POST GAME - CHICAGO AWAY

Thomas leads Celtics to wire-to-wire 110-101 win

CSNNE

A.SHERROD BLAKLEY

BOSTON – The Boston Celtics produced materials promoting Isaiah Thomas as a candidate for next month’s All-star game.

The game he played against the Chicago Bulls spoke volumes about his all-star candidacy, as the 5-foot-9 Thomas came up big when the Celtics needed him most with Boston holding on for a wire-to-wire 110-101 win.

Thomas finished with 22 points including a number of plays in the game’s final minutes carrying Boston (23-21) to victory.

Boston led by as many as 16 points, but saw its lead down to a single point in the fourth quarter.

Chicago had a chance to take the lead but committed one of their 20 turnovers. Boston made them pay by scoring four straight points which included a lay-up by Thomas.

He would later drive into the lane and score on an up-and-under reverse lay-up that put Boston ahead 103-96.

Thomas did more than just score for Boston, which was evident when he connected with Jared Sullinger for a lay-up that made it a 107-98 game.

And then there were the free throws he made with 39.1 seconds to play that gave Boston a 109-98 lead and all but sealed the victory and with it, the head-to-head series which may come in handy if the Bulls (24-18) continue to slide and the Celtics start to surge their way up the Eastern Conference standings.

The fourth quarter was a stark contrast from how Boston played to start the game. Despite strong play throughout most of the game, the fourth quarter did not get off to the best of starts for Boston which missed nine of its first 12 shots from the field.

In the first half, Boston shot 51.7 percent (14-for-27) from the field while limiting the Bulls to just 31.8 percent shooting (7-for-22) along with forcing seven turnovers.

Leading the way for the Celtics out the gate was Avery Bradley who had 11 of his 21 points in the first quarter.

Chicago trailed 34-23 after the first, with former league MVP Derrick Rose carrying much of the scoring load with eight first-quarter points. He would finish with 27 points and seven rebounds.

The second quarter saw a much more aggressive Chicago Bulls team with Jimmy Butler leading the charge.

After going scoreless in the first quarter, Butler came alive in the second with 11 points in the second along with a game-high 11 rebounds. He would finish with 28 points, 14 rebounds and three assists.

The Bulls were able to make it a one-possession game (45-42) in the second quarter following a tip-in by rookie Bobby Portis.

However, Boston responded with a 10-2 run capped off by a 3-pointer from Thomas to make it a 55-44 game with 3:37 to play.

Boston would eventually pull ahead by as many as 16 points before settling on a 15-point lead at the half.
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JARED SULLINGER’S DOUBLE-DOUBLE LIFTS CELTICS PAST BULLS, 110-101

WEEI

By Sam Packard

The Boston Celtics ended their two-game losing streak with a 110-101 victory over the Chicago Bulls on Friday night.

In a dominant first half, the Celtics built up a 15-point lead while shooting 50% from the field. The Celtics defense did an excellent job getting their hands on the basketball, scoring 17 points off of 13 Bulls turnovers.

In the second half, Derrick Rose and Jimmy Butler helped the Bulls claw back in the game. The duo picked apart the Celtics poor pick-and-roll defense in the third quarter, combining for 36 of their 55 points in the final 24 minutes.

Two Jimmy Butler foul shots cut the Celtics lead to 97-96 with 4:58 left to play in the game. The C’s, who have led a number of fourth-quarter leads slip away this season, did not relinquish their lead, only allowing five points during the rest of the game.

With the game on the line, the team turned to their potential All-Star Isaiah Thomas, who scored 6 of his team-high 22 points down the stretch. Avery Bradley added 21 on 8-of-14 shooting.

Jared Sullinger registered his 13th double-double of the season, finishing with 18 points, 12 rebounds, five assists, and three steals. This was Sullingers third double-double against the Bulls this season.

With the win, the Celtics improve to 23-21 on the season. Due to Winter Storm Jonas, their schedule game against the 76ers was postponed from Saturday night to Sunday.

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The good news is that we just beat a pretty good team.  The bad news is that it should not have been that close.  We struggle to win close games and last night was no exception.  Teams know that about us now, they surge in the 2nd half, and we go flat.  We stop moving, we start missing shots because their energy levels are higher and the shots are a bit more contested.  That's what happened last night but we were able to keep it together and win, actually pulling away a bit.  That felt good.  Not just "not choking", not just hanging on with a good stop or a big bucket but winning after it got down to 1 with 4 1/2 minutes left, LOTS of time to blow it, and then pulling away.  The last possession of the game was a breakaway by Bradley, which he did not rub it in by scoring but dribbled time out instead but effectively ended the game.  We won by 9, 3 possessions minimum, and we could have won by 11 if Bradley chose to make it so.

I had the Chicago feed with former Bull Stacy King doing the color.  He was always big but he looks like Sully's uncle now.

Amir didn't play, due to "personal reasons".  Maybe he left his heart up in Toronto and went back to get it.

After getting dissassembled by the GSW the previous game in Chicago they opened the game strong, with a 34 points first quarter.  They were pnring us to death, with Thomas trailing his man over the pick forcing Pau's man, Kelly, to pick up Thomas' man while Pau Gasol rolled.  We had 23 points in that quarter to trail by 11 after the first frame.  We blew 3 or 4 bunnies.  I wondered if they were going to come back and bite us in the ass later and they almost did.  You cannot blow bunnies against good teams, they don't usually reciprocate.  Last night Chicago did a bit, enough to offset our poor finishes.

1.  Kelly got the start with Amir out.  A nice game by Kelly, 12 points on 5-11, 1-1 from 3 and 9 rebounds, 3 offensive.  Not a wow game, but nice.  As I said, Thomas not fighting to stay between his man and the basket put Kelly, and others, in difficult positions.  To be honest, his game is still so unpredictable to me I'm happy that he didn't look over his head against Pau.  Springfield-bound or not, Pau Gasol is still a very, very effective player.  If you look like you deserve to be on the same court as him, you're doing ok.  Interestingly, he's not as soft as he was with the Lakers.  All of Kelly's fgas, except for 2, were in the paint at the rim.  The two outside the paint was a 3ptr, which he hit, and a 9' miss from the mid-high blocks.  Kelly shooting and scoring inside.  Will wonders never cease.  Please.  Don't let the wonders cease.  He also sets nice screens, which don't show up in the boxscore.  Thomas got a lane on the baseline big enough to drive a Ford 150 through because Kelly did a good job of sealing his man, Taj Gibson, outside so he couldn't prevent the penetration around Kelly's other side.  26 minutes by Kelly, limited not by his play but by the refs.  Lauren Holtkamp and John Goble, in particular, were atrocious last night.  Kelly is shooting 48.5% over the last 10 games, 47.9% in January, 63.6% from 3 in his last 5 games and a fantastic 43.7% from 3 season-to-date.  Timing is everything, as they say, and Kelly's timing as we approach the trade deadline is making it very hard for Danny to include him in any deal that doesn't absolutely rock his world.  If you're talking Boogie, he's probably gone.  Someone else?  I'd say no.

2.  The man next to him in the front court, Sully, had the type of game that made me fall in love with him 2 years ago.  8-19 isn't a great shooting night, not bad, but it was where he was getting his points in the 2nd half that I loved.  In the first half he was taking shots from outside and missing his share.  No surprise there, right?  But in the 3rd and 4th he kept going to the front of the rim and getting rewarded with passes for layups.  IT with a penetration and a Sportcenter wraparound pass into Sully's soft hands for a layup.  Kelly got an offensive rebound along the baseline and made a beautiful bounce pass right up into Sully's hands for a layup, he didn't even have to bend down at all for it.  I know that I've been getting a little giddy over Kelly lately, but he has had nights where he definitely deserved it, and that pass was one that good point guards make.  Bad passers make passes to bigs that don't come up.  I saw one last night in the GSW/Indy game, where a bounce pass to Miles Turner never came up and it skittered out of bounds at around his knees for a TO instead of a close shot with the defender out of position.  Get Tommy going on about that and he'll talk your ear off.  Good passers make passes that hit the bigs right in the their pockets, not where the passer's pockets would be and that little thing makes a big difference in execution because the shot goes up that much faster.  Sully had 12 rebounds and some of them were real rugged ones in traffic.  He has been in a bit of a funk lately and even his rebounding has fallen off but not last night.  Sully even had 5 assists and 1 TO.  You don't expect that from him.  You forget his BBIQ is quite high.  The reason why you forget, unfortunately, is because he takes so many unnecessary boneheaded outside shots.  3 steals.  30 minutes by Sully and he earned them.

3.  What made it hard for us was the shooting of Jae Crowder and Marcus Smart.  3-10 by Jae and 3-12 from Smart.  They played over 25% of the total player minutes (63 out of 240) and shot a combined 6-22.  Jae blew at least 3, maybe 4 bunnies.  Smart, as usual, missed almost every mid-range shot and out he took and every single one of them, every.  single.  one.  were too hard and off the back of the rim.  Not one soft shot from range.  Not one shot that had a chance of bouncing around and in.  No shooters bounce because it wasn't a shooter who was taking them.  I'm not going to go on about his mechanics, just watch how/where all his shots miss and you'll see what I'm talking about.  His misses are consistent.  They are all hard.  Too much power caused by too much motion in the shot.  Ok, I'm done now.

4.  I am SO done with Evan Turnover.  5 TOs for him, all live.  Move him, Danny.  Package him and play Rozier, let him develop as a ball-handler and floor general.  Turner's a ME-baller who does not move without the ball.  He took two 3pt fgas last night.  I'll give you one guess how well they went.  SO done with him, SO done.

5.  The Chicago announcers said that Jimmy Butler was questionable for the game because he was "a little under the weather".  Good thing or this game might have ended differently.  28 points on 10-20 and there was nothing Jae Crowder or anybody else could do about it.  14 rebounds.  By a guard, who was sick.  Jimmy Butler, continuing the Bulls' long tradition of great shooting guards.  He isn't starting the All-Star game but DWade is?  That's why fan voting is a joke.

6.  Chicago's other guard, the former NBA MVP, had a pretty decent game too.  27 points on 10-21 and 3-4 from 3.  7 boards.  They were a 3-legged team last night with Butler, Rose and Gasol doing the damage.  73 of Chicago's 101 points were from those 3 players.

7.  Our bench killed their bench.  Niko Mirotic has admitted that he shooting slump has effected his confidence.  McBuckets was 0-1.  Personally, I'd be willing to take either one of those players.  Mirotic will break out eventually, just as Jerebko finally is, and they don't call him McBuckets for nothing.  Position us for next year, Danny.  Trade Lee and Young for Noah and either Mirotic and/or McBuckets.  According to the NBA Trade Machine, Noah + Mirotic + McBuckets for Lee + Turner + Young works.  Noah's gone, probably, next year anyway.  Just saying...Bobby Portis, who some people thought we should have drafted before Danny took Rozier, was a Smart-esque 4-12.  Aaron Brooks was 2-6 and our old friend E'tuan Moore was so busy getting posted up by Turner he forgot to shoot.  He never could do anything except shoot, but he was only 0-2.  Their bench was 7-28 (25%).  On our side, we had Jerebko with 5 points on 2-2.  After one of the worst shooting slumps I have ever seen, his fg% has crept up to 39.5% due to his shooting 48.5% in his last 10 games.  His weakness, ironically, is in his 2pt fg shooting.  He's a very healthy 43.5% from 3 on the season.  His motor is quite high.  He works very hard.  He was all over Mirotic last night, not letting him see any daylight (the last thing you want is for Nikola Mirotic to take and hit a 3 or two and get his confidence up).  Zeller got 16 minutes and did pretty well all-in-all.  He had 5 points and 2 offensive rebounds in the 4th quarter.  When you consider we only scored 20 points in the 4th, Zeller's contributions loom large.  He is definitely, positively a 2nd if not 3rd string center, but he's cheap and competent.  12-27 (44.4%) from our bench last night is not too shabby at all.  Take the ball out of Smart's shooting hands and it would have been much better.  David Lee never says a word, but you know he's dying inside.  Hang in there David, Danny's still got another 3-4 weeks and I can tell you Chicago is a great town.

8.  Thomas with a slow start but a strong finish.  He missed 3 ftas last night.  How rare is that?  A nice 7-15 night, 3-7 from 3 but astonishingly poor from the stripe and making life hard for our bigs with his pnr defense.  In today's NBA, effective perimeter is critical.  The shooters are too good, the picks are being set way to high and the floor is being opened up way too much for traditional baseline defenders to be much help.  The days of funneling penetrators into the middle and yelling "Russ!" are gone.  Nowadays, they do what's known as "ice", which means running the ball off a pick with a double-team and channeling them towards the sideline and not towards the middle.  That creates an imbalance too, but it's an imbalance on the side of the floor and not right up the gut.

9.  Bradley went about doing about all he could to stop Derrick Rose.  He shot 8-14 for 21 points.  He was 2-4 from 3.  4 assists and only 1 TO from a guy who is NOT a floor general.  4 steals including one right out of the hands of Rose.  He had Stacy King singing his praises every time he hit a big shot, so King was in full-throated oratorio last night.

10.  Stat Roundup:  96 fgas is excellent.  We had 17 fast break points to 6 of theirs.  14 steals, most of them live, and creating 20 TOs made Hoiberg pull his hair out.  14 points off of 20 TOs, who knows how many off of steals.  Why don't they track that stat?  You would think it would be an obvious one.  Our fg% were close 45% for us vs 43% for them, but our fgas were a difference maker.  They were 3-13 from 3, with everybody except Rose missing.  We were 8-23 for 35%, exactly the NBA average, with Smart's 0-5 dragging us down.

Brooklyn lost to Utah by 22 in Brooklyn.  As if winning last night didn't bring a big enough smile to my face, Brooklyn got obliterated at home by a team that wouldn't make the playoffs in either conference.  Charlotte beat Orlando.  Toronto beat Miami.  Dallas lost.  Indy lost to GSW in Oakland.  All is well with the world.  We are in 7th place, just 1/2 game behind Detroit and Indy.  Chicago, is in Cleveland tonight.  I wonder what effect the Blatt firing will have on Cleveland.  Indy is in Sacto and Detroit is in Denver.  With some luck we could be in 6th place by tomorrow night if Indy loses in Sacto (possible) but Detroit wins in Denver (probable).  Let's hope the weather sucks in Denver and the Pistons' flight is delayed so they have even less time to acclimate to the thin air.  Chicago is 2 games ahead of us.  If we beat the Sixers and they lose to Cleveland, we'll be 1 game out of 5th place.


bob


.

Bob you wrote....

After getting dissassembled by the GSW the previous game in Chicago they opened the game strong, with a 34 points first quarter. They were pnring us to death, with Thomas trailing his man over the pick forcing Pau's man, Kelly, to pick up Thomas' man while Pau Gasol rolled. We had 23 points in that quarter to trail by 11 after the first frame. We blew 3 or 4 bunnies. I wondered if they were going to come back and bite us in the ass later and they almost did. You cannot blow bunnies against good teams, they don't usually reciprocate. Last night Chicago did a bit, enough to offset our poor finishes.

We led wire to wire

We had the 34 point first quarter not Chicago. and we extended that 11 point lead to 15 at the half.

beat

beat wrote:Bob you wrote....

After getting dissassembled by the GSW the previous game in Chicago they opened the game strong, with a 34 points first quarter.  They were pnring us to death, with Thomas trailing his man over the pick forcing Pau's man, Kelly, to pick up Thomas' man while Pau Gasol rolled.  We had 23 points in that quarter to trail by 11 after the first frame.  We blew 3 or 4 bunnies.  I wondered if they were going to come back and bite us in the ass later and they almost did.  You cannot blow bunnies against good teams, they don't usually reciprocate.  Last night Chicago did a bit, enough to offset our poor finishes.

We led wire to wire

We had the 34 point first quarter not Chicago. and we extended that 11 point lead to 15 at the half.

beat

beat,

Ooops. You're right. And that was despite all those blown bunnies. Mas caffeine next time first before I write.


bob


.

Smart really has to work on his shot. There is plenty there and I think he will eventually become a decent to good consistent shooter.
Add that to his defense and presence on the court and he'll no doubt become an Allstar.
I really hope that he is still CELTIC when all comes to fruition.

I can live with his shooting for now and hope it gets better, he is so damn young and few players have the moxie he brings.

Remember Dennis Johnson

he was a career .172 shooter from 3 granted threes were not looked at the same then but...

DJ's second yr in the league he shot .417 from the field (all 2's)
third year he raised it to .434 (still no threes in the league yet.)
Discounting his rookie season when he shot very few times per game he did not get his field goal % above .45% till his 6th year in the league.

And for his hallmark defense only averaged over 1.5 steals per game 2 seasons.

And DJ is a HOF'er..... He brought so much more to the game than stats. (like Smart)

Smart has played about 1 seasons of games due to injury he is just legal drinking age in most all states, is shooting .310 from 3 in his career something DJ never came close too.

Per 36 minutes DJ's career average is 1.5 steals per game, Smarts is slightly over 2 per 36 minutes. Rebounding per 36 MPG DJ 4.2 Smart 4.8. Assist DJ leads 5.5 per 36 minutes vs 4.2 for Smart. DJ is also a ways in front in foul shooting % .79 to .68.

Again we are speaking of a 21 soon to be 22 YR old, DJ was still bouncing the ball at Pepperdine at that age.

Personally I think too much is made of his shooting right now. Perhaps he needs to be a bit more selective as to when to shot but I have no reason to believe he won't get somewhat better but even if it's only marginal I can live with it.

beat