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Rapid Reaction: Mavs 94, Celtics 89

By Chris Forsberg | ESPNBoston.com

Rapid reaction after the Dallas Mavericks defeated the Boston Celtics 94-89 on Monday night at the American Airlines Center:

THE NITTY GRITTY
Jerryd Bayless got hot late and helped fuel a fourth-quarter comeback attempt while scoring a team-high 19 points, while Kelly Olynyk added 16 points and nine rebounds off the bench (finishing a team-best plus-15 in plus/minus), but the Celtics couldn't come all the way back from as much as a 15-point deficit. Dirk Nowitzki scored a team-high 19 points, while Monta Ellis added 17 points, seven rebounds, and four assists. The Celtics shot just 36.6 percent (34 of 93), but utilized 21 offensive rebounds to generate 16 second-chance points.

TURNING POINT
The Mavericks were up 15 with 4:19 to play in the third quarter, but Boston wouldn't go quietly (despite heavy legs on the second night of a back-to-back). The Celtics closed the frame on a 12-0 burst -- Olynyk scoring the final five -- to make it a one-possession game. Dallas pushed its lead back to as much as 12 with 6:25 remaining in the game, but Boston surged as close as one (90-89) when Avery Bradley ripped Ellis and produced a fastbreak dunk with 21.6 seconds to play. Brandan Wright, however, had the biggest play of the game just moments before, utilizing a third-chance rebound to produce the winning points with a putback layup.

LOOSE BALLS
The Celtics played without point guard Rajon Rondo, who got planned rest on the second night of a back-to-back. ... Chris Babb and Joel Anthony were healthy DNPs for Boston. ... The Celtics won the battle on the glass 57-36 with help from their work on the offensive boards. Kris Humphries had seven offensive rebounds, while Jared Sullinger added five more. ... The Celtics turned the ball over 17 times, while Dallas had just 13 giveaways.

WHAT IT MEANS
The Celtics (22-46) have lost five straight and remain tied with Utah for the fourth-worst record in basketball. Boston will take Tuesday off after a back-to-back before hosting the defending champion Miami Heat on Wednesday at TD Garden. A trip to Brooklyn looms on Friday, but the Celtics get a four-day break after that to catch their breath after a stretch that will have featured 10 games in 17 days (closing with seven games in 11 days, including a pair of back-to-backs).
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Another late rally, another late loss.  Execution, execution, execution.  Having said that, I loved the ganas our boys showed last night.  It went tit-for-tat down to the wire.  Brad has them playing hard, they're just not able to finish.

Max is driving me a little crazy.  What the hell does "give the boy another biscuit" mean?  Must be a suthin thang.

1.  Cowens asked, after the last play on the Game On thread, "since when is Jerryd Bayless our go to guy?".  That would be since we traded away every shot creator on the team except for Jeff Green who was on the downside of the yoyo last night because he showed up the night before in Nawlins.  Bayless ended up tied with Dirk for high scorer with 19 on 6-16 BUT after coming in with half the 4th to go, he scored 12 points on 4-4 shooting, 2-2 from 3 and 2-2 from the line.  He was the hot hand and, as Doc used to say, "feed the pig".  I actually don't have a problem with the last play, he got past his man and into the paint, he threw up a shot that was pretty well defended and gave the best offensive rebounding team in the NBA post-all-star game a chance to get another board.  You want players on your team that want the ball in crunch time and, with Rondo sitting out, Bayless was the man.  Pierce didn't hit them all either. Where Bayless irked me was because he committed two offensive fouls because he didn't think. No lateral movement, no head or ball fake, nothing to make the defender wonder if he should slide one way or another and lose position when they do it, just straight into the man.

2.  Another unbelievably poor shooting game almost salvaged by another unbelievably good offensive rebounding game.  The "almost" highlights how much better it is to hit the first shot than it is counting on an offensive rebound to bail you out.  That's what we were counting on with the Bayless shot and we didn't get it.  We did, however, KILL them on the boards.  57 rebounds, 21 offensive.  Wow.  Those are truly impressive numbers.  As is often true with numbers, they don't always tell the whole tale.  Our rebounding has become a crutch for our awful shooting.  If we can only get some shooters, if only...we'd get few offensive rebounds, because there'd be fewer rebounds, but we'd continue to contest them and we'd still get some.  We could actually become quite dangerous if we could only drop the ball through the damn peach basket on the first try a little more often.

3.  Hump came out like a house on fire again.  He just worked his everlovin' butt off right from the start.  He fought and flew in on rebounds like he was possessed.  In the first quarter, Calderon was cruising in for, what he thought, was going to be an easy layup. Hump sorta laid back and then when Calderon committed to the shot, swooped in and blocked the layup. The rebounded ball gets into Green's hands who takes it to Dalembert on the other end quickly and who was there to clean up any miss (Green, in fact, got the layup over Dalembert)? Hump. He blocks the shot at the rim on one end and is the first man trailing the break at the other end. When Stevens shows team film, he should show that. It's not an execution thing, although Lord Knows we need to work on that, but it shows how important and easy it is to work hard, hustle and have ganas. His usually reliable jump shot was off, that's why he was an atypical 5 points on 2-8, but he snared 14 boards with 7 of them offensive and man, they were aggressive, hustle ganas rebounds.  Hump is showing tremendous, tremendous pride out there right now, in the middle of this losing streak.  While Bass has been underperforming, like many of his teammates, Hump is trying to carry the team on his back.

4.  The "Skelly" showed up well last night too.  Sully with 13 points, 9 rebounds (5 offensive) and Kelly had 16 points (2nd behind Bayless) on 6-11, 9 rebounds (3 offensive).  These two kids are just absolutely relentless on the offensive boards, The Board Bashers.  Playing them together, rather than starting one and having the other come off the bench, makes good strategic sense since in the coming years they will be doing that a lot and this will begin the chemical reaction.  There was a stretch in the 2nd half where Kelly was doing everything right.  He was switching well on defense, he was grabbing boards and he was attacking offensively.  Stevens had Kelly defending against Shawn Marion for a lot of the game. So, on defense, Kelly was playing 3. That's pretty good versatility. Oh WE of little faith.  All the kid needed was half a season of real ball to figure it out but 3 months ago we were ready to throw him out with the bath water.  Kelly grabbed an offensive board and passed it to Bayless, who lost it out of bounds.  Kelly looked like he could have killed Bayless, based upon the look on his face.  Abby Chin said, later, that Kelly was down on himself for that and Stevens told him to "forget about it and focus on the next play".  Good lesson taught and learned.  With one minute left in the game, the score 88-85 Dallas, Dirk missed a 3 and then Dallas crashed the boards.  First Marion got the O-board and kicked it to Ellis, who missed a 3 and then Brandon Wright grabbed another O-board and put it in.  That hurt, since it made it a 2 possession game.  Stevens called a 20 second TO.  The ATO play?  Bayless misses a jump shot, Green gets the rebound and misses the follow, Sully gets his miss and misses the follow, Kelly gets Sully's miss and puts it in.  You wanna board with us?  Bring it!  Sure, it's still just 2 points with less time left, but I loved, loved, loved the ganas they showed.  Right back atcha!  That's the type of 'tude I like in professional athletes and the kind we need to foster in our boys.  Good job Brad Stevens, keeping them focused and hungry even when it'd be easy to just let frustrations take you out of the game.  

5.  Avery Bradley, 5-14.  Jeff Green 2-12.  Hump 2-8.  Bass with an average improving 2-5 (40%.  Whoopee!).  This is not good.  Even with Bayless' 6-16 our starters shot 30.9%.  My opinion?  Not enough movement to the hoop.  We have a lot of high pick and rolls, where the picker rolls after only a modest pick, but the ball isn't attacking hard after that and he's not getting the ball to the picker either.  He's just pulling up for the contested jumper.  That's not the desired result of a pick-and-roll.  The other play we're seeing a lot are pindowns, where someone would set a pick for, let's say, Green who would flash out from the baseline and get the ball and shoot quickly from 19'.  We need to set pindowns lower.  Those need to become 15' jumpshots, not 19'.

6.  A hustle game by Phil.  Some pretty assists, 2 ugly TOs and a couple of 3s.  He's in a tough place, we all know it.  He's working hard but...

7.  Another energy game by Johnson too.  Early in the game he had a nice spin move into the paint for a short shot that I haven't seen him try before.  So far the overwhelming percentage of his shots have been 3s.  In fact, according to basketball-reference.com, of CJ's total 139 fgas this year 84 have been 3s.  That's 60%, so when I see him slash and drive I get all excited.  He showed some ball handling skills that I didn't think he had.  Are they good enough to move up and play 2?  I'd say no, that's an off-season development he needs to focus on, but anything that shows he's more than just a one-trick pony will grab my attention.  He's shooting 40.5% from 3 this year, that's a very nice eFG% of 60.75%, but live by the 3, die by the 3.  Another unnoticed stat for Johnson is that, while he's not a particularly strong rebounder with only 4.5/36minutes, 1/3 of his rebounds are offensive.  It's contagious.

8. Joel Anthony has to be wondering why Danny traded for him. Unlike Chris Babb, who is just happy to be with any club, Anthony has had a 6 year NBA career already and he can't get off the bench on a crappy team that's not winning without him on the floor.

9. Shawn Marion has the ugliest jumpshot I think I've ever seen. It starts at the waist and is released at roughly chin level. Kids, if you're watching this at home, don't do this.

10. 27 of Dallas' 78fgas were 3s. If they make the playoffs, they're not going anywhere.

11. We took 93 fgas. That's the good news. The bad news is that a decent chunk of those 21 offensive rebounds resulted in fgas and the reason why we got the offensive rebounds is because we can't shoot for shite. As I said above, our starters shot under 31% and that's despite them grabbing 10 offensive rebounds. Imagine how awful their shooting percentage would be if we only counted first attempts? If we're getting anywhere near 93 fgas we would be a truly feared team provided our fg% was north of 45%. Our team fg%, season-to-date, is 43.1%, which ranks us 26th. Our 5725 total fgas is fifth in the league. By comparison, Brooklyn is 14th in fg% at 45.4% but is 29th in fgas at 5066. I love offensive rebounding, I truly do, but I'd be more than happy to give up a bunch of offensive rebounds if that was because our fg% was up to 45%. I don't know how you get players who have decent offensive skills to hit their open shots consistently, but that's what we need. Period.

Our defense is definitely improving. We drive other team's offensive efficiency down in the 2nd half regularly now. Our offense? Ugh. We ran, what might be, one of the worst, most amateurish fast breaks I've ever seen last night. A good steal by Bayless primed a 2-0 fast break and we blew it. The Butler Bulldogs would have done it better and just about all of them are looking forward to a career in insurance or construction or as a gym teacher but not as professional basketball players.

No joy last night. Brooklyn and Atlanta both won and Utah and Philly and Chicago all lost. Toronto at Atlanta tonight. Maybe they can bring down the Hawks on the 2nd of a back-to-back for them. Washington at Sacramento. C'mon Sacto!


bob


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