POST GAME INDIANA

To say our offense sucked doesn't even begin to cover it. NOBODY could throw the ball into Boston Harbor from the edge of the pier last night except for the guy who was flat on his back sick the last couple of days, Ray Allen.

34-33. That's a nice high scoring quarter, huh? Unfortunately, that was the halftime score last night. Pierce was 0-5 in that quarter.

1. Too much passing and dribbling. The overpassing started happening when the ball wouldn't go through the hoop and nobody wanted to take the next shot. The overdribbling came from Rondo. Some of that wasn't his fault. We had NO energy last night, NO movement. So, who's he going to pass to? On the other hand, Rondo didn't make things happen on offense either by forcing the defense to react to his dribbling and maybe create some opportunities for his teammates. Here's an example: With 15+ seconds in the half, the Celtics steal the ball off a Pacer inbound and have it out on a wing. Rondo has the ball and he dribbles it all the way out to the logo! Not the the top of the key, not slashing to the hoop, the logo at midcourt. In fact, he came so close to the halfcourt line I was afraid for a moment he was going to accidently get an over-and-back. He was completely nonchalant in how he dribbled out to the logo and his approach to running this final play. You could just tell what he wanted to do. He wanted to wind the clock down and take a "hero ball" shot. Well, the problem came when Jeff Foster came out to help double Rondo and, by the time Rondo passed to to someone else to take a shot the buzzer went off. 15+ seconds left on a clock, you're already over halfcourt and you can't get off a shot because your point guard is bouncing the ball without purpose far away from the hoop. Horrid. Rondo's ft shooting has reverted too. He's back to shooting 56% from the line this year and shot 1-4 last night. It's mental, all mental. We saw him shoot free throws very well earlier. He knows the stroke.

2. We were brutally outrebounded. We gave up weakside offensive rebound after weakside offensive rebound after... West had 10 rebounds, 4 offensive; Hibbert had 12 boards, 4 offensive; Foster played 15 minutes and even he got 4 boards, 3 offensive and I swear almost all, if not all, of these offensive rebounds came off of poor blocking out on the weakside. I hurt my hand on the table last night from hitting it. They had 47 rebounds last night. Some of that is just due to our horrible shooting percentage, when you miss you give up a rebound, but some of it was them going after the ball and us not focusing on our assignments. They had 14 offensive rebounds out of 47 total. That's a very healthy percentage of offensive rebounds for a lot of total rebounds. You know you're in trouble when Pierce and JON are tied for team high rebounders with 7 and the Pacers have 2 rebounders with 10+.

I can't believe how angry I'm getting just writing this. It's like last night all over again. I'm not going to hurt the desk, though.

Nobody was putting a body on their man on the far side of the basket. We watched the shot and forgot about our men. VERY poor fundamentals. If I was Doc I'd be running rebounding drills today, a lot of them.

3. Pierce was 3-17 and some of them were just flat-out bricks. It's easy to blame him, but shooting is what shooters do. They shoot themselves out of slumps like the way sluggers swing their way out of slumps in baseball, but 17 fga? Ray Allen, who shot 7-11 and led all scorers with 23, didn't take that many. We only had 66 fga all game (another problem due to the slowdown, no energy pace we played at) and Pierce took 26% of them. I always get down on Kobe for being a ball hog and shooting the Lakers out of games (when he's not hitting his shots), well...How about setting up the guy who is hot, Ray Allen? How about giving up a few of those fga to your teammate?

4. JON showed up to play last night too. He didn't shoot like Ray (who does?) but he played inspired defense overall and pretty good on the much larger Hibbert. He took two very physical charges and blocked 4 shots in 21 minutes. A good night for Jermaine, one of the few bright spots. I cringed everytime he got knocked down on those charges. He may be made of porcelain, but it's a military-grade porcelain. He's still out there fighting even if his body has abandoned him somewhat.

5. Bradley came in, played pretty good D (not crazed like the other couple of games, but still pretty good). His offense, for the first half was what we've come to expect from him. A couple of 3s taken, none hit. However, in the last minute of the game, garbage-time to be sure, he hit 17' and 16' jumpers. I'm not impressed that a guard hits a couple of mid-range jumpers during garbage time (although I've yet to see that from JJJ), what impresses me is that Bradley took the shots, period. Bradley's big problem last year was his lack of confidence. It appears that part of his mental game seems to be finally coming around and that's good news for him, Doc and us. The jury is still out, for me, if he's going to make it, but at least I'm seeing him making progress in some areas and that's getting me to withhold final judgment. And that's ok with me.

6. The referees forgot how to count last night, so a lot of missed traveling and 3 second calls last night. The Pacers, to my admittedly biased eyes, were the recipients of much of that.

7. The Pacer bench outscored our bench 33-14. Bass, usually a very dependable shooter, 2-7 last night and 5 points total. Wilcox hit a free throw. Yippee! I'm thinking about taking up a collection to buy Daniels a basket. Dooling and Bradley were tied with 4 each. That was our bench scoring last night. The Pacers got 25 from the inside/outside threats of Tyler Hansbrough and George Hill. Man, Chris Wilcox was made to defend Hansbrough and it didn't get done.

I agree with Sinus, a VERY ugly game. I also agree with Mr. Kleen. Next! I have to say, though, we haven't beaten a good team yet this year, which makes us..?


bob

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