POST GAME TORONTO

Garbage in garbage out!

KEY GAMES - NY over Wash/ Ind over Clev./ Atl. over Orlando/NJ over Phil.


NEXT GAME SATURDAY 7:30 pm @ NEW JERSEY - CSNE/NBA LEAGUE PASS

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GAME RECAP WEEI 850AM

FAST BREAK: C’S SHOOTING RUNS COLD IN TORONTO
By Ryan Hadfield

The Celtics are a much different team since their 86-74 loss in Toronto in early February. But no matter how much things change, sometimes, they stay the same. Friday night, in an ugly affair, the Raptors defeated the Celtics, 84-79.

The C’s trailed by 10 with just over two minutes left in the game, but pulled within one, 78-77, with 20.5 seconds left in the game. Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo helped spearhead the effort, shooting a combined 7-of-9 from the field in the final frame, but it was to little to late as the Raptors hit their free throws, and Pierce missed a 3-pointer that would have tied the game at 80.

The Celtics shot 37.5 percent from the field. The Raptors didn’t fare much better at 34.7 percent, but Toronto out-rebounded Boston, 50-37. For the Raptors, DeMar DeRozan scored 22 points. Pierce scored 18 points, but only shot 6-of-15 from the field. Rondo’s 12 assists keeps his consecutive games with at least 10 assists alive at 20 games.

WHAT WENT RIGHT

Killing Time: For a good portion of the second quarter Doc Rivers trotted out a lineup of Greg Stiemsma, Keyon Dooling, Mickael Pietrus, Sasha Pavlovic, and Ryan Hollins — and they extended the lead to as many as 13. This kept the starting five’s minutes down early, which is critical, considering this is the first game of a back-to-back-to-back this weekend.

Killer B’s: Brandon Bass and Avery Bradley don’t get the publicity that the Big Four do, but the two are just as critical if the C’s have any dreams of a deep playoff run. In what was a terrible 24 minutes of offensive basketball, the duo combined to score 17 points (8-of-13 shooting), nearly half the Celtics entire output (36 points).

WHAT WENT WRONG

Star Power?: Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Rondo were a combined 6-of-25 shooting with 16 points through three quarters. Without Ray Allen, Boston needed more production from their stars. Rondo, who dished out nine assists through 36 minutes, missed all four of his shot attempts.

Killer Instinct: The crowd in the Air Canada Center was silent, the Raptors looked disinterested, and the B-squad had built the Celtic lead to 13. Yet, inexplicably, Boston began settling for jumpers and the Raptors chipped away at the double digit lead, dwindling it to six at halftime, 36-30, despite shooting 21 percent from the field.

Where was the knockout blow? Things only got worse at the start of the third quarter. Toronto’s confidence grew and a 30-10 run opened up a nine point lead for the Raptors. Point is, the Celtics could have made life much easier by putting the 20-win Raptors away when they had the chance.

Dry Paint: If the Celtics win in Miami was a great illustration of living off the jump shot, Friday served as an example of dying by it.

Piggybacking off that last point, the Raptors were able to get back in the game by attacking the basket. Their aggressiveness substituted for their ineptitude. Case in point, DeRozan was the game’s leading scorer midway through the third quarter with 15 points — he was only shooting 3-of-11 from the field at the time, but was 9-of-9 from the free throw line. The Raptors were winning thee free throw battle 20-10 at this juncture of the game, which was a big reason why they outscored the Celtics in the third quarter, 27-11.

We were tired, exhausted more like it, David Stern has really made this season exhausting and taxing on all the players.....we just are in midst of too many grueling games. If I was Doc I'd rest Rondo, Pierce and KG tomorow night, FUCK David Stern I don't want to see any of our players injured, playoffs are right around the corner.

What this stinker tonight determined is that Boston will now open the playoffs on the road against Atlanta. Even with winning their division which they're still gonna do thanks to Philly's ineptitude.

Write that down. No chance of any other possible result now.

They made their bed and now they gots ta lay in it.

Steve,

Thanks for the exciting email. I'll be in touch after this 2.5-week trip we're starting today.

Sam

Sam,

You and the Mrs. have a safe trip and enjoy!

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Sam

It is exciting isn't it? have a great trip!!

You could tell Stern was out to stick it to the player's union for effing with the owners with this 66 game schedule. He's such a tool. As commish, isn't he technically supposed to represent both sides, but he just sides with the owners?

I hope the Celtics feel rested after the nice nap they took in the 3rd quarter last night. As it is, in the first half, they acted like a cat playing with a mouse they felt they could kill at any time, so why not have some fun with it first? Unfortunately, in the second half, that mouse turned into a rabid capybara. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capybara.

In the first half, the Raptors shot 23%. They were playing without 2 starters, Bargnani and Calderon. They went 9 minutes without a fg. We had 13fgm on 14 assists. On the Game-On thread I said they should feel good about that they were only down 6 at the half, except that they are down 2 starters. Apparently that was more significant to me than it was to Dwayne Casey and the Raptors. They came out of halftime and played with energy and attacked us. We had an 11 point 3rd quarter much due to our lack of energy. We stood around a lot, watched players go one-on-one.



1. Rondo had 8 assists in the 1st quarter, 1 assist in the 2nd quarter, 1 assist in the 3rd quarter, 2 assists in the 4th quarter. His streak of double-digit assist games continues. Big shit. Our first quarter floor general became a buck private in the 2nd quarter and didn't get promoted back up to corporal until the late 4th quarter. Would Wyc consider paying to have the Celts on national TV against the inferior clubs next year, just so Rondo will remember to show up for the whole game?

2. The only three players that I saw that had any ganas all game were Steamer, Bradley and Hollins. You know, the guys who actually need to play hard to keep their jobs.

Steamer kept going to the front of the rim, something he doesn't usually do. Over the past few weeks, he has taken to swiping at rebounds from behind, trying to slap the ball out to a Celtic at the 3pt line. Sometimes that works, sometimes it's just a long rebound for the opposition, but he's trying to deny them clear control of the ball and disrupt their transition to offense, and that's good. If going to the hoop is another new thing he's doing then this is a big step for him since an inside offensive game, even if it's just off a pick-and-roll and not a post-up, is a big missing link for him. He played with energy last night, even if his stat line doesn't show big numbers.

Bradley was #2 high scorer for the Celtics with 15 points on 7-14 behind Pierce's 18. His defense on DeRozan in the 1st and 2nd quarter was outstanding. DeRozan didn't throw up many shots due to Bradley's deny defense, and when he did they were contested. Unfortunately, it's hard to keep Demar DeRozan locked up in an icebox for a whole game. You gotta make offensive hay while the sun shines and we didn't.

Hollins was another energizer bunny, one of only a very few in green. Not big stats for him either, but his body was flying everywhere. I realize that you can have unproductive energy but any energy was welcome last night, even wasted energy.

3. We did a pretty good job of keeping DeRozan off his feed for the first half but he scored 13 points in the 3rd with 6 of them from the line. Not someone I'd want starting in my lineup, he's too one-dimensional, but what a streak shooter off the bench he'd be.

4. We shot 3-16 in the 3rd period. We had 5 turnovers that quarter that cost us 5 points (we're lucky we only gave up that many). Pierce had 2 of those TOs early in the quarter, which set the tone. We all just had that "WTF?!" look on our face for the rest of the quarter.

5. A little over four minutes left in the game, down by 12, we suddenly woke up and said "gee, you mean they're not going to just let us win?" and started to play hard. Our energy level went way up from that point on. Too bad they didn't do that a few minutes earlier (much less the whole game) or we would have still won this despite our execrable 3rd quarter.

6. Ben Uzoh and Linus Kleiza were stars for Toronto last night, filling in for Calderon and playing some of Bargnani's minutes at 4. Uzoh played with energy, rebounded and generally played a good game. Kleiza had one of his, now rare, big games. 17 points for Kleiza off the bench including 3-6 from 3 and 8 rebounds. Our entire bench only had 15 points. 10 rebounds for Ed Davis off their bench. Our entire bench had 10 rebounds (Pietrus with 6 of them, although an icy 1-7 from the field, 1-6 from 3. He's back to loving the 3 too much. That didn't take long, did it?).

7. I'm a big fan of Doc's, I think he's a great coach. He handles his players as well as any coach in the league and he is a great tactician with a very successful record of "made baskets after a timeout", but he got outcoached by Casey last night. Casey had a bunch of lemons and he turned them into a Ketel One Lemon Drop.

Too many jumpshots in the 3rd quarter against a team with Aaron Gray in the middle and no Bargnani. Too much one-on-one and not enough team offense and movement even though their starting point guard was out.

Very disappointing loss, since it was against a team that was very shorthanded and not very good even when it was healthy. We had a day off to rest. We should have torched these guys but our egos got in the way and didn't bring our "A" game.

Instead, we ended up with an "L" game.

bob

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