POST GAME PHILLY

We missed an overtime win by THAT MUCH!

It was not pretty and it was Philly's night that all their shots dropped but I was highly disappointed by the Celtics effort. Hey we were playing for first place in the Atlantic Division. We came out flat by the starting 5. Hey no excuses. We di not run , we did not press and we played offense byond the arch.

Next Game Friday 7:30pm at home - Portland

112288

POST GAME RECAP WEEI 850

FAST BREAK: CELTICS MOMENTUM MEETS THE ROAD
By Paul Flannery

Six times the Celtics have played the second game of a back-to-back on the road and six times they have lost spectacularly.

Dec. 28: At New Orleans: 97-78
Jan. 14: At Indiana 97-83
Feb. 10: At Toronto 86-74
Feb. 16: At Chicago 89-80
Feb. 20: At Dallas 89-73

You can add Wednesday night in Philadelphia as the Celtics were embarrassed, 103-71 in a so-called showdown against the division-leading 76ers. It was over almost as soon as it started. Then it got worse. The 71 points tied a season-low and the 32-point spread was the worst loss in The Big Three era.

WHAT WENT WRONG

About those back-to-backs: If you wanted to know why the Celtics struggle so match in back-to-backs, all you had to do was watch the first quarter when they constantly settled for jump shots and were killed on the offensive glass. They were outscored 20-4 in the paint at the start and that was just a prelude to ….

The second quarter blues: It’s not that hard to figure out. The Celtics’ offense goes from mediocre to awful whenever Rajon Rondo is out of the game. Their bench is one of the worst scoring outfits in the league. They needed something from Chris Wilcox and Mickael Pietrus. They got nothing.

Rondo, oh no: On the one hand, there wasn’t much that Rondo could do when the Celtics weren’t getting stops or rebounds and everyone else was moving in slow motion. On the other, this was a game when you’d like to see Rondo try to take it on his shoulders and jumpstart his team. Instead he took six shots in 28 minutes and was a minus-28.

Someone woke up Evan Turner: A story making the rounds in Philly on Wednesday is that the second-year Sixers guard had some kind of unidentified “issue,” that is holding him back. Whatever issues Turner may or may not have — and he and coach Doug Collins denied a problem before the game — he worked them out against the Celtics to the tune of 26 points in 36 minutes. He’s the kind of young, athletic player the Celtics would love to start adding to the roster.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Doc pulled a Popovich: For years, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has treated back to backs as if they don’t exist. He’s been known to pull his starters en masse and rest them while his team takes their lumps. Doc Rivers has often resisted the ploy, preferring to have his team work through their issues on the court and try to build momentum. He called them off early on Wednesday, saving their legs for Friday night’s game in Portland.

Here's something (fortunately) you don't see very often: Celtics were outrebounded by 19 in two consecutive games. 57-38 vs Houston and 54-35 vs Philly. And for tonight's game, that's without Philly having 7-1 Steve Hawes and 6-8 Thaddeus Young.

This rebounding thing is starting to become a problem...

I wonder if they're aware of it.

You made me laugh with that one, Steve. Yeah, I think they have an inkling. lol.

Sam

Lucky for me, I DVRed the game and was able to blow through stretches where Philly was laying it on thick.

As Paul Pierce said after the game...."we know they are not 30 points better than us - so we just have to move on." Totally agree.

mrkleen09 wrote:Lucky for me, I DVRed the game and was able to blow through stretches where Philly was laying it on thick.

As Paul Pierce said after the game...."we know they are not 30 points better than us - so we just have to move on." Totally agree.

If I were a 76'er fan.

My comment would be

"well we were last night."


As for the comment Pierce made, really what can any of the C's say? And moving on makes the most sense. People don't drive cars ahead looking in the the rear view mirror ( well except for Juan Montoya and Danica some of the time )

beat

beat wrote: If I were a 76'er fan.

My comment would be

"well we were last night."

And if I were a Celtics fan, I would say.....well when you root for the Sixers, I guess you have to savor all the little victories.

mrkleen09 wrote:

beat wrote: If I were a 76'er fan.

My comment would be

"well we were last night."

And if I were a Celtics fan, I would say.....well when you root for the Sixers, I guess you have to savor all the little victories.

On the comeback scale I'll give you a 10!!

beat

Didn't see the game, so can't comment directly.

Several posters here noted before the game how important it was. Philly obviously agreed.

I've been waiting a long time for Evan Turner to have a game like that (11-19 for 26 points, 9 rebounds), which was a career best. I say this because we had him on our fantasy team until dumping him Tuesday after a month shooting below 40% (and not scoring in double figures since February 4) and a particularly egregious 1-12 outing in his outing before the Boston game. It's no surprise that he played great, which is what players typically do immediately after we drop them, so I guess the Celtics' loss is my fault -- if we'd kept him, he would've had another lousy game, and Boston would've won. But in any event, I don't think the Sixers can count on a similar performance from Turner in the future, so you've got that to look forward to the next time Boston plays them.

Outside

Rivers said he is not considering sending Moore to Maine of the NBADL. Moore has been on the inactive list for five of the past six games. Boston Globe

What gives with Moore? Like he has not proven he can shoot and play defense?

112288

So, the only thing that went right in this game is that the starters hardly played? Yup, that pretty much sums it up.

I listened to the Philly announcers. I don't know their names and thank God I don't. Really annoying. They couldn't stop talking about how old, aged, ancient the Celtics were. Then, in the next breath, they'd say how a 20+ lead wasn't safe and how the Sixers needed to keep pouring it on. Not particularly knowledgeable either. Ignorant and irritating is no way to go through life, boys.

In the 1st or 2nd quarter, I opined on the Game On thread (btw, I'm soooo glad I'm not lonely on that thread anymore! Thanks to everybody who showed up.) that the Celtics were showing signs of fatigue already. Sam disagreed with me, feeling that fatigue at the beginning of the game shouldn't be a reason for their play. It's true that it's usually the 4th quarter where you see it and that still relatively young athletes should be able to suck it up. My evidence for saying that was that all their jumpshots were consistently short. That usually means the legs aren't giving you as high a jump as you're used to and so the ball hits the front of the rim instead of the back. What we do know is that the Celtics often have problems with back-to-backs. We know that you begin to see that in the 2nd half of the second game. Why wouldn't it be reasonable that 3 games in 2 days, with the first 2 being OT grinders, produce a physical beatdown that shows itself earlier than the 2nd half of the 3rd game? Vince Lombardi said "fatigue makes cowards of us all". The Celtics didn't have an attacking mentality last night. We fans see that as "lack of effort" or "lack of focus" but maybe it's just their brains telling their bodies not to do too much. Should 26 year olds like Rondo and Bass ever get tired? I didn't when I was 26, but it was clear to me that Bass wasn't getting lift from his legs early on. Rondo did his usual "walk the ball up", but that might just be Rondo doing his "on today, off tomorrow" thing. What a heartbreaker. Every time I want to fall in love with Rondo he takes the night off.

Six Philly players in double figures, including 3 bench players. The Celtics had 3 players in double figures with JJJ having 10 in extended garbaaage time.

1. The only starter who showed up was Pierce. He took it to the hole whenever he could. Other than him, nobody wanted the contact last night.

2. Thank God for free throws. Without them, Ray Allen would have been shut out last night.

3. Philly put 6'7" Evan Turner on Rondo for much of the night. The idiot Philly announcers talked about how that took away Rondo's game. Not if Rondo played hard, but he didn't. A little pick, turn the corner and Turner would have been in Rondo's rear view mirror. That requires someone who wants to set a pick and take the contact and it requires Rondo to be aggressive. Neither were in sight. On the offensive end Turner, who is averaging 8.1ppg on 42% shooting this season, had a career night. 26 points on 11-19, 6 assists and only 1 turnover. He pretty much did whatever he wanted. Today, his wife/girlfriend woke up and found a pumpkin sleeping in bed with her, because he no doubt turned back into one at midnight, but his agent is cutting his newspaper to shreds to save last night's performance for when he next has to negotiate Turner's contract.

4. KG just wouldn't stop shooting. He was 2-7 after 1, I think, and kept shooting (and missing). He ended up 4-11. When it's not dropping, do something else.

5. Bass had 12 points last night, to be one of the 3 players who made it to double figures in scoring (Pierce and JJJ being the others). The bad news is that he shot 5-15 to get them. That's making KG look good and that's not good.

6. Steamer came in and gave it another good effort. 2-5 isn't great shooting, especially for a big, but at least he's shooting. We all know he needs to work on his inside game before his shooting % will look like a 7-footer's, but at least he threw up some shots in a game where we couldn't shoot. What's particularly pathetic (not for Steamer) is that his 40% (2-5) shooting pulled the Celtic teams' fg% up to the 35% we ended up with.

7. Doc! Sit Dooling's ass down! The announcers said that he was a 12 year veteran and I almost fell down. Really? He's survived 12 years in the league? How? Does he have pictures of a bunch of GMs naked together?

8. Elton Brand, who didn't even start on this team, had a good game. Damn.

9. Vucevic is another player who came out of the woodwork to hammer us. Averaging 6.8ppg and 5.1 rebounds, he had 14 points and 12 rebounds last night. Of those 12 rebounds, 5 were offensive. One thing I really liked about him was that when he got a rebound he didn't bring it down. Like McHale, he kept the ball up high and just did a quick hop jump back up to put it in. When I say "I liked it" I mean in a basketball purist way, of course. Last night it pissed me off because he was killing us. A 21 year old rookie from Switzerland. No wonder I've never heard of him. Have you noticed the substantial increase in the number of NBA players whose names end in "ic"?

Disappointing loss, disappointing effort, disappointing execution.

Let's kick Portland's ass and then show how champions can win anywhere, including on the road. And boy, will this road trip be a bitch, starting with a back-to-back in LA against LAL on Friday and LAC on Saturday.

No rest for the weary. Their last easy day was yesterday.

bob

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Outside wrote:Didn't see the game, so can't comment directly.

Several posters here noted before the game how important it was. Philly obviously agreed.

I've been waiting a long time for Evan Turner to have a game like that (11-19 for 26 points, 9 rebounds), which was a career best. I say this because we had him on our fantasy team until dumping him Tuesday after a month shooting below 40% (and not scoring in double figures since February 4) and a particularly egregious 1-12 outing in his outing before the Boston game. It's no surprise that he played great, which is what players typically do immediately after we drop them, so I guess the Celtics' loss is my fault -- if we'd kept him, he would've had another lousy game, and Boston would've won. But in any event, I don't think the Sixers can count on a similar performance from Turner in the future, so you've got that to look forward to the next time Boston plays them.

Outside

Outside,

At least now we know why Turner picked this particular time to go off. I was worried it had something to do with The Celtics!

Any C's you have on that fantasy team you might consider dropping?

Regards

Bob I agree with just about everything that you said except your comment about Kg.

He is an above average shooter so why should he not keep shooting. 11 shots is not a lot.

Plus with ray off his game where else was the offense suppose to come from?

Dboss

Question,

If KG is playing center, why is he taking the majority of his shots last night from way outside?

112288

112288 wrote:Rivers said he is not considering sending Moore to Maine of the NBADL. Moore has been on the inactive list for five of the past six games. Boston Globe

What gives with Moore? Like he has not proven he can shoot and play defense?

112288

112288,

Moore's sitch confuses me as well. I can understanding keeping JJ around, due to the ever-changing need for bigs, but Moore? It looks like Moore is behind even Dooling in Doc's rotation. With all the travel and with no real practices, it must be very hard for the DNP players to get any gym time.

Maybe Doc and Danny think that with Moore hanging around the team, he will get the very thing(or things) that they think he is missing.

gyso

dboss wrote:Bob I agree with just about everything that you said except your comment about Kg.

He is an above average shooter so why should he not keep shooting. 11 shots is not a lot.

Plus with ray off his game where else was the offense suppose to come from?

Dboss

dboss,

When I meant "stop shooting" I should have specified "stop shooting 18-footers". Philly was without Spencer Hawes last night. He could have posted up just about anybody on that team anytime he wanted. He could have picked and rolled for a short shot. He played little low post and, when he did, he took fallaway jumpers instead of facing up and taking it to the smaller men. He just kept taking the long J and missing. What I should have said is "when they're not dropping from deep, do something else".

Where else was the offense suppose to come from? Rondo? Driving? Shooting? Dishing?

I don't think we can read much into JJJ's offensive production, it was all in garbage time of course, but we know the kid can score (his weaknesses are inconsistent defensive rotating and low post defense). Maybe Doc should have put him in earlier? Could a frontcourt of Steamer and JJJ have been much worse than KG and Bass? I mean, it's not like our starters' defense was stellar last night either.

bob

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Hi,
I didn't watch the game, so my jaw fell open when I saw the final score.
The only guess, uneducated, I can give is Celtics were spent mentally. After 2 tough, OT games they couldn't summon much.
They could keep it really close in losses to Chicago, Mia and OKC. I don't think Philly is better than those. So, I think PP is right.
Don't take me wrong - loss is a loss is a loss - no excuses. I hope they recover for tomorrow and, especially, Sunday.

AK

NYCelt wrote:Any C's you have on that fantasy team you might consider dropping?

We do have Pierce, but we're not about to drop him. Maybe we could pick up Dooling or Pietrus and then drop them so that they can get the guaranteed Outside and Son fantasy bump.

For the right price, of course. A singular product like our fantasy bump doesn't come cheap. In fact, I think I'll rename it as the iBump®, which ought to be worth even more. But have no fear, special Sam's forum discount rates apply.

Outside wrote:

NYCelt wrote:Any C's you have on that fantasy team you might consider dropping?

We do have Pierce, but we're not about to drop him. Maybe we could pick up Dooling or Pietrus and then drop them so that they can get the guaranteed Outside and Son fantasy bump.

For the right price, of course. A singular product like our fantasy bump doesn't come cheap. In fact, I think I'll rename it as the iBump®, which ought to be worth even more. But have no fear, special Sam's forum discount rates apply.

outside,

Now THAT'S conviviality!

bob

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