POST GAME GOLDEN STATE

Celtics again showed shades of brilliance tonight. Green is going to be an All Star within the next year or two. The kid is terrific and can leap. Until getting hurt, Von Wafer is starting to show some great shooting touch and leaping ability. His defense has really picked up.

But the guy who makes the world go round for everyone is Rondo. This team can up its per game scoring average at least 5 points per game down the stretch. Just have to work on defense. They got lazy and let Golden State back into the game. Should have won by 20 pts.

Remember 9PM start Sunday night! Have a great weekend all!

112288

Hi,
I just wanted to mention NK. He started to get used to all passes coming his way. With his receiving abilities and high FT % he's going to be a very potent offensive weapon.

How's VW? He started to show a lot of promise. Hopefully, he's out for a game or two.

AK

sinus007 wrote:Hi,
I just wanted to mention NK. He started to get used to all passes coming his way. With his receiving abilities and high FT % he's going to be a very potent offensive weapon.

How's VW? He started to show a lot of promise. Hopefully, he's out for a game or two.

AK

Hopefully he's not out at all.

Has anyone else noticed how Paul Pierce seems to be playing on another level this season. His passing, his defense, his positioning, running the floor, virtually every aspect of the game that a player can excel at, and he's doing all of it as well as it's possible to do it. This year Paul is Bird-like; that's the highest praise I can come up with.

A Tale of Two Halves. They were the best of times (Rondo racking up 9 assists, 63% shooting as a team), they were the worst of times (Ellis going off like a nuclear bomb, sloppy passing, unfocused defense). Bottom line, my favorite team beat my second favorite team (or, at least, the team I hold my nose and try to root for whenever they're not playing my favorite team).

The game I watched and listened to was being announced by the usual GSW announcers, Greg Papa and Jim Barnett. They are usually very respectful of the opposing team and, last night, they were positively effusive in their praise of the Celtics. I also listened to the post-game analysis. Garry St. Jean, former head coach and GM of GSW gushed about Pierce being able to do it all; how he could shoot outside and how he was the "master of creating contact" (his words). The other analyst (don't know his name) went on to say how he thought Jeff Green would be a big impact player for the Celtics in the playoffs. I swear they played more Celtic highlights than Warrior highlights. Considering this was a pretty close game, so there are enough GSW highlights to offer, that's pretty damn fair, for a local CSN crew, I'd say.

1. Ray Allen was unconscious in the first half. His shot was off some in the 2nd half (a little fatigue?), but he still was a constant threat. His shooting was other-worldly in the first half, but what might have been his biggest play of the second half was the offensive rebound he grabbed as time wore down. Those free throws iced the game. When Ray came back into the game in the 4th quarter because the GSW were making a run and the announcers were all excited about that, Jim Barnett (1st round pick, Boston Celtics, 1966) said "and here comes "The Assassin", in a voice that sounded like pouring rain. If that's not the nicest compliment you can pay to an opposing player, I don't know what is.

2. Rajon Rondo played a great half of basketball. What I'm undecided on is whether his good half was the first half of the game or if his good half was the offensive half of the game (ignoring his 3-11 shooting). It is starting to look like Rondo actually DOES believe he's a jumpshooter now. Rondo took 6 shots from 15' (free throw line) and out and he was 1-6. That's pretty freaking bad. What may be worse is that means he was 2-5 on shots in the paint and that's really freaking bad too, not just because 40% is not very good for inside shots, but because he had more outside fga than inside fga. That's just plain wrong in every language.

3. You all got to see what GSW fans have seen many times in the past few years, Monta Ellis just take over a game. Like another great player and athlete who went straight from high school to the NBA, who shall remain nameless (but his number is 24) he can be a ME-baller who shoots you into a game and he can shoot you out. Last night, we saw the former. 13-24, 4-9 from 3, 41 points. Yeah, it was ME-balling, but not as much as you might expect. A lot of it was good team offense courtesy of bad defense by Rondo and our baseline defenders. Doc, in his post-game press interview mentioned, specifically, how we were getting backcut 8 or 9 times in a row and "we don't give up backcuts" (that's about as close to a verbatim quote as I can come). I suspect Doc and Larry Frank will have a few things to say about that today. Rondo consistently overplayed Ellis on the entry pass and Ellis consistently took advantage of that to backcut him and take a bounce pass enroute to the basket. If we had Perk, or even Shaq, he'd have gotten bounced a few times himself, but Krstic and KG were late on their weakside switches. That was, by far, THE worst man-to-man defense I've seen Rondo play, in my memory. He made it about as easy for Ellis as Keith Smart could ask for. Like I said earlier, though, Rondo did play a wonderful HALF.

4. David Lee is an anomaly. He is the second least athletic player in the NBA (sorry, Luke), he's undersized for his position and has flippers for arms and yet he gets the job done. Take THAT all you people who think basketball is all about running fast and jumping high! 26 points on 10-19 shooting from inside (including some nifty drop steps with his right hand. He's a lefty) and from outside. He did most of his damage in the first half, which kept the game somewhat/kinda close. In the second half, of course, the only way anybody in blue scored was by prying the ball out of Monta Ellis' cold, dead hands. He always seems to play well against us. 12 ribbies is yeoman's work on the boards too. Hell, he even won a jumpball against KG!! Tell me you wouldn't have bet the ranch and even given odds against that happening!

5. Obviously, this was Jeff Green's best game as a Celtic. He was 2-5 from long range (with one miss being a 50' 3rd quarter ending buzzer beater, so you can't hold that against him; so he was effectively 2-4 from downtown) and 5-6 in the paint. He's running the floor, he's getting open underneath. He's starting to see the difference between Rajon Rondo and Russell Westbrook. With Westbrook, it was all about Westbrook penetrating and either finishing himself or kicking it out to a shooter (usually Durant). With Rondo, he likes to stay outside, let the other 4 players set picks for each other, and then hit the open man. That translates into "move and you'll see the ball", and he's moving. The lightbulb above his head just came on. What must have been another "lightbulb" moment for all the newbies (Green, Krstic, Murphy and Sasha) came halfway through the 2nd quarter when Ray, who was hot as a smoking pistol from 3, gave up an open 3 to hit Green for a dunk underneath. When a starter, future HOFer and THE hot hand at that point gives up a shot he's hitting like a layup to a teammate who has the better shot (a dunk is still better than a layup), wow. I bet none of those players has seen that in all their cumulative years of NBA experience. Welcome to Celtic basketball, guys. Welcome to the team.

6. So far, I'm liking Krstic. His weakside, baseline defense is slow, and that's where we're missing Perk, but his perimeter defense was quite good. He did a good job of driving the ball back off the screens and then getting back to his man before the ball could be dumped to him. I used to talk up how Scal did that better than anybody not named Garnett. Well, Krstic might be the new Scal in this. I'm also liking Krstic's soft hands (as opposed to Perk's manos de piedras) and his free throw shooting (he's shooting 78% this season). This means that, if we're in serious crunch time, we could feel good about him coming in for Shaq and not have to worry about our vulnerability at the free throw line and that's a luxury at the center position we haven't had in a bunch of years. One thing he has to learn to do, though, is to keep his hands up. Bodying a player out is good, but you still should raise you arms so they have to shoot over them. Another good lightbulb moment was when KG tap-rebounded the ball towards Krstic. Krstic's hands were down and the ball sailed out of bounds over his head, but he got the point and, I'm betting he'll remember it. Be ready to catch a pass.

7. Troy Murphy made a '63 Ford look good. He doesn't have his legs, he doesn't have his timing, he doesn't know where to go. I'm not really down on him (I mean, he just showed up and had 1, maybe 2, practices and hasn't played at all since January?) but he didn't start out hot last night. That's ok, he's been a double-double machine per 36mpg all his career. He's not injured and he's not old and past his prime. He won't play 36mpg (Gawd, I hope not!! If Murphy's playing 36 minutes that means KG AND Davis and maybe even Green are down!) but if he's giving us a double-double per 36mpg then we're in very good shape. If he hardly scores at all, I'll still take his defensive rebounding and smile. He did look lost out there last night, though.

8. I don't think Chris Johnson's strong enough to survive in the NBA. If you're fighting in the trenches like him, you have to be able to grab hold of the ball and hold onto it even with bigger, stronger men slapping at it and you. He struggled with that some last night. He also seems to have this habit of being too far under the basket. I don't think it's because he's getting shoved under there so much as he goes there and then tries to gain position by jumping out in front of the rim from underneath. That might work in the D-league where the players are shorter and weaker, but it's not working here. Unfortunately for him, the coaching staff will be dedicating 95% of their time to integrating Green, Nenad, Murphy and Sasha and will have very little time left over for him. I think when JON comes back, he's toast. The cup of coffee was on us, Chris.

A sloppy victory against an athletic run-and-gun team is still a victory. If we got caught in the switches in Denver because we were shorthanded and (OKC) Thunder-struck by The Trade, the Scheduling Gods are making it up to us now.

Our offense has clearly improved but equally clearly our defense has declined. Over the next few weeks we'll start to see whether we regain our old personality and bear down on defense or if we morph into a team that is more reflective of the players and talents we have now and become more of an offensively-oriented team.

On to Milwaukee and, hopefully, another victory. Our team is playing better and is overcoming the disruption caused by all the new players. When Shaq comes back, and Nenad comes off the bench with Green, I'm predicting some seriously good basketball after the first game back. Our first unit will be the one that powered us out of the gate this season and our second unit will be Nenad, his longtime teammate Green, Murphy, Delonte and Wafer/Sasha. That second unit is a playoff-bound starting 5 in this league.

bob


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bob

I have no problem with Rondo taking that shot, hes got to take it, was off yesterday, but were gonna need him to take and make that shot.Our defense has declined, it seemed in the halfcourt the perimeter players could get to the rim alot easier.People think Perk could only bang, but his help defense and hedging was really good too.On that side of the court he was the complete package.

I'm not all down on the trade, loved what I saw from Jeff Green, he flies up and down that floor, he and Rondo are gonna have alot of fun. After Lebron, Carmelo and Pierce he might be the 3rd best SF in the East and he can play some minutes at the 4, he has way more flat out ability than Posey.

Its gonna come down to Shaq and JON, right now we have enough to beat the non playoff level teams, but in playoffs who would feel confident going in with current team?

cow