be without Zaza Pachulia for the first couple of games. That's good news for Boston, as it eliminates a big part of their offensive rebounding, which is an advantage every team has on us.

Boston 100, Milwaukee 91

[recap] [box score]

The NCAA Tournament precludes the NBA regular season for me, so I didn't watch more than a few minutes of this game. It's really a huge win, though. The Bucks had a six-game winning streak going and a new weapon in Monta Ellis, acquired from Golden State for the injured Andrew Bogut. And the Celtics were in the seventh game of an eight-game road trip. Boston is now four games clear of Milwaukee for the playoffs.

Even more importantly, thanks to Philly's home loss to the Knicks on Wednesday, the Cs are just half a game back of the Sixers for the Atlantic lead (and the #4 seed in the playoffs that would come with it). So a win in Philadelphia on Friday would put Boston in the division lead. Our schedule down the stretch is quite a bit tougher than Philly's, and so there's no guarantee that we'd hang on to the lead. But a win Friday would be huge -- it might even rattle the young Sixers, which could give us an edge down the stretch. You can watch the game on ESPN at 8 p.m. Eastern.

One personnel note: We're reportedly on the verge of signing Ryan Hollins, recently waived by Cleveland, to replace Chris Wilcox on our roster. Wilcox is out for the year with a heart ailment -- yes, another heart problem -- and with Jermaine O'Neal also done for the year, Boston's been using Kevin Garnett as the starting center with Brandon Bass at power forward, with Greg Stiemsma really the only available big off the bench. (Stiemsma had a great game Thursday in his return to his native Wisconsin, where he also played college ball, doing a little bit of everything with six points, four rebounds, three assists, and -- here's where it gets good -- five blocks and four steals.)

KG and Bass have thrived in the roles, and Doc Rivers has said that he intends to keep the starting lineup the same. No longer having Bass has made the second unit significantly less effective on offense, but playing Garnett has been getting more time with the second unit this season, thanks to Doc's plan to only play him for five minutes at a time until the fourth quarter. Hollins is long and athletic, though maybe a little too lean, but in that respect he's kind of a good replacement for Wilcox; Doc had said that he planned on playing Wilcox in uptempo games and Stiemsma in slower-paced games, and Hollins certainly can get up and down. I'm not sure he's got much of a shot, but Hollins is also a pretty good shotblocker. Word is we're after one more big, though a lot of the buyout guys have been snapped up already and I'm not sure who is left.

Week in Review

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 105, Milwaukee 102 (Overtime)

Last season, we lose this game.

[recap] [box score]

Second night of a back-to-back; a stubborn, hard-nosed defensive opponent that won't give up; an offense that wasn't clicking all evening; some questionable calls down the stretch -- all of these factors would have caused Boston to pack it in for the night. But this Celtic team is supposed to be different than the one that held back during the last regular season and waited for the playoffs to give a full effort. And so, down six with three minutes to go, a Glen Davis offensive rebound led to a three-pointer from Ray Allen. A Kevin Garnett dunk over Andrew Bogut was punctuated by a forearm to the big Aussie's chest, resulting not just in a double technical foul, but a reinvigorated crowd and team. A Paul Pierce three-point play gave Boston the lead, and another three-point play by Garnett got it back after a Milwaukee basket. A Rajon Rondo steal led to another Pierce layup, and a Glen Davis steal on the subsequent Buck possession resulted in a pair of made free throws. In just 100 seconds, Boston had gone from down six to up six, completely turning the evening around in just a few possessions.

They didn't close the game smoothly, coughing up that six-point lead in regulation thanks to a turnover, a missed free throw, and a blown defensive possession. But they regrouped in overtime and came away with the victory. If you were looking for proof that this year's regular season would be different than the last, this was a good first step.

Bullets:

• Boston's defensive effort was strong throughout most of the evening. But they got killed on the offensive glass, giving up 13 offensive rebounds, including six by Bogut. Many of the offensive boards were tap-ins or tap-backs, the latter perhaps a reflection of Bogut's size relative to Jermaine O'Neal and Glen Davis. The team didn't do a bad job on the boards, especially when you consider that Shaq was out, but this game would have been in the bag had Milwaukee not had so many second chances.
• The offense looked stagnant for most of the evening. Gone was the pace and flow from the night before against the Pistons. Give the Bucks credit; they're a strong defensive team. But the Cs allowed themselves to be slowed down. They lacked purpose, even in the way they ran upcourt.
• WIth some free throws in overtime, Pierce passed 20,000 points for his career -- every minute of which has been spent in Celtic green.
• Rondo had 15 assists, giving him the most in NBA history through five games. (He also has the record through four games). He also had six turnovers, though a big chunk of those came early in the game. Most importantly, he showed that he can score when the situation warrants it, with 17 points on 7-for-10 shooting. The baskets came at particularly opportune times, too. Twice in the fourth quarter, with Milwaukee looking like it might pull away, Rondo came up with a deuce to keep his team within striking distance.
• Jermaine blocked three shots, all in the first half (I think).
• Doc played Davis down the stretch alongside KG (until Davis fouled out).
• The bench (save Davis) was pretty bad tonight, for the second straight game.
• Semih Erden was the only Celtics big I saw boxing out consistently.
• In terms of end of quarter plays, Pierce ran a nice pick-and-pop with Nate Robinson that resulted in a corner three for Allen. The nice thing about the play is that the team initiated it with enough time to go to the second or third option off the play, a big improvement over last year. Boston also had the ball at the end of the third quarter, but some good full-court pressure from Milwaukee prevented them from getting a good look.
• Bogut had a strong game for Milwaukee, but really seemed to be coddling his injured right arm.

The Celtics are back on TV Friday night against the Bulls.

The Next Lamb: The Milwaukee Bucks

Game 5: Milwaukee (1-3) at Boston (3-1)

Date: Wednesday, November 3

Time: 8 p.m. (Eastern)

TV: ESPN

I haven't had much of an opportunity to watch the Bucks this year. As I'm writing this, I'm keeping an eye on a replay of their 90-76 home loss to Portland last night. As I type this sentence, in fact, they're up 23-13, and they look good on both ends of the floor. The box score says they scored 27 points in the first period, which means they got just 49 the rest of the way. I have no idea what happened after such a promising start.

My only other look at Milwaukee this season was a few minutes of their 96-85 loss to Minnesota. I tuned in towards the end of that one, and most of what I saw was Brandon Jennings forcing the action and turning the ball over. That was the tail end of a nice in which the Bucks hit just over a third of their shots, however, so perhaps frustration was settling in.

Jennings, the second-year point guard, is an interesting player for me. I saw him at Summer League before his rookie season and was pretty unimpressed. He got everybody's attention by scoring 55 points on the Warriors early last year, and I personally think that one game colored everyone's opinion of him. Perhaps it's the stubborn Jonny Flynn fan in me; Jennings was a Rookie of the Year candidate, Flynn was widely panned as one of the worst starting point guards in the league. But statistically the players were pretty similar. (I'll have more on this once Flynn gets back and I write my defense of him.)

Anyway, Jennings vs. Rajon Rondo is a matchup of the only two players who have recorded triple-doubles this season (Jennings dropped 20/10/10 on Charlotte last week). Boston has the clear advantage in that matchup. A big key will be limiting Jennings' options; he's not the most patient point guard, and he'll force the action if he can't get what he's looking for right away.

Milwaukee's other big name is center Andrew Bogut. The big Aussie isn't 100% after a nasty arm injury suffered at the end of last season, but he's the first good post player the Celtics have faced this season. I don't know if Shaq is playing tonight, but Bogut isn't overly physical, so hopefully Jermaine O'Neal will be able to handle him. He's got a nice little lefty hook that he loves to use, and word is that his shooting stroke -- not great to begin with -- isn't what it was before the injury. Bogut is one of the best shotblockers in the NBA, so Boston will need to be wary of his presence on drives to the hoop. On the flip side, whoever Bogut is guarding should be open for dishoffs and offensive rebounds.

The Bucks have a bunch of wing players who do a variety of things well. John Salmons is good scorer, Carlos Delfino is having a great year shooting the three, and newly-acquired Corey Maggette excels at getting to the foul line (where he converts at a terrific rate). Reserve power forward Ersan Ilyasova is a good three-point shooter, and the starter at the four, Drew Gooden, gave KG a lot of trouble when he was with Cleveland a few years ago.

Milwaukee was tabbed by most as an up-and-coming team in the East after they took the Hawks to seven games last season (without Bogut). They haven't come together yet this year, but they have been playing very good defense. Boston pushed the pace against Detroit last night and would do well to use a similar strategy against the Bucks. Doing so would keep Milwaukee from setting its defense and force the excitable Jennings into turnovers.

Boston 98, Milwaukee 89

[recap] [box score]

I was excited for this matchup because it was my first look at Brandon Jennings, the point guard for the Bucks who hung a double-nickel on the Warriors last month, the most points by a rookie in a single game in more than 40 years. Jennings was decent, but his opposite number stole the show. Rajon Rondo did a nice job of keeping the clamps on Jennings, spent three quarters setting the table for his teammates -- my favorite was a no-look feed to Kendrick Perkins after an offensive rebound on which three Bucks defenders bit on Rondo's ball fake -- and then scored all 11 of his points in the fourth quarter, including going 5-for-7 from the free throw line. Rondo's fell one rebound short of a triple-double, adding five steals to go with 13 assists.

Kevin Garnett continued his torrid shooting, and Rasheed Wallace came up with big offensive contributions off the bench.

Marquis Daniels missed this game, and it appears it was the first of what will be quite a few more: He had thumb surgery today and the Boston Globe is reporting that Daniels will be out about eight weeks. I didn't even notice that Daniels wasn't playing, only that the Rondo-Eddie House-Ray Allen combination Doc Rivers ran out there for a while was a little odd. These are the kind of details you miss when you are watching a game at 4 in the morning, having spent the past 12 hours staring at law review articles about Christian political realism.

Losing Daniels hurts, for all the reasons that we got him in the first place: He can handle the ball and let House play the two with the second unit; he can guard both big guards and small forwards; he gives us someone other than Tony Allen to spell Ray Allen and Paul Pierce on the wing. Daniels' contributions aren't apparent from the box scores, but he'll be missed. His absence will probably cost us a game or two down the line, and Doc should be advised to ensure those losses come while Daniels is still out, rather than in the playoffs (due to Ray and Pierce being worn out from playing more minutes during the regular season in Daniels' absence).

Speaking of Tony Allen, he played for the first time all season, and picked up where he left off: Canceling out roughly every positive play he made with a negative one. Relatively early into his brief return to the court, he went up and gathered a very tough defensive rebound over two Bucks. The carom took him towards the left sideline, and while falling ever so slightly backwards, with the Bucks retreating back downcourt, he whipped a chest pass towards the Celtics basket that missed an understandably surprised Brian Scalabrine (he is, after all, a power forward, and had no reason to think that Tony would be passing him the ball) by about three feet. Tony just never looks comfortable with the rock in his hands. I'd like to be able to say that this was just rust, but I know better. It's Tony being Tony.

Next game is a TV game; Thursday on TNT at 8 p.m. Eastern against the Wizards.

Muy Beno: A quick note on Brandon Jennings. I saw him play in Summer League in Vegas, and while you could tell he had talent, he seemed like he was a ways away from being a positive contributor. Moreover, this was when all the stuff about him being brash and undisciplined was coming out. I was sitting fairly close to Bucks coach Scott Skiles and general manager John Hammond in the Vegas crowd, and Skiles -- a notoriously tough, no-nonsense guy as both a point guard and a coach -- had this look on his face the entire time that read: "This is the asshole you drafted to be my point guard?" If you could bet on stuff like Skiles performing a reverse Sprewell and strangling Jennings by season's end, I would have.

It wasn't enough to keep me from drafting Jennings late in one of my fantasy leagues, on the theory that he was going to play a lot and guys who play a lot put up decent fantasy stats (this worked very well with Oklahoma City's Russeell Westbrook last season). It was enough, however, to get me to drop Jennings before the season when I discovered that Andray Blatche would be starting the first several games for Washington while Antawn Jamison recovered injury. Jennings was quickly scooped up, and now I'm starting T.J. Ford in one of my "utility" slots on a team that is one good assist man away from being about as close to a lock as you can get in a semi-competitive league.

I overlooked a lot of things about Jennings, particularly the fact that the guy was perhaps the best point guard in his high school class, and that his modest averages (something like six points and two assist per game) in his one year playing professionally in Italy could be explained by many things: Transition to a foreign culture; playing a different style of basketball (an adjustment for any player, but particularly a point guard); the fact that European teams give sparse minutes to young guys, particularly those who they know will be jumping to the NBA soon. (Spanish phenom Ricky Rubio, the 19-year-old point guard whom the Wolves made the fifth pick in the NBA Draft this past summer, continues to make NBA mouths water despite averaging around 20 minutes, five points, and five assists in 17 games for DKV Joventut in Serie A and EuroLeaugue competition.)

Anyway, Jennings is quick and wiry, with a very mature-looking floater and a jumper that looks decent but wasn't falling last night. Moreover, he seems to have won over the Milwaukee organization. So, yeah, I was wrong about him.

Milwaukee 86, Boston 77

I am in Las Vegas for a couple of job interviews. I flew in yesterday and caught the second half of this one in the Venetian sports book. I shouldn't have bothered.

[recap] [box score] [highlights]

This was just a terrible offensive performance from everybody but Kendrick Perkins, who had 26 points. And you can find faul with Perk, too: He had 12 rebounds, but nine of them were on the offensive end. As a team, we gave up 21 offensive rebounds, too many to win a game where we weren't scoring.

Next game is Tuesday at Chicago, and we host the Heat on Wednesday on ESPN (7 p.m. Eastern).