Celtics Central

The Celtics are looking more and more team-like every game. It wasn’t always this way.

The three star system is giving way more and more to entrusting the role players with bigger roles. They, in turn, are coming through on a much more consistent basis. Osmosis is taking place.

Team Celtic’s new winning streak is at 6 and counting. They are a league leading 17-2. Team Celtic beat a Bulls team that was rising.

Set them up. The Celtics will knock the down. There are new heros every night. If this keeps up, it will remind me of some of the old Bill Russell teams.

Yet, if you looked at certain stats, you would think that the Bulls won – handily.

Shooting 22 more times, having 6 more offensive rebounds and 8 less TOs would guarantee a win, wouldn’t it? Especially with 22 extra shots, it has to be a blow-out, right? If Paul Pierce shoots 1-8, finishes with 10 points and Kevin Garnett takes just 7 shots through 3 quarters, this must have been over early – Bulls win. You would be wrong.

The lean, clean, Green Celtic Machine played with such efficiency as to lead most of the game, going up by 16 at one point and winning by a final score of 92-81. How could that be?

The Celtics outshot the Bulls .516 to .360. They made 2 more goals (33-31) on 22 less attempts (86-64), outrebounded the Bulls 45-37, and blocked 9 shots to the Bulls 3. Garnett was a human flyswatter tonight with 7 blocks, many of them of the highlight variety.

Both Pierce and Garnett did other things than score to help this team become more team-like as they go and grow together.

If there was any doubt about Pierce’s willingness to play team ball, tonight was great example of that. He is taking to being the playmaker much more of late and leading the team in assists this evening with 7. He added 6 boards. He actually could have and should have shot more.

His nemesis, Luol Deng, again played smothering defense on him. But Paul did not turn it into a personal challenge, except defensively. Paul played great individual and team defense all night. Deng scored just 15 points on 6-17 shooting. There was one play in the 4th quarter where someone ran hard and made a play on a loose ball they had no business getting to. It shocked me to see that player was Paul.

The role players who stepped up with great games this evening were Rajon Rondo, Glen Davis and James Posey. Rondo was an efficient 9-13 for 18 points, with 7 boards, and 5 smart assists. This was an excellent all around game by the Celtics point guard. He is looking more comfortable on his jumper.

Glen Davis saw action very early (10:22 of the 1st quarter) when Kendrick Perkins incurred 2 quick fouls. Davis grappled his way to a career high 12 rebounds, to go with 8 points on 3-3 shooting in traffic in the paint. Two of those hoops came with Ben Wallace right there trying to reject. Glen led the team with 3 offensive boards. He played 26 minutes and is looking more and more comfortable with the starting unit.

James Posey continues to play a solid all around game, contributing in a number of ways. I never knew he was a hustle guy, but he is certainly that, with this Celtic team. His boxscore stats weren’t outstanding, but his energetic play was. I loved his one ‘wrap around’ assist to Ray Allen on his baseline drive that drew 2 defenders.

Ray Allen led the team in scoring and showed some signs of coming out of his distance shooting slump with 4 hits from downtown on 10 tries. Ray shot only 6-16 overall, but played excellent defense on the shorter Ben Gordon. Ben didn’t score in the 2nd half.

The Bulls are without an inside game and the Celtics clamped down on the perimeter opportunities in the 2nd half to gain their largest lead of the night and then hold onto it from there. The Celtics once again laid claim to 3rd quarter ownership, holding the Bulls to 16 points.

When the Bulls tried to make a run in the 4th, Kevin Garnett made 3 important baskets in response, when other Celtics were having trouble scoring. The Bulls made another run when down 16 with 5:23 left in the game. They got it to within 5 points on a 11-0 run by the :57 second mark of the game. Garnett answered for the 4th time in the quarter with a fadeaway jumper for 2. Chicago did not score again.

Andres Nocioni played an aggressive game, going to the hoop often, with good results, and finishing with 18 points to lead the Bulls.

Whenever you get a new toy with multiple parts, it takes some time to assemble it. This Celtic team is no different. In this case, batteries are included. Their names are Glen Davis and James Posey.

Next up: Sacramento Kings on Wednesday in Boston.

Well…Let’s see…

No Bosh. No Bargnani. No chance.

The gang in Green are the new bullies of the NBA. They are destroying teams. At home they are unbeatable.

Get the office pools started. When will the Celtics lose at home?

They kicked the Raptors to the curb by the 2nd quarter when they went up by 48-28 at the 5:10 mark. Game over. Send in the clowns. Or is it the scrubs. Doc didn’t do that until the 3rd quarter. The stars do need to break a sweat and get some burn (and points). No Celtic starter
played in the 4th quarter.

How bad was it? The Raptors tried to have Joey Graham ‘D’ up on Kevin Garnett. Yeah, I know. Kevin lit up Tony Allen’s college team mate and the rest of the declawed dinosaurs for 23 points in 24 minutes on 9-13 shooting. He simply overpowered his defenders, throwing one in strong for good measure.

Yes, there were interesting things happening on the court of a game where one team had a 39 point lead at one point. The Green Machine won 112-84. Silly to say, but it wasn’t even that close. Toronto started the 4th with only 55 points to show for their efforts, to the Celtics 91.

This game went according to plan and Boston simply overpowered a line up that had no height, save Rasho Nesterovic, and he played all of 10 minutes. They toyed with them and won going away. It was kind of like one of those intra-mural games in high school.

A favorite play of mine was a multipass play in the paint that went from Pierce to Rondo to Posey for the lay-up. Real team basketball lives.

I’m not forgetting that the heart and soul (Bosh and Bargnani) of this Raptor line up was missing. But the Celtics are starting to look more like a team, too. Doc knows when he can get away with limiting the stars minutes. Tonight they made it easy for him. But even before it was completely out of hand, you could see Doc trying to get the other players involved early. I think you will continue to see that against any but the very best of teams. The Celtics schedule will cooperate.

Pierce had 9 points and Garnett 6 in the first quarter. Eddie House got going early in the 2nd quarter and had 10 by the half. James Posey had a double/double for the game. I’m really getting to like that guy. The dude is long – he looks 6′ 10″ long when he rebounds, but he’s really 6′ 8″. I like that.

Pierce played the most Celtic minutes with a mere 28, and filled them in with 5 boards, 6 assists, 2 blocks and a steal.

Call Shel Silverstein…. Ray is still looking for his Missing Piece. Yeah, that would mean his jumper.

Ray was off from out side again, 0-5 from downtown and 4-11 for the game. He did other things, like rebound (tied for second on the team with 6) and play defense.

Rondo was penetrating and dishing off for 7 assists and looking good overall. In a season high 27 minutes, Tony Allen had a nice game with 9 points, 5 assists, and 3 boards. He also looked great fitting in.

Glen Davis was a foul magnet, but they were all real fouls. Glen likes contact but made too much tonight. He played a decent but not great game. He was frustrated but the effort was there, as always. We haven’t seen everything he can do yet. Right now he’s just trying to fill a role.

Kendrick Perkins came out and scored 2 of the Cs first 3 baskets, with strong, no nonsense moves on Rasho. It was good to see. I’ve been critical of his loose work around the hoop in recent recaps. They were his last buckets of the night. Still, it was nice to see him work with confidence and authority.

Things were so in control that Leon Powe was sighted for 8 minutes in the 4th.

TJ Ford didn’t have a ‘better idea’ and was confined throughout the game by Rondo and even Eddie House on this night. Ford finished with 12 pts, 3 assts, and 4 TOs in 21 minutes. Both Celtic guards did a great job of staying between him and the basket this time.

The Celtics assisted on 29 of 39 makes, outshot Toronto .527 to .425, out boarded them 44 to 32, and even out shot them from 3 pointland, a Raptor strength, .429 to .353.

In other words, for Celtic fans…a good night was had for all.

The Celtic Summer of Love has turned into the Autumn of Fast Starts and Fitting In.

Next up are the Chicago Bulls tomorrow night. The Bulls beat Detroit tonight

A supposedly toothless Raptor team comes to Boston as team all-star Chris Bosh and up and coming Andre Bargnani are both sidelined for tonight’s contest.

But the star of the ‘Great Celtic Scare in Toronto’ of November 4th. wasn’t either of those players. TJ Ford was unstoppable. He scored 32 points to lead Toronto – more than Bargnani (9 points) and Bosh (19 points) combined that night. The Celtics won 98-95 in overtime to a team that played them on equal footing all night.

Rondo has been criticized for his defense and Ford is one guy who gives him trouble. It will be an interesting match up.

The Bosh & Bargnani-less Raptors scored 123 points in a loss to the Suns Wednesday. They also gave up 136 so you can look at things 2 ways here.

What’s a Jamario Moon?

Toronto has been known to look far and wide for players, plucking many talented European players to add to the mix. This off season they went to the Moon…Jamario Moon, that is.

Moon, a 6′ 8″ player who never played more than one year at the community college level and registered a DNP for the two teams first meeting, has been a big surprise for Toronto. He has gone from 15th man on the roster to recent starter. That’s right, starter. And he doing quite well it appears from his stats – in 15 games at 32 minutes he is averaging 8.8 pts. and 7.9 bds.

In a league that is really very, very hard to find new talent for, talent that everyone else has overlooked, Bryan Colangelo manages to keep doing it. Carlos Delfino was wasting away in Detroit and is now a solid contibutor for Toronto. Now add long shot Jamario Moon. He is making a big splash for the Raptors, as well.

Moon is a well traveled minor league player, having played at USBL, ABA, NBDL, and WBA. He puts up good stats at each stop. He’s played most recently in the CBA, where he was the Defensive Player of the Year. At the CBA level, he can also score (18.8), rebound (7.9), make steals (2.0), and block shots (2.4).

The 27 year old rookie even played with the Harlem Globetrotters in 2004 (Wojnarowski article – Yahoo Sports)

So far his rebounding and shot blocking (1.7) have made the transition to the pro level.

His height/weight is remarkably similiar to Boston’s own D-League player, Brandon Wallace. Wallace is 6″ 9″ and 203. Moon is 6′ 8″ and 205. Maybe all Brandon needs is a little more work like Moon was able to get. Moon is certainly the far better offensive player of the two.

Rotation changed admitted

Doc Rivers has come clean on the change in rotation players. Glen ‘Big Baby’ Davis is in. Brian Scalabrine is out. Davis brings so much more to the table. I know that Davis will prove himself up to the trust being placed in him so early in his NBA career.

Hard to predict tonight’s contest. It should be another bunny for the Celtics, but you saw what happened with Philly. Still, I think this game might be over by the third quarter, if the Celtics play some defense. That was something they didn’t do, until they had to, in the Sixers game.

Catch up with you later.

T

I got in late and haven’t watched this game yet (taped).

The Celtics beat the Sixers by the score of 113-103.

The Celtics had a game handed to them when they wanted a win handed to them without playing hard. Welcome to the NBA. That is what happens to you are one of the premiere teams. Remember how the Celtics felt last year after beating San Antonio in San Antonio?

That’s the kind of effort teams are going to throw at the star laden Celtics on many nights. They will get up for those games like they will not for mediocre teams.

The Sixers even led at half time 57-52. I said something could happen in games like these. It did. Andre Miller happened. The point guard had 26 points, 12 assists, and 5 boards in his best game of the year.

The shooting percentages for both teams look like no one wanted to play defense tonight.

Paul Pierce had a season high 12 assists tonight in what was his Steve Nash imitation apparently.

Ray Allen’s jumpshot is still MIA. He shot just 3-12 tonight. After starting the season shooting an atmospheric .638 % for the first 4 games (30-47 from the field), Ray is shooting.363 % (77 for 212) since then. He is still hitting clutch shots and foul shots from time to time. But his
offensive game is out of whack. Maybe Doc should make some adjustments to get him right. These games would be easier to win with Ray stroking it.

Ray recently admitted he was getting different kinds of looks last year, and that the ball always ran through him. I can’t believe that he was anymore open then, than he is here this year, though.

The bench played well led by Posey and House. The Celtics had another patented, game deciding 3rd quarter, when they took the lead and held on for win #15.

Tony Allen played relatively well, it looks like. The rotation is 9 deep right now. Big Baby in and Scalabrine out? Scal only had a single minute of PT tonight. We’ll see.

Have to get to bed so I can get up and watch this game. (Did that make any sense?)

Celtics continue their roll.

T

The Celtics get some red meat thrown into their cage tonight in the form of the 5-12 Philadelphia 76ers. The well rested 14-2 Celtics play at home tonight. Uh-oh.

That has spelled doom for the opposition every time so far this year. The Celtics boast a ridiculous double figure spread at home while posting a perfect 9-0 record. Shades of the Larry Bird days.

Glen Davis is attracting more minutes and lots of media attention for his energetic play off the bench of late. Leon who?

Leon Powe was supposed to be Glen’s competition for PT at the PF position. They almost got into a fight in practice earlier in the year, when Glen took exception to continual rough play from Leon. As far as PT goes..it’s a knock out. Davis wins.

I actually thought that Powe would get the minutes early in the year as Davis acclimates himself to the NBA, his team mates, Doc Rivers, and the team’s playbook. Neither saw any time until Davis finally got a few openings and made the most of them.

He seems to be winning a regular rotation spot on the team. He was the energizer for a sluggish team against Cleveland on Sunday. He even played good defense against a much larger (7′ 2″) Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Ilguaskas was a problem for the Cs in the last game in early in that one, too. Z didn’t score from the field after the first quarter.

Some Sixer changes:

Billy is no longer ‘king’ of the 76ers. Ed Stafanski, formerly of the Nets, is the new GM. The low performing 76ers felt it was time for a change.

The Philadelphia 76ers just fired Billy King after 9 years of service as GM of a franchise that has not seen very many bright moments since their Finals appearance in 2000-01. The Lakers beat them 4-1, yet, they got to where the three current Celtics stars have yet to go.

That Larry Brown led team had NBA MVP Allen Iverson, Defensive Player of the Year Dikembe Mutumbo, and Sixth Man of the Year Aaron Mckie. They also role players like Toni Kukoc (portion), Matt Geiger, Eric Snow, George Lynch and Tyrone Hill. Is that the roster of a Finals team? It was that year.

Since then, a number of moves have not panned out, including the high profile addition of Chris Webber. Webber is Gone. Iverson is gone. The team be young now.

The false hope of playing .500 ball after Iverson left last year, has caused this move. Chairman Ed Snider said that they expected better from this year’s roster. I’m not sure why.

I predicted a tough year for this crew in the preseason (29 wins). There is no go-to guy, and lots of youth added. One of the veteran stabilizers who played well during that post-Iverson run, Joe Smith, is gone (Chicago).

I like some of the pieces here, but it will take time for some talented youth (Thaddeus Young. Louis Williams, and Jason Smith) and another first tier scorer for them to move forward in any real way.

In the meantime, 2nd round choice from Detroit, 5th year player Willie Green, keeps getting chances to become a bonifide scorer (12 pts. in 29 minutes per, this year) though he sports a 40% career scoring average.

Willy has something in common with Tony Allen as they both underwent the same knee injury and operation. So there is life after such an injury. May Tony be able to regain his form, as well.

Andre Iguadola is the leading scorer now at 17 plus. The team scores just 90.8 (4th worse) and gives up about 93 points per game.

Two big differences of this Sixer team since the trade is:

a) they now take much fewer (4.2 less) 3 point shots than their opponents, even with a Kyle Korver chucking it up there.
b) they take 6 less foul shots than their opponents, another big change since referee favorite, lane crashing Allen Iverson left.

Speaking of Korver, his shooting is way down this year at 35.7% from the field and only 29.7 from downtown. He is obviously no longer getting the open looks from Iverson double teams.

One of the team strengths is rebounding. They outrebound their competition by 3.3 boards per game, with Samuel Dalembert’s 8.7, new comer Reggie Evans’ 8.5, and Iguadola’s 6.7 boards per game.

Philly has lost 2 straight. Boston is on a 3 game win streak. Both streak’s should continue tonight.

Boston is learning to win with other players as the 3 stars have been having ‘less than star quality’ games of late. Pierce and Garnett both scored in single digits Sunday, while Ray Allen has been in a shooting slump. Rondo, Posey, House and now Davis can help out offensively. More important, they still hang their hat on defense when things go awry offensively.

Everything says ‘blow out’ about this game. But in games this obvious, something unexpected often happens to make all the bookies very happy. I can’t see a Philly win, but they may play well enough to put a scare into the Cs.

That was about the only thing that was perfect in this game.

The Cavaliers played without LeBron James. Paul Pierce scored 7 points on 2-7 shooting. Kevin Garnett scored 9 points on 2-12 shooting.

If you’re wondering if the two teams challenged for the shot clock record low…again, the answer is no. But it wasn’t too much better.

The final score was 80-70, Celtics win.

The Cavaliers hung around longer than they should have. Or was it that the Celtics played only as hard as they had to.

In a generally slow paced game, the Celtics, playing their 3rd game in 4 days, were without
a spark in their step for much of the game. Yet, they persevered and went up as much as 21 points before the Cavs made a late charge in the 4th period.

The Cavs were a different team without LeBron. They tried to hang around. They even managed to maintain the lead until about the 3 minute mark of the 2nd quarter, without the one man show.

Glen Davis played well for the Celts, but fouled out in 21 minutes of play, with 9 points on 4-5 shooting, 7 boards (4 offensive), a steal and a block. He brought energy to a team whose battery was running low. Time to recharge. Enter: Glen Davis – the energizer. Never to be mistaken for a pink bunny, Glen makes maximum use of his court time.

Doc had asked Rajon to bring life to the team in the second quarter and his defense picked things up a bit. But it was Big Baby who made plays and seemed to energize the crowd as well as his team.

While Paul Pierce wasn’t doing much offensively today, he had a deflection that he caught himself and a knockaway that both turned into Celtic steals and scores.

The Celtic game plan was to go to Garnett and Perkins in the paint, early and often, to challenge Zydrunas. I guess the thinking was to get Z and or Gooden into foul trouble. It didn’t work. Perkins could do little with Ilgauskas. Though getting the ball in strong position Perkins shot 1-4, was blocked by Zydrunas once, and wisely passed the ball out a number of times.

On the other side of the floor, ‘Z’, the league’s top offensive rebounder, started strong, making 3 shots early against Perkins, yet ending up 3-12 for the day, leading the team with 12 points, and 13 boards (2 offensive). It was that kind of a day.

Ray Allen led both teams with 20 points on 8-16 shooting, but only 1-7 from downtown. Rondo was the 2nd leading scorer for the Cs, with 12 points on 4-6 shooting, 5 boards, but only 1 assist. It was that kind of a day.

The Cs held a slight edge in rebounds, 51-47. They shot .375% to the Cavs .329%. They only shot 2-14 (.143) to the Cavs 6-23 (.261) from downtown. Maybe 12:30 p.m. starts aren’t such a good idea. It didn’t look like the players from both teams were awake yet.

The Celtics did manage 11 steals led by Pierce’s 3. Perkins had 2 blocks and a steal. But both players, not wanting to be considered greedy, gave the ball back 3 times each themselves. That’s fair.

The big three did get more rest than usual, which makes me think that Doc knew he could probably get away with a little more rest for them and still pull this one out. That is how it happened, though the second unit is the one that lost the leads during parts of the game for the
most part.

Dwayne Jones, the former Celtic, pulled down 10 boards (6 offensive), 2 blocks and 6 points (3-3) in 18 minutes. He is a guy (‘cheap but capable’ big man option) the team could have used this year.

Not much else to say. It was that kind of day.

Next up: Philadelphia 76ers.

boxscore

It seems that the Miami Heat have this little game they like to play with the Celtics.

It’s called – “Caught you napping.”

Or maybe it’s ‘Ambush.’

The Celtics once again built a huge lead. The Heat once again made a strong run late in the game. This time the Celtics were just a little more ready for them. Ray Allen once again made plays that broke the comeback.

In the blink of an eye, 14 points were chopped off of a seemingly safe 28 point lead. The Celtics were up 28 at 81-53, with 1:08 left in the 3rd. At 10:21 of the 4th, the score was 83-69. If you went to the refrigerator or made a nature call at that time, you would have come back and thought, “What the…? Did someone change the channel on me?”

No. Jason Williams happened.

After a Udonis Haslem dunk, J-Will made 2 quick 3s to end the third quarter. Nothing to worry about. The Cs lead 83-61. Then Williams opened with another 3 giving him 9 points in exactly 48 seconds of game time between the 2 quarters. Daequan Cook followed with another 3. Dwayne Wade and the Heat smelled blood. Dwayne drove for a lay-up making the score 83-69 in just 2:49 minutes of game time.

A 14 to 2 run, and the Heat started paying attention. I’m not so sure the Celtics did. They continued to asault the lead as the Celtics missed shot after shot. The Cs didn’t make their first shot of the quarter until Kevin Garnett scored with about 6 minutes left.

So the Heat closed a 28 point, 3rd quarter lead down to 7 (86-79) with 3:53 left in the game on yet another Jason Williams 3 pointer. Ray Allen, who was having a tough offensive game, missing 12 shots in row up to then, made a bank shot (his 14th point) to break Miami’s move. The Heat would respond 2 more times get it back to 7, but never got any closer.

The Heat looked a little bit like the Knicks for earlier parts of the game as the Cs built a 28 point lead. They didn’t seem to be competing with any enthusiasm. The Celtics can do that to you these days.

The long range barrage by Williams infused some life back into the Heat. As can happen, the Celtics were caught off guard and had a hard time re-establishing their own competitiveness.

Luckily, Ray Allen showed again that he can make plays when they need him and he hit 3-4 in foul shots down the stretch, as well. James Posey hit 2 FTs of his own and KG made a little jump shot, giving him 23 points for the game, closing out the Celtics scoring and their 13th win against 2 losses.

Paul Pierce had 18 first quarter points as the Celtics broke on top, 31 to 25. Paul was 5-6 from the field, 3-3 from downtown and 5-5 from the foul line for the opening act to lead the Cs to an early lead. He finished with 27 to lead the Celtics.

The Celtics did not block a single shot but had 15 steals, led by Rajon Rondo and Ray Allen with 5 and 4 respectively. Rondo shot only once, had 3 points, but added 6 solid assists and 4 rebounds to go with his 5 steals.

James Posey, Scot Pollard, and Eddie House all contributed off the bench. Glen Davis was a CD-DNP after 30 minutes last night.

The Celtics have a chance at pay back for their recent overtime loss to Cleveland, when they play the Cavaliers in Boston on Sunday. LeBron’s finger is hurt. I hope he plays.

Meanwhile, the Celtics keep responding to all challenges. The Heat play a good defense as was evidenced by the Celtics poor 39.7 shooting pct. Ray Allen’s shot was off, yet they still won.