POST GAME TORANTO

"DOC"!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jwx7O1nbmzI#!

Next game Sunday - Chicago 3:30 PM ABC

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POST GAME RECAP WEEI

FAST BREAK: CELTICS GET CRUSHED BY RAPTORS 02.10.12 at 9:39 pm ET
By Paul Flannery | No Comments

Oddly enough, the Celtics have not been that bad in back-to-backs this season. Coming into Friday’s game against the Raptors, they had won four of six on the second night and each of the last three.

However, all four of those wins had been at the Garden and their two losses — at New Orleans and Indiana — ranked as two of the worst losses of the season. You can add Friday night’s 86-74 loss in Toronto to the list as the Celtics looked not only old and tired, but disorganized and ineffective.

They scored 14 points in the first quarter and 17 in the third, placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of the starting five.

WHAT WENT WRONG

– Rajon Rondo put together perhaps his most ineffective nine minutes as a Celtic, taking two shots, missing both and turning the ball over four times with no assists. He wasn’t much better in the second quarter, either. Or the third, or the fourth. In what was Rondo’s worst game of the season, he scored five points on 2-for-10 shooting, while allowing Jose Calderon to score 17 points and hand out 13 assists.

– It wasn’t just Rondo. Ray Allen and Paul Pierce combined to shoot 7-for-19. Rondo, Allen and Pierce were outscored by Calderon, DeMar DeRozan and James Johnson by a combined score of 52-23.

– Jermaine O’Neal joined Keyon Dooling and Sasha Pavlovic on the injured list. O’Neal has somewhat remarkably missed only five games this season and has already played 49 more regular season minutes than he did all of last season. Somehow, someway the Celtics have to get through the rest of the season with O’Neal playing 75 percent of the games.

– The Celtics switched to a zone to get more shooting on the floor, but they didn’t play it well. The Raptors made just 1-of-11 3-pointers through the first three quarters, but buried 4-of-8 in the fourth.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

– Avery Bradley, on the other hand, did what Avery Bradley does. He caused havoc on the defensive end, brought the ball up the court without incident on the offensive end and then got out of the way. Unfortunately, Bradley could only give them seven minutes because of an injured shoulder.

– Kevin Garnett scored 17 points and had eight rebounds, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

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ESPN BOSTON

Rapid reaction after the Toronto Raptors defeated the Boston Celtics 86-74 Friday night at the Air Canada Centre:

HOW THE GAME WAS WON
DeMar DeRozan (game-high 21 points) and Jose Calderon (17 points, 14 assists) made the Celtics look like a high school team, aiding the Raptors in building a comfortable first-quarter cushion and leading from start to finish en route to what might ultimately be Toronto's biggest win of the season, earning payback for two lopsided defeats in Boston earlier this season. Kevin Garnett paced Boston with 17 points on 6-of-9 shooting (could have used some of that Thursday night) with eight rebounds over 28:44 and was the only Celtics starter in the positive in plus/minus (+. Boston's backcourt of Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo combined for a mere 11 points.

TURNING POINT
It was over when it started. The Celtics came out with zero energy, didn't generate a field goal for more than four minutes, turned the ball over recklessly and allowed the Raptors to build a double-digit cushion midway through the first quarter. An enraged Doc Rivers lit into his lifeless team during a first-quarter timeout, but even that wasn't enough to turn them around. The Celtics trailed by 12 at the end of the first frame (26-14) and rarely got close again (and when they did, Toronto stretched the lead back out).

NORTH OF THE BORDER, HEALTH GOES SOUTH
Jermaine O'Neal sat out with left shoulder soreness, while Keyon Dooling (hip) and Sasha Pavlovic (wrist) remained inactive. Rivers had said that Avery Bradley (right shoulder) wouldn't play, but needed his energy so bad that he played 7:27 and nearly did inject some life into Boston early on.

WHAT IT MEANS
Just a cringeworthy loss all around. The Celtics (14-12) shot themselves in the foot so often Thursday night in falling to the Lakers it seemed like there was no way they wouldn't atone against an inferior opponent, even if it was the second night of a back-to-back. Nope, Boston again just seemed disinterested and disjointed. After winning five in a row and nine of 10 overall, rebuilding optimism around the team, the Celtics have now lost two straight with a daunting Sunday visit from the Chicago Bulls looming. Boston needs to shake the cobwebs and get back to what it was doing so well in recent weeks as it's been some ugly basketball the last two nights.

I had dinner plans that, thankfully, allowed me to miss the 4th quarter. She was a lot prettier than this game was.

Unlike my usual tome, I think I can boil this one down to a handful of bullets, to wit:

1. "Fatigue makes cowards of us all" - Vince Lombardi. We were exhausted and didn't take it to the hoop much in the first 3 quarters. Note LA's loss to the Knicks the next night too. We both left it all on the floor and had little left the next night. Our legs weren't in this game from the tip and our brains weren't aggressive neither.

2. Rondo had, perhaps, the worst game of his career as a Celtic. 4 TOs in the 1st quarter. Jose Calderon, a very middling point guard, made him look really bad, completely outplaying him. 7 assists and 5 TOs for Rondo and not looking good in the process.

3. +/- doesn't mean much unless you view it in the context of unit you earned it on (right, Sam?). Here are the +/- of our starting 5: KG, +8 (he also played the fewest minutes of the starters); Pierce, -20; Bass, -14; Allen, -17; Rondo, -16. As you might logically assume, the +/- of the Toronto starters they played against were almost the mirror image of the Celtics. In other words the Toronto starters, minus Andrea Bargnani, completely dominated our starters.

4. With 3:26 left in the 1st, Boston called a timeout. They came out onto the floor and, apparently, didn't execute the play Doc drew up in the timeout because 8 seconds later, at 3:18, Doc called a 20 second timeout and did little more than scream at the players and then sit down on a chair. That's how bad they were. We are usually very good coming out of a time-out and Doc completely lost it by what he saw just 8 seconds out of one. And Doc is not much of a screamer...

We looked old and bad.

Time for us to take some naps and come back strong on Sunday for (gulp!) the Chicago Bulls.

bob

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For those of you who missed it, here's our non-screaming coach screaming at his players who couldn't even run a play out of a timeout. The first segment is the play that led to the first, full, timeout. After coming out of that timeout Doc called a 20 second timeout and went apeshit.




bob


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BOBH:

I applaud your technological savy by being able to show that video on your post to illustrate the extent of Doc's anger and frustration by what the team wasn't giving at that point and at most points during the Raptor game. The team should have listened with Raptored attention (LOL)

MD!