Post-Game Thread, Cavaliers - Home

[bobheckler]

Once Cav's coach David Blatt decided to sit Irving, James, Smith and Love the outcome was not in doubt. All that was left at that point was to

A. Win and get the Magic Number down by at least one and;
B. Send a message to Blatt. The message was "if you sit your starters, whatever score differential that existed when they were on the floor will deteriorate after they leave it". The way to make this message clear was by winning every quarter so there would be no doubt that no matter who we had on the floor, we were still better.

Message ALMOST delivered. We lost the 1st quarter by 1 point. Obviously we set the record straight with a 34-9 second quarter and by winning the next 2 quarters after that handily.

According to Mike Gorman there was a lot of yapping out there. I'm hoping it was the Cleveland scrubs who was doing most of it. "Wait until my big brother LeBron gets home! He'll thrash you!". Last night was like clubbing little burgundy-and-gold harp seals.


1. Mozgov needs two bolts in the side of his neck to complete the picture, he is BIG, but as I've been telling girlfriends for years "size doesn't matter". He was still 4-11 for 9 points. He sure tried to bull his way in but Zeller and Kelly did a pretty good job of not letting him get to his spot. He was 1-4 in the 1st quarter from inside the paint with his only bucket coming from 14'. I can live with Mozgov taking 14' shots. In the 3rd quarter he hit two from close and another from 14. All in all, a pretty decent job holding the lone Cleveland starter down.

2. I don't know what happened to Perk, but he is definitely not what he used to be. Never one for filling out boxscores, he still did nothing of note in 19 minutes. At least the Garden crowd was kind to him.

3. You wanna match bench with bench, Blatt? Ask and ye shall receive. Only one Cav, Jones, was in double-digits in scoring. Four Celtics were in double-digits. You say "but a lot of the Cav bench were starters last night!". Fine. Let's include Tristan Thompson (who played 28 minutes) and his 14 points and Shumpert's 15 in 38 minutes to the total and there is still only 3 Cav's players in double digits last night. So, even though some of the Cav's bench were playing heavier minutes than usual the Celtic bench still outscored them.

4. Jerebko is just SO active. He only got credit for 3 rebounds but he got his fingers on a lot more.

I'm not going to go into every player, there was just so much good going on. The biggest reason is because of our movement. We moved the ball and we moved ourselves on offense and defense. Final score aside, Brad had to be very, very happy with our motion last night.

50 points in the paint for us vs 30 for them. So much for the physical superiority of Mozgov and Thompson.
27 fast break points for us vs only 3 for them.
54% fg% for us vs 39% for them.
7 TOs for us vs 24 for them.
20 steals for us vs 1 for them. Wow.
Turner with 7 assists and IT with 6 assists and a combined total of only 2 TOs.
10 steals by our starting back court of Bradley, Turner and Smart.
Does it get any better than this?

Unfortunately, the Pacers beat OKC. So, the Magic Number to make the playoffs is at 1. The Nets lost so the Magic Number to have the #7 spot vs Brooklyn is also 1. Any combination of Celtic wins or Brooklyn losses and we have #7 as is any combo of Celtic wins and Pacer losses.

Chicago plays at Brooklyn tonight, with the Nets being on the 2nd game of a back-to-backer. If we want Atlanta, we should root for Brooklyn.
Tomorrow, we play Toronto at home and Indy hosts Washington. Definitely GO WIZARDS!

38-42. 38 wins, with 2 to go. Who'da thunk it?


bob


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[Sam]

Bobc and I are willing to hire out as totems for the entire playoffs so as to bring #18 to Boston.  It's not so much that we can help the Celtics' cause by attending the game, because they didn't need any help yesterday.  But we seem to be good at getting the personnel numbers advantage heavily in favor of the Celtics.  I'm sure that the Cleveland coach will be dying to rest his Big 3 in the playoffs with just a nudge from Bob and me.

In a more serious vein...well there really was no serious vein yesterday, as the game quickly turned in an artery of humor.  Cries of "Shutout" accompanied the Celtics' opening 9-0 salvo.  Then things got briefly interesting.  Then, in the second quarter, cries of "Mercy rule" could be heard (mostly from me, actually).

Then it became a matter of cherry picking players on whom to isolate (guess whom I picked) and learning never to glance at our cell phones because we'd probably miss a Celtics steal or drive to the hoop or corner three.  (Yup, they said it couldn't be done, but I actually derived a sliver of pleasure from the Celtics' 10-24 three point barrage.)

I've always been against premature assumption of victory or early cries for Gino because I believe such manifestations can create bad karma and lead to horrific losses.

So I pretty much assume nothing until there are just a few minutes left and the Celtics were leading by 30.  That pretty much described the fourth quarter.  So, for much of the final quarter, I tried a new viewing method: simply sitting back and letting a sort of long-distance panorama infiltrate my mind.  And what transpired for the rest of the game was a deluge of length-of-floor dashes, deflections, steals, and more hands in sight than at a drive-in movie.  It seemed that, every time Cleveland would advance the ball, a jack-in-the-box in grey pajamas would pop up and the ball would go back in the opposite direction.

I've mentioned my favorite part in a couple of other threads, but I can definitely bear repeating.  Up 39, with a minute left, the Celtics were still diving for loose balls!  It was definitely the most frenetic display of Celtics defense that I've seen in at least a couple of years.

I know people will be tempted to discount the magnitude of the win because of the absence of Cleveland stars; and they'll certainly have a point.  But I believe that a lot of the secret to professional basketball involves getting into a good groove.  And, if this game wasn't a step in that direction, nothing ever will be.

From the latest Boston Massacre to a great French restaurant and an intimate birthday dinner for my wife, all-in-all, yesterday was a definite keeper.

Go Celtics!

Sam

Near the end, I even tried a new viewing technique, during which I focused solely on energy.