Article In Boston Herald Says It All!

Garden tenants fail to take pride in parquet

House not a home

By Steve Bulpett / Celtics Beat
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - Added 1m ago
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You remember the old joke.

“Ninety percent of accidents occur within a mile of home . . . so I moved.”

Well, the Celtics [team stats] aren’t laughing. They’re too busy checking the out-of-town real estate listings.


The Celts have played 21 games on the road and lost five. They’ve played 18 games at home and lost seven. As Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes so eloquently put it, ‘Whatever happened to you and I that I don’t want to go home?”

The Celtics’ past three Garden parties - vs. Atlanta, Chicago and, last night, Dallas - all ended with the guests walking away with the silverware.

And you can forget about blaming all this on the injuries, unless you count the collective brain injury that struck the Celts in the second half last night when the home team forgot about its offense - when the players forgot about running their stuff and staying on the same page.

If you expect Kevin Garnett to solve this problem when he returns, he’d better be bringing enough focus and intensity for everyone. Or he’d better be bringing Tim Duncan.

Paul Pierce [stats] put it another way last night. The captain said the Celtics aren’t playing with enough “pride and toughness.”

It’s not quite the same as Larry Bird saying his team played like sissies, but if Pierce said the same thing to his teammates or if they read the papers, it should pack a similar punch.

No matter how thick an NBA player’s skin, or wallet, might be, questioning his toughness is serious stuff. And, in this case, such questioning is warranted.

Even when the Celtics were ahead by 12 and smiling against the Mavericks, you were aware that Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Kidd would get the visitors going on a run. But the Celts were so weak on defense in the third quarter that Scott Brown accused them of being Democrats.

Dallas shot 80 percent from the floor in the third quarter with no visible “pride and toughness” from the Celts. And this was very much an inside job, as the Mavs outscored the C’s 22-6 in the paint during the period.

That’s not lobbing bombs from an offshore warship; that’s driving a tank onto your front lawn and asking, “What are you going to do about it? . . . I didn’t think so.”

Much will be mentioned in the next days about the Garden not being a fearsome place for opponents, but this has nothing to do with the building or those in the stands.

This is about the people on the parquet floor. Teams aren’t afraid about coming in because the Celtics don’t give them any reason to feel that way. The Garden can only be a house of horrors if the Celts start acting like Freddy Krueger.

The problem is that the Celtics “expect” to win - and that’s it. Expectation is an important element for a good team, but it means nothing unless said club is also willing to do the work required to win. Simply put, and we’ve said this more than once this season, you have to try.

It seems they are better motivated by a hostile crowd, so perhaps Friday’s sellout should dress in black and red - and root for Portland.

Or perhaps the Celtics [team stats] should play harder.

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At the risk of oversimplfying things, I decided to do a little analysis of the Celtics' opponents at the Garden versus the Celtics' opponents on the road.

Of the 18 games the Celtics have played at the Garden, 10 (or 56%) have been against teams with records above .500.

Of the 21 games the Celtics have played away from home, 8 (or 38%) have been against teams with records above .500.

Gee, I wonder if it's remotely possible that it's the comparative caliber of the teams the Celts have played at home versus those they've played on the road that has some remote bearing on their respective home and away records.

Moreover, the tendency of a team is to become used to a certain chemistry among the players. When that chemistry is disrupted (even by a player RETURNING from injury), the smoothness and timing at both ends can actually be adversely affected until the returnee is reintegrated and once again at full strength. This is particularly true of the Celtics, who rely on precision more than on factors such as strength or athleticism or individual heroics. And when is it that players are most likely to return from injury? When the team's at HOME.

So the irony is that the team's struggles to regain its chemistry when an injured player returns may be skewed toward home games, whereas the offensive and defensive flows are more likely to have been smoothed out (relatively speaking) by the time they hit the road.

As for second half fades, basketball is very much about adjustments. A decimated team is easier for opponents to adjust to at halftime than a team sporting all its resources. If an opponent makes a halftime adjustment to exploit a Celtics vulnerability lately, the Celtics' ability to make a significant counter-adjustment is severely limited by lack of available resources and versatility. Throw in fatigue in many (not all) games; consider the presence of returning injured players who may still be a little subpar and perhaps stiffen up at halftime (see above); and perhaps factor in more playing minutes than would be desirable for guys expected to be the go-to players in the stretch; and it doesn't take rocket science to understand second half meltdowns.

And, for those who feel inexperienced kids are the answer to any of the above because the kids are fresh and possess some athleticism, see my comments about the importance of chemistry and precision to a team like the Celtics. Doc knows, based on what he sees in practice, the risk he'd be taking by giving serious minutes to one or both of the kids. Doc has to weigh the possible "pros" of young legs versus the possible "cons" of yet another five-minute disorganized stretch that could give opponents momentum and knock this Celtics team out of a game.

Sam