POST GAME KNICKS

I thought I was at a boxing match rather then a basketball game at the Garden with all the blood being spilled! I don't want to sound like a downer on a win night, but we got lucky again for the last 7 minutes of play. The fans were out for raw meat tonight and let put it this way, I wore my jacket over my Celtic sweatshirt for most of the game and ran out of the Garden as fast as my daughters could keep up. Thank God I knew some off the beaten path stairwell that got me to 8th Ave. really quick!

Celtic played soft most of the night and were pushed around. The Knicks were taking liberties with high elbows all night. So where was Stern and all his useless ref's. Let me tell you the new PUNK OF THE NBA IS MELO THE JELLO. The guy is a real punk when it comes to his cheap elbows and all of the other chippy play he dishes out. Glad Rondo got him good with the elbow!

I have to raise these issue because if the Celtics don't correct them, they may well be out the first round. Here is some observations:

1) What really pissed me off in the first half………you draw 4 fouls on the Kicks with 7 plus minutes left in the first quarter and you fail to drive the paint the rest of the quarter and pick up easy points. What the hell are the players and ….and Doc and the coaching staff thinking! I've seen this more often then not during the season with the Celtics.

2) Last shot of the first period and Rondo takes it…………no creativity and weaves and picks…….Rondo just stands near mid court and waits to about 8 seconds, makes his drive to the foul line looks for a possible pass and shoots and misses. What kind of bull shxt basketball is that. I have seen him do this the whole season! No creativity for the last shot and your worst shooter takes the shot. Doc what type of plays are you drawing up! Wake up!

3) Until the middle of the 4th quarter, no one was driving the paint on what is supposed to be a team with no defense and yet we were behind by as much as 17 pts at one point, and to add salt to a wound, Ronnie and Stot stuff KG and Kristic. We have 5 inches over each one of them and they get stuffed multiple times!!!!!!!!!!!

Well any way good time had but I rather be in TD Garden then MSG any night of the week, the fans are much nicer and better educated on basketball then the NY crowd! Hey did anyone catch Ray Allen's mother putting her arm around Spike Lee as the clock was winding down and another loss! Love it....next time keep your big mouth shut about KG Homer!

112288

112288,

You thought Ray's mom put her arm around Spike Lee. She was actually slipping him a roofie.

I guess I had a much better feeling about the game than you did. I think Doc is discovering that a bench that's not augmented by one or two starters is very likely to lose ground. I think only Davis, Green and West played off the bench in the second half. The starters had a collective +/- of +14 while the bench was at -4 and was only that good because I counted Glen Davis (+13) who put in a lot of time with the starters. The Celts outrebounded the Knicks, 48-38. They won the battle of the paint, 44-28. They committed only 8 turnovers despite the alley cat nature of the game. And they showed signs of pretty good lockdown defense in the second half, holding the Knicks to 35 points and (I think) limiting That's Amare to 2 field goals and Anthony to none. And the same five who have been closing for most of the season (Davis, KG, Pierce, Ray and Rondo) just blew away the Knicks, who looked like the older team down the stretch.

Actually, I thought Rondo looked really good in this game. Very aggressive. A solid 13 point 12 assist night. A major reason why the Celtics won the fast break points battle, 18-7 over a team that really likes to run and gun. Did an excellent job of keeping in front of Billups. You mentioned a quarter-ending play that went awry. How about equal time for Rondo's great bounce pass to Davis for a layup as the third quarter expired after the Celts had taken the ball out of bounds with 6 seconds left?

One thing I found interesting was that the Celtics assisted on only 17 of 37 made field goals (46%). I think that stat will be lower now than before because both Green and Krstic frequently create their own shots without benefit of assists. And tonight, Pierce made some isolation plays too.

I thought that, as a whole, this game represented a pretty good stepping stone as this team tries to come together. They took the Knicks' best punches (literally) and just pulverized them in the second half in the Knick's building. I'm not in the glimmer game this season; but, if I were, Rondo's resurgence would have been high on my list.

Glad you were able to see an exciting game with your daughters...and got out alive. And your recent news about Chloe made my day.

Sam

Cow,

I remember that play, which they replayed at the time. Melo definitely swung the elbow twice. I was pretty proud of the Celtics for taking the Knicks' best shots, maintaining their poise, and making a nice comeback on an away court. They translated their anger into energy. For a change, they were the ones winning the 50/50 battles. I thought KG made one of the plays of the year by laying it all out on the floor and then winning the jump ball easily.

I was also proud of them for winning the second game of a back-to-back on an away court earlier last week.

Little by little, I think this team is coming around, and it took a fairly decent stride last night....and, not coincidentally, so did Rondo.

Sam

Sam, There were signs of Rondo coming back and he looked aggressive in the second half. Again I do not know if its Doc or Rondo, but why is he taking the last shot? You are right that at times they are looking great but outside of new faces like West it is the same cast of players. Baby was full of energy! Time will tell.

112288

Sam is back in to glimmer game, despite his protestations to the contrary. Simply saying you aren't... doesn't mean that you aren't... particularly when you are posting like you are... if, of course, you really were.

Nice game for Rondo. Very aggressive. Good defense. He was certainly overdue for a good game. He took 9 shots outside the paint, wide open, and missed 8. I'm thrilled that he is at least taking them. How else is he ever going to learn. Keep shooting. I'll try to stop cringing. It only hurts me for a moment or two, like a bee sting. I'll do my part if you do yours. Promise.

The bounce pass Rondo to Baby at the end of the quarter was the rare exception, not the rule.

I particularly appreciated the assist from DWest to Rondo at the beginning of the 4th quarter that led to Rondo's only made mid-range jumper. (He missed three more mid-range jumpers subsequently.)

A role reversal for sure (West to Rondo for the dime) that I suspect surprised Rondo but led to a nice step into it and shoot basket... without having to think about it too much.

Baby steps for Rondo.

GC

I thought this was an exciting game. Celtics play continued to get stronger as the game progressed. This was a good win on the road.

112289, agree not the best use of the shot clock by rondo at the half but other than that he played very well at both ends. Celtics ended on a big time run, a lot of energy, determination and excellent execution.

Perhaps the team has turned the corner.

Dboss

I agree that the last quarter the energy turned up. I just hope they can continue. What had me concerned was the fact that the Knicks are a poor defensive team and yet we could not score, and the Celtics are the best defensive team in the league and they were scoring like we were swiss cheese!

112288

Think I'll look at this from a bit of a different perspective as to why the Knicks lost. They had the lead.........a very nice lead to add. Good ball movement, points coming from inside out. And the crowd certainly was loving it. Never allowed a run till late in the 3rd when..............the movement stopped, nothing came inside, complaining to the refs increased thus not getting back on defense as they had been thus allowing for more easy hoops by the C's.

Key play was the end of the 3rd when up 9 and the ball they tinkered around with it out on top of the arc and Delonte got a piece of it I think it as he, and we got 2 foul shots on the clear path call (made 1) and possession which we scored on, cutting the lead to 6 when it could easily been double that.

The Knicks played well for well over 1/2 the game. We played better for 12-15 minutes. Against the Knicks that was enough. Against the real contenders it won't be.

A step in the right direction.

beat

I'm going to put this on under Sam's Andre Agassi theory. Going back to the pre-game check list:

1) Rondo turning corner? Check for now. Lay-ups were falling nicely. 12/13? 3 TO's? That's plenty for for me. B+

2) Krstic showing up? He showed up. 7 points, 4 boards, 3 wimpy fouls too early. I was expecting a little more at this point. Needs to shed the "I just don't want to mess things up around here" image and slam it. D+

3) Game Flow? This was like a symphony piece that started out very quietly, gradually crescendo"ing" into a typical playoff finale and by the near end was blaring. The actual end was quiet, back to the beginning once the game was in hand. No big deal. B+

4) Getting off to a good start and not digging ourselves out of a whole for the rest of the game? So-so. Started off close, basket for basket. Held up until the second quarter. Third quarter was spent coming back under ten. 4th quarter see-saw until late when we took over. Insert the AA principle. Resign oursevles to the fact that this is a fourth quarter team. If you are going to have any team in the world, I'd pick a fourth quarter team 100 out of 100 times. My boys were typical fair weather fans early on. "Boston sucks! I'm pulling for NY! I hate Boston!" I always love telling them in the morning the error of their ways. C+

5) PP back? I'd say so. Nice rhythm. Spreading it out in the 4th with KG and RA. Getting CA in fouls trouble and in his head? Priceless! A-

6) Rest the starters, Doc? Certainly not RR @42. RA scaled back a little maybe @ 37. But he's the enegizer bunny. Sitting him down will kill him. almost a DD. I'm going to say C+, since Doc has deliberately shortened the bench for playoff mode.

7) Offense from Defense and vice versa? It took a while, but the 4th quarter was pretty sweet for both. Even 3/4 of the way through the 3rd, I'm thinking we're going to come up short. Usually they've started a pretty solid comeback by then. They did cut it in half by the end of the 3rd. Shutting down CA and AS is like cutting the head off a snake. Lots of writhing and wiggling around by the rest of the team but going absolutely nowhere and eventually dying. Thank you LeBron and CLE for all the lessons over the years. Only a "B" - For all the gut wrenching we had to experience getting to the fourth.

Overall, a good solid B effort. Definite improvement. ATL needs to wake up tonight for one game. Then they can go back to sleep.

If the Celtics play the way they played down the stretch last night, they can beat ANYONE....not just the Knicks.

They took on the NY basketball team, the refs, the fans - and delivered big knock out punch after knock out punch. Pierce has ice in his veins - Ray got beat up and still hung in there - KG, Rondo, Baby, West - all played great games.

Big win on the third game in 4 nights - this is one you can mark on the calendar as the night this team started to really come together.

Oh - and Carmello and Amare are the two biggest PUNKS in the NBA. Whooping it up on the bench like two classless bums.

SEE MY POST ON DOC CALLING CELTICS "SOFT" AT HALF TIME.

112288

MRKLEEN

Coach Karl has to be the happiest coach in the world to get rid of that bum. Melo the Jello is just that. He's a punk who takes cheap shots but cannot back it up with tough play...he's soft as jello! This guy is an egotistical punk from Brooklyn who plays up gangster image when he's in fact a moma's boy! It's all me, me, me never the team. The Knicks and that jerk of an owner just threw away a team that in two years would be contending for a title to get a jerk in return!

112288

Hi,
Thanks for all to-the-point comments.
The major victory of the game, IMO, is RR coming of the slump.
I hope that neither RR nor BBD have any after-effects from being elbowed.

AK

I am not sure Celtics fans want to use this win against the Knicks as a measuring stick. In less then 2 weeks NY lost to Milwaukee, Detroit, Indiana two times and gave up 127 points in a loss to Dallas.
What was a very positive sign was Rondo's aggressiveness. He needs to take the ball to the basket more and get to the FT line. He will draw other teams bigs to him, which will open up easy shots for others. Teams are now guarding him at the ft line. When he has an unguarded running start, it is almost impossible to keep Rondo in front of any defensive player. When Rondo settles for an 18 ft jumper, it makes life easy for opponents.
With Boston head to head with Chicago and with LA and Dallas breathing down their neck, every win is an important win.

Turned on a mixed martial arts tournament and a basketball game broke out. Well, all's well that ends well and the Battered Bastards of Boston won.

Another slow start. We gotta stop doing that (like we're doing it on purpose). Still, another win driven by our defense.

This game was won by championship level offensive execution, ferocious defense, Paul Pierce taking over and concentrated tincture of ganas in the 4th quarter. In crunch time, we flat out wanted this a lot more than they did. A lot more. Rondo racing across court to throw the ball off of Amar'e, Baby's fighting for offensive rebounds (not always getting them, but definitely throwing a monkey wrench into the Knicks' running game) and vintage KG flying, diving at halfcourt to tie up Amar'e for a jumpball (which he then won). The NY Knicks are in 7th place and dropping. We could easily see them in the first round and I think the Celtics knew that and wanted to make a statement. Not just issue a staid Press Release, they wanted to blast it from a wall of Marshall amps and they did it last night.

I watched the game from my quarantine cell, the pooltable room at my local pub, and listened to NBA TV color commentator Walt "Clyde" Frazier do the game. He was one of my childhood heroes. A defender first and foremost. His choice of adjectives is quite odd, though. Landry Fields is a "precocious neophyte"? Clyde had a rep for always being in fullblown sartorial splendor (take that!) when he was a player and he commented how Ray Allen is always one of the best dressed players in the league. It's always interesting to hear what former players and coaches working the games on TV harp on.

The Knicks went from being a very good running team that was lacking height and bulk to being a mediocre running team that is lacking height and bulk even more. The honeymoon is over in NY, they are 4-6 in their last 10 games and the long knives are coming out for Melo now. The fans there are quite knowledgeable, appreciate good team basketball and are very impatient. You know, they're NYers. They do NOT like dumb players. Speaking of dumb players...

1. It should be Melo's fervent hope that his old teammate, Kenyon Martin, plays another 10 years. That way there'll always be at least one player in the NBA that's dumber than Melo. He's an outstanding schoolyard player, in the Kobe Bryant mode, but is not a team player. He took himself out of the game early with some very stupid fouls (noted by Clyde). He shot 7-12 in the first half but was 0-5 in the 2nd half. I was becoming worried about NY a bit, with the trio of Amar'e, Billups and Melo. Not anymore.

2. KG came to play. 10-15 for 22 points, 11 boards, 4 steals and that inspiring dive at halfcourt. He played good defense on Amar'e (or, at least, as good as anybody can) and was just generally in the middle of everything that happened all game. This is one of the best games I've seen from him in a while.

3. We outscored them in the paint 44-28. Not surprising, since they are so soft in the middle, but it's still nice to know we can do it. What is surprising is that we had 18 fastbreak points to their 7. This was due to a combination of Rondo's aggressiveness (NICE to see again) and Doc releasing our players on top on NY shots in the 4th quarter. That shows confidence in our team defense and our rebounding. You don't have your guards taking off downcourt if you aren't sure you're going to get the ball.

4. Paul Pierce took over in the 4th. 4-8 in the first half, 0-1 in the 3rd but 5-5 in the 4th. He finally got his lost shooting rhythm back.

5. Not good games for Krstic and Green. Largely ineffective. Jeff Green's defense against Amar'e and Melo was awful. Offensively, he's fitting right in. Defensively, it almost looks like nobody ever spent the time to explain how to play positional defense. How to move your feet and seal the baseline. How to force your player into your defense and not give him the opening to go around you and away from the defense. This isn't the first game I've seen this.

6. Clyde repeatedly mentioned, in the 4th quarter, how all the Knicks were 30' away from the basket, how they weren't taking the ball to the Celtics. The Knicks were 4-15 in the 4th quarter but it wasn't only because they were missing long shots. They were 1-5 in the lane in that quarter and 3-10 from outside it. That's good defense all over the court. We really took the bit in our teeth in the 4th last night. That was a championship quarter.

7. Clyde, the HOF defender, also made numerous comments about Rondo's play and shooting. He really liked it when Rondo took it to the hoop, froze the defenses with fakes and generally ran the offense and hustled his butt off on defense. He had a lot of good things to say about that. He positively chortled, however, whenever Rondo took an outside shot, as if he was the Knick's backcourt coach and he specifically told them to let him have that. Rondo shot 1-9 from outside the lane and 5-6 from inside the lane. I'm very happy with Rondo's overall play last night, ESPECIALLY given how crappy he has been playing, but he is jumpshooting too much. I agree with the poster that commented on Rondo fiddling and diddling and then taking a buzzer beating jumpshot (and missing). He should not be doing that.

8. Bill Walker never took off his warmups. In fact, he has only played in 1 game in the past 5 for a total of 3 minutes. I realize that the arrival of Melo will affect Walker's minutes, but he has completely fallen off the end of the bench. I guess Mike D'Antoni's infatuation with his latest one-dimensional, no-defense ME-balling SF has supplanted his infatuation with his previous one-dimensional, no-defense ME-balling SF.

I don't usually talk about the refs. The NBA is a tough sport to officiate and they try to balance everything out by the end of the game, but the officiating last night was abysmal. KG being called for a loose ball foul when nobody was in front of him but Jarod Jeffries was coming over his back. Ray Allen going down from an elbow by Jarod Jeffries who came over Ray's back (no call, just blood). Troy Murphy spontaneous, unprovoked bloodbath (yeah, right). They call me Melo's Elbows. Amar'e didn't clock anybody, but his elbows come straight out too. I understand it is the policy of the NBA to review the officiating of every game. If so, there will be 3 refs that won't be working many playoff games.

After the game, Baby was interviewed on NBA TV and was asked about how Doc helps to prepare them day-in-day-out for games. Baby compared Doc to Martin Luther King (if you can believe that) in that he gives great inspirational speeches, gave credit to the entire coaching staff for always being prepared and summed Doc up as being "a player's coach". He was asked about their execution in the 4th quarter and he talked about how Doc holds all of them accountable, how they all are expected to look at themselves in the mirror and that the standards are quite high here. I loved that. He was asked about Chicago and Miami and he said "they can have all the attention, the only attention we want is when we're holding the championship trophy over our heads on June 17/18". It's strange when a Big Baby is more grownup than Rondo.

The Knick new "Big 3" don't know their roles. They don't know what is expected of them. If they don't know, then you can pretty much bank on other players not knowing either. The "lesser" players will try to fit in with the superstars' games, try to find their supporting role there, but if the superstars are confused...

The shot of Ray Allen's mom consoling Spike Lee is classic. Spike Lee's hat is not.

bob


.

TJ,

I think the only "measuring stick" that matters right now is how well this team is coalescing. On that basis, every recent game has represented a stepping stone, whether it be the identification of the potential represented by an eight-man rotation or the apparent resurgence of Rondo or the reemergence of hustle or something else.

Sam

sam wrote:TJ,

I think the only "measuring stick" that matters right now is how well this team is coalescing. On that basis, every recent game has represented a stepping stone, whether it be the identification of the potential represented by an eight-man rotation or the apparent resurgence of Rondo or the reemergence of hustle or something else.

Sam

Well said Sam.

Anyone that watched that game last night, knows they were tired and beaten mentally and physically in the first half. After going through that, they bounced back and finished the game on a 24-4 run. I dont care if you are playing the Sisters of the Poor - that is an impressive way to finish a game.

One of the things I forgot to mention in my initial post was the play of Ronnie Turiaf. I've always liked Turiaf, back when he was a backup center for LAL and then for GSW. He had a very good high energy game last night. A real pest. He doesn't really have much of a game himself, can't really shoot (which is why D'Antoni doesn't like him) but runs the floor well for a big man and will make you pay if you forget about him. He has a nose for the ball and is physical.

In Mike D'Antoni's post-game press chat he was asked if this game meant that Turiaf's play would earn him a permanent starting job. D'Antoni started to respond to the part about Turiaf's game and then caught the part about "permanent starter" and backstroked for all he was worth.

I'm starting to think that Mike D'Antoni is a nitwit. Amare's is getting punished as a center, but is overwhelming as a PF. Due to the trade with Denver, the Knicks' only real center is Turiaf. For D'Antoni to not see his team is soft suggests he has a serious blind spot.

bob

.

Carmelo is a tough guy, but only when there are people between him and the opponents. Remember him throwing a sucker punch and then backpedaling as fast as he could? Simply a wimp.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6340183342668645660#