POST GAME WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON 88 CELTICS 104


GAME STATS

CELTICS

FGM-A 36-71 50.7%
3PM-A 1-12 08.3%
FTM-A 31-35 88.6%
OREB 8
DREB 30
REB 38
AST 25
STL 12
BLK 6
TO 17
PF 17
PTS 104


WASHINTON

FGM-A 35-77 45.5%
3PM-A 1-7 14.3%
FTM-A 17-26 65.4%
OREB 13
DREB 25
REB 38
AST 14
STL 10
BLK 3
TO 21
PF 25
PTS 88

112288

Well I was a giant worry wart the whole game but I believe we won every quarter and won the game handy.

Right now I will take it. Rajon was immense and pp, kev and Kristic had good games.

Too many minutes by the starters by far. Looking back I dont know why I was so worried.

Hell word on the street (i dinna have a feed) is Murphy even played good.

Jeb

I guess the sky is not falling afterall.

Celtics had on their running shoes last night.

The playoffs are coming....The playoffs are coming.

Dboss

The Celtics beat the lowly Washington Wizards playing without Rashard Lewis and Josh Howard. Hell, you know that any team that has Yi Jianlian as their first big off the bench is hurting bad. Nevertheless, the Celtics needed to make a statement, after their loss to Chicago. This win does, in a way. It's not their fault their next opponent was undermanned and stinks anyway.

As a team, we shot 51%. That's more like the efficiency we were seeing in the first half of the season.

Link-less Jeb asked, on the Game On thread, about our ganas. We'll touch on that further.

1. Rondo had a dynamite game. I don't know what was said behind closed doors in his meeting with Doc, but the walls must have been pulsing. 14 assists (9 in the first half), 6 steals and 20 points on 7-12. That's what we need from him. We probably could do without the 6 TOs, though. I'm left wondering why he can't go 6-6 from the line every night? If his problem has been technique, it seems he's fixed it (it still looks, to me, like he shoots by rolling the ball off the cup of his hand, which is NOT good technique). If his problem was mental, then he should have bottled his brain (like "Abby Normal" in Young Frankenstein) after the game. 25 fast break points by the Celts vs 12 for the Wiz and that's largely Rondo doing his job well. He wanted this win badly, clearly, and outplayed #1 draft pick John Wall hand-down on both ends. Rondo had the fire in the belly, he had ganas last night.

2. Paul Pierce didn't have a good shooting night (5-14, 0-2 from 3. I''m SO glad he only took 2 3p fga!) but he worked hard in other parts of his game. A team leading 12 rebounds (4 offensive), 2 steals and was 12-13 from the line. His rebounding, a lot of which was in traffic, his fts and the relatively few number of 3ptrs showed he had ganas last night too. He was putting the ball on the floor and taking it to the Wiz and that earned him ftas. A very physical game played by Paul Pierce. This is what we need from him. If he's hitting from outside, great, but if he's not then do other things that help the team. That is not what we've been seeing from Pierce lately. We've been seeing him continue to hoist 3s even when it's clear he can't throw the ball in the ocean that night. His shooting was off, but he fought on the boards and to get to the line. That's ganas.

3. Blatche is a player. He likes playing against KG too. He's aggressive inside and attacks. The only time I saw him move backwards all night was when he lost his balance on a long rebound and fell down. Otherwise, he was steamrolling ahead. 20 points, 10 rebounds; I thought he generally outplayed KG and Davis. To be honest, it seems to me that's the way it is everytime we play the Wiz. For some reason, KG has trouble with this kid. Not that KG had a bad game. 15 points on an efficient 6-8 shooting, 11 boards, 3 assists, a steal and a block in 33 minutes is a very good game too, I'm just appreciating Blatche's game.

4. Looking at Ray Allen's stat line, you'd think he had a decent game. 13 points on 5-10, 3 assists and a steal. Watching him, though, told me a different story. This is the second game in a row (and there were more before that, I just have the last two games clear in my head) where possessions were lost by Ray because he wasn't paying attention. He'd take his eye off the ball and lose it out of bounds. Last night, a pass hit him in the hands, bounced up off his head and was stolen by a Wiz. He's trapped in the corner by a double-team and doesn't recognize it quickly and passes out of it. NOT laser-beam focus on the game by Ray. He has been missing free throws. Last night he had, and took, a WIDE open 3 (nobody even remotely near him) and the shot was sooo short it hit the front of the rim and bounced straight back. These citations are all symptomatic of fatigue. You lose an inch or two off the top of your jump, and the ball will not clear the front of the rim. Last night, he was 1-6 from 3. As a team, we were 1-12 from 3. I think that the team, as a whole is fatigued. Our core players been playing a lot of minutes in the past month or so. Ray Allen is a warrior, and won't want to take a day or two off, but I think Doc should insist. We don't NEED Ray "on his game" to get past Philly, but we do to get past Miami and Chicago and it's all about #18.

5. Delonte West was ejected after 6 minutes on the court for arguing with the refs on a call. Two techs, on the same play. I don't know if I've ever seen a player get tossed like that. I hope he's still taking his meds.

6. Yes, Jeb, there is a Santa Claus. I thought Troy Murphy finally played like he deserved to be the Belle of the Free Agent Ball. Only 2-5 (and 0-2 from outside), but he looked confident last night. He took Yi off the dribble (yeah, I know, it's Yi, but he still attacked him successfully) and looked very aware of his defensive responsibilities. Sometimes it's good for a player to sit, with or without injuries, for a while. It gives them an opportunity to reflect, to soak up the game and learn. HOPEFULLY, this is a turning point for Murph. We'll see more definitively over the next few games, but definite ganas from him last night, though. He worked out there.

7. A good game by Krstic. At halftime, he was the Celtics high scorer with 12. He was running the floor, he was scoring inside. His inconsistency drives me (and, no doubt, Doc too) crazy. He comes from OKC and comes out like a house on fire as a starter, then he slumps as a starter, then he has a good game off the bench, then he stinks off the bench, now he's starting (they gave JON the night off just to be safe. Hear that Ray?) and did well again. He is who he is and he's never going to be the hulking, glowering, defensive intimidator that Perk was, but he still brings value to the court and the team and we saw that last night. He just needs to even it out more and not be as much of a Trick-or-Treat. Last night, though, he brought it. Good ganas from the Serb. Nice to see how he responds to losing a big game. We might need that in 2 weeks.

8. Glen Davis was 3-7, 1-4 from outside. He's dragging a ton around with him every night. Could his shooting woes this second half be fatigue too? He played 21 minutes and had no rebounds. That is not a typo.

9. Carlos Arroyo is a halfcourt point guard. He runs the ball over halfcourt, and then pulls up. I have not seen him, Celtic career-to-date, drive on a fast break (nor semi-fast break), nor have I seen him try to take the ball to the rim in the halfcourt even when he gets the pick that breaks him free. When he gets some daylight, he pulls up for a mid-range jumper. I'm starting to see the reason why Miami let him go instead of Chalmers. Is it lack of confidence? Is it trying to please the coach by showing he can run offensive sets instead of trying to finish by himself? I don't know, but he's not very effective out there doing what he's doing now. Fortunately, once we get the Green Swiss Army Knife back on his meds, we won't need Carlos, but it'd be nice to feel confident when he pulls off his warmups. After all, we never know if/when Delonte West may get back on his bike and ride to the roar of the distant guns.

Ok, we need to beat Miami on Sunday, so we can have a 1 game lead on them in the loss column. There are 3 games left for both of us and we own the tie-breaker against them. So (if we win) they'll need to win the last two games and we'll need to lose both of our last two games for them to wrest the #2 seed from us. Put another way, if we win tomorrow, our magic number against the Heat will be 1.

bob

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