Celtics Go Vintage for Crucial Game 5 Win

This is my first traditional blog post in a while. I was reading some of the ones I used to do and figured this was as good a time as any to get back into the groove. So let's get going!

KG and the Celtics returned to vintage form Tuesday night.

It felt like a 2008 playoff game, didn't it? I mean, this was vintage Celtics basketball on display Tuesday night in Cleveland. In fact, this wasn't so much a vintage game because we couldn't win for shit on the road a couple years ago. When we play up to par and how we can night in and night out, we are a more versatile team than that previous version, if only for the simple fact that we can save face on the road. In an arena in which the Cavs were uber-dominant during the regular season (and the first round of the playoffs), the Celtics have managed to win twice there (it could've been three times had it not been for that mini-collapse in Game 1). Either way, it's wins like this one that has got to make you feel good about our chances moving forward, at least in this series. I don't want to get into any future series talk, so I'm not even going to think about any sort of matchups going forward besides Game 6.

LeBron couldn't hide his frustration as the C's swarming defense held him to just 3 of 14 shooting.

I kept waiting...waiting...waiting. I mean, come on. LeBron is not going to suck for an entire 48 minutes in a crucial playoff game, right? He's gonna get woken up come crunch time and get his team going, right? There's no way that the same guy who scored a billion points and did EVERYTHING in Game 3 was gonna take a few jumpers, not really get anyone else involved, and call it a night in Game 5 in his domain, right? As we all know with this Celtics team--at least its regular season incarnation--no lead is really ever safe. We tend to sit back on our haunches and wait for the clock to tick away to zero whenever we have a lead bigger than 10 points in the 4th quarter (and sometimes even earlier). So, as we entered the 4th with nearly a 20 point lead, I still didn't feel safe. To be honest, I wasn't TRULY convinced we were going to win until about 7 minutes left in the game with a 28 point lead or whatever it had swelled to at that point. The one thing I was convinced about was that LeBron would take the game over like he had done so many times before. Remember his 25 straight point game against Detroit in the playoffs! I kept reminding myself. Not this time. He was just...out of sync? tired? ElbowGate? I don't even know. And as far as the analysts are concerned tonight (I'm writing this currently at 12:45 am), they have no idea either. Bill Simmons tweeted that LBJ's performance was "perplexing." That's probably the best word to use because NO ONE expected him to come out like this. After getting a much-needed split up in Boston, you'd think that the "best player in the universe" would keep the momentum up in what is always a critical Game 5 at home. I don't really believe in all the elbow hype, I just think he didn't show up. I mean, look at his post game press conference. Very ho-hum. Very non-chalant, like there's not a thing to worry about, even though he shot a ghastly 3-14 ("ghastlier than a thousand ghouls!"--Stewie quote from Season 1, thank you very much). Maybe it's just me, but he was just very stoic, like nothing phased him. I can't help but imagine him with the same tone of voice after a Cavs win, ya know? Where's the desperation or even just disappointment? You know that if the Celtics lost by 32 points at home, someone like KG would be visibly pissed off, not just, "Well, we just gotta go and win the next game."

Anyway, enough LeBron analysis and talk. Let's get into the Celtics side of the game. For one thing, Rondo is a superstar. Sure, what he did a couple nights ago was ludicrous, but he came out with exactly the perfect attitude for this game. With a player as young as he is (He's 24, I'm 22. What have I done with my life?), and coming off a Wilt Chamberlain-Oscar Robertson territory type game, I wouldn't have been surprised if he tried to replicate at least the same sort of aggression of Game 4. No siree Bob! He played just the way we needed him to play. Get others involved, defer to the Big Three, etc. thus accounting for his 1-rebound-and-nothing-else stat line of the first quarter. Only in the second half (3rd quarter mostly) did he come out and really put the petal to the metal, ensuring the Celtics played with continued urgency. He knows he controls the offense and dictates the pace of the game and played aggressively to open that second half just as we needed it to happen. When all was said and done, Rondo ended up with 16 points and 7 assists on 7-12 shooting. Nothing flashy, but everything we needed him to be when we needed it to happen. That is what you want out of your point guard.

Ray Allen just keeps on impressing. His hot shooting to close the regular season has continued without much interruption into the playoffs. He shot 8-13 overall and 6-9 from downtown to record a game-high 25 points. I mean, this guy is just the prototype of a knock-down shooter. Not to be the prisoner of the moment, but I give full support to resign Allen for next season. Shooters shoot and it's something he won't really forget how to do. He loves Boston and deserves to stay here for all that he's done to help this team. Can you even imagine where we'd be if we traded Allen in February?! Not here, that's for sure.

KG. Got his game going early. Abused Jamison down low, like he can do virtually every play and finished with another 18-point game. It's becoming almost a given that Garnett is going to score 18 points and grab 6-10 rebounds. That's really all you can ask for. Knee problems be damned, by the way. He seems fine to me. He's running up and down the court every play and skying for rebounds whenever he's in position to do so. Just a Community Note of Interest, KG has scored exactly 18 points in Game 4 vs. the Heat, Game 1, Game 2, Game 4, and Game 5 (and 19 in Game 3) vs. the Cavs!! Is that weird or what? That is 5 times out of a possible 9 games (he didn't play Game 2 vs. the Heat) in which KG scored 18 points. That's crazy! Let's see how he fares in Boston...

Pierce began the game inside to regain his touch and moved to his sweet spot in the 2nd half.

Onto the Captain, the Truth. Paul Pierce. Give him all the flack you want for not showing up in really any game thus far against the Cavs. He actually did this poorly against the Cavs in 2008 until his breakout 41-point Game 7. So there. This game, he took what the defense gave him. Instead of taking a lot of jumpers to start the game, he drove inside to try and get layups, bunnies, and fouls to get to the line. That's the way to get going if you're struggling shooting. **ORIGINAL RESEARCH ALERT!!!** Looking at tonight's shot chart, Pierce took 11 out of his 21 shots from in the paint, all but one of which came in the first half. Two things can be gleaned from this. One is that Pierce took a lot of shots, some would say too many if he only scored 21 points. But the thing is he got shots up. Two, he was aggressive, not tentative as he had been in the other games. Perhaps he saw that LeBron was doing shitty offensively, so he didn't have to expend as much energy defending him. Whatever the case was, Pierce was able to attack primarily and then revert to his traditional sweet spots on the elbows for jumpers. It's also nice to note that Pierce had 11 rebounds and 7 assists to go with those 21 points. That's almost a triple-double! Great production from him that one can only see continuing, especially at home.

Rondo continued his strong play, leading to easy buckets from bench players.

One final note is the bench play. Daniels did a FANTASTIC job off the bench, hitting a tough layup and jumper in the 4th quarter...

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JUST KIDDING. That was all garbage time. When it mattered, Glen "Uno Uno" Davis (does he seriously expect that to catch on? such a dumb nickname) and Tony Allen really contributed. They really never get plays called for them, but somehow always end up finding the loose balls and cutting in for layups and and-ones. As much as I've hated on TA in the past, I gotta give him credit where it's due. This entire 2010 playoffs, he's been stellar and not trying to do too much. Tonight, he finished with just 6 points, but the Celtics were +14 when he was on the floor (Take what you want from that...I actually like the plus/minus stat because it tends to show the intangibles. If you didn't watch the game, TA's presence on the court couldn't be seen in the box score, but he did contribute in a big way, if only for his once again stifling D on James). Davis had more of an offensive impact. Sometimes I don't understand how the laws of physics allow him to spin the ball so much to get it to go in. He's such a big guy and kinda just throws his weight into people while simultaneously throwing the ball in a seemingly random direction at the rim and more often than not (unless it gets blocked), it goes in and he gets fouled. Not to mention his jumpshot is a great asset to have. Overall, Davis finished with 15 points and made 7 out of 10 free throws. Not bad, young Padawan.

On that note, hope you enjoyed the first Celtics recap blog in a long while. Hopefully there will be more to come. I typed into my iPhone a few things that piss me off during the games themselves (the repeating commercials, for example) that I think has potential of being funny, especially if you're watching almost all of the games in their entireties (is that even a word?) like I do. Until next time!

Funny Story

Just read this in Sports Illustrated in an article about timeouts in the NBA:

"And in Game 2 of the 1984 NBA Finals, Larry Bird famously told Celtics coach K.C. Jones, 'Give me the ball. I know what to do,' to which Jones responded, 'Shut up, Larry, I'm the coach of this team.' Then he gave his instructions: 'Inbound the ball, get it to Larry, and everybody else get out of the way.'"

Simmons

I agree, except I'm not 100% positive that we'll lose in the first round. There's a helluva good chance, considering our...well, laziness since December, but only time will tell. Bottom line: Momentum is a necessity heading into the playoffs. We don't have ANY. Should be a shit show.

On Tuesday, I thought Dwyane Wade could beat by himself what I described in a recent e-mail as a "decrepit, non-rebounding, poorly coached, dispirited, excuse-making, washed-up sham of a contender" (admittedly, I was a little angry) … and that's before the Celtics tanked Game 82 on Fan Appeciation Night in a pathetic attempt to land Milwaukee in Round 1. Nope. They got Wade and Miami. The karma gods hate that crap. And that's what this season was: crap. The Celtics have been a .500 team for nearly four months. Everyone has a glazed, "As soon as we get eliminated, we get to start summer vacation, right?" look on their face, and if you could describe Garnett's bizarre clinging-to-the-past-and-not-getting-the-hint-that-he's-done-as-an-impact-player season with a movie character, it would absolutely be O'Bannion from "Dazed and Confused."

All of this shocked the diehards who loved the 2008 and 2009 teams and never thought they'd become, for lack of a better word, weak. Yes, we won two years ago. Putting us well within my self-proclaimed five-year grace period (see rule No. 12) that goes like this: "No fan can complain about a team that just won a title for five years" … and making me a hypocrite for everything you read in the previous paragraph. Of anything I ever wrote, I regret the five-year grace period most. I created it three weeks after the Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVI, my first Boston title in 16 years. It had been so long since one of my teams won anything that I had forgotten what it felt like. So really, my creating rules for fans of championship teams was like Kate Moss releasing a manifesto for eating fatty foods. How the hell would I know?

Here's what I learned from 2002-2010 (six Boston titles in all): You can't stop being a sports fan just because your team won a title. Sports are all about the highs and lows. If you don't get swept up in them, you become detached and eventually you won't care as much. Just because the Celtics won two years ago doesn't give them the right to embrace, "Don't worry, we might not care now but we're gonna try in the playoffs" as their team mantra two years later, just like I shouldn't be obligated to accept their recent foibles out of some twisted sense of gratitude.

I thought the Celtics played their fans this season. Don't rope us in with "ubuntu" for two years, then turn your back on it like it was a Kaballah fad or something. Don't tell us to embrace "The New Big 3," then shop Ray Allen for eight months like he was a used car. Don't tell us our best forward's knee is fine when we see him limping. Don't blame the effort of your players after a loss when you played all 12 of them like they were Little Leaguers, or when you keep playing the one guy who exhibits no effort whatsoever without calling him out once. Don't sign a second center for big bucks, then act surprised when the incumbent center bristles about his playing time. So on and so on. It was an empty season filled with excuses, half-truths and false promises. Just because they won two years ago doesn't mean fans had to blindly condone it.

I once wrote that Miami's 2006 title run was like a group of guys in Vegas spending crazy money at dinner, having a great time, ordering dozens of dishes and drinks and never once worrying about the check … and the 2007 Miami season was the ten sobering minutes when the check arrives and nobody could believe the bill. The check just gets passed around so everyone can stare it in horror, then the one dude with an MBA in economics grabs it and figures out what everyone owes, and you limp out of the restaurant saying, "I can't believe we just spent $250 apiece on dinner, I gotta hit an ATM," only it takes an extra 10 minutes to leave because somebody has to take a dump and somebody else thinks they have a chance with the waitress, so the rest of the guys are just clustered in the lobby, totally full, a little bit drunk, a little bit tired, trying to rally for a big gambling night but knowing that they're about to get their asses kicked because you can never win in Vegas when you're drunk, full and tired.

Welcome to your 2009-10 Celtics postseason. The check has arrived. I hope I'm wrong.

My Favorite Celtics Call Ever*

*...that happened when I was alive, of course.

Love this Quote...

Bono: "I'd love for everyone to have that hope at the moment of death, the hope that you aren't leaving this world the same as you found it, but you're leaving the world a little better. We ought to celebrate the tiniest changes everywhere we find them -- in ourselves, in our family, our neighborhood, our country, the world. I'll say it again: I hate the idea of the inviolability of things. You can and you should shake things up. Besides, history proves it. Look, not long ago women didn't have the right to vote, and that was something just taken as a given. That appalling fact didn't stand the test of time."

Amen.

Check out this unreleased track from the "All That You Can't Leave Behind" sessions. Fits in perfectly with that album--emphasis on melody and more radio-friendly songs. Pretty solid! It's an upbeat song so if you're feelin' down, I think it should help a bit :)

Bring on the Haters!

Quick thoughts on tonight's debacle of a game. Or really just the second half.

--Worst half of a game we've played since I can remember.

--13 assists. Total (at least until I shut the TV off with about 1:30 left).

--Almost opposite defensive energy between the first and second halves. I was pleasantly surprised that in the first 24 minutes, every single player on the Celtics showed a helluva lot of energy, helping out teammates, overplaying everything (in the best sense of the word), getting in passing lanes, HUSTLING. The second half was a completely different story. Sluggish, showing the men they were playing a clear way to the basket, overplaying (in the WORST sense of the word) when showing on screens (PS: Why does that tend to happen? For example, Rondo guards Williams. Okur comes to set a screen. Sheed leaves Okur to help the semi-open Williams. Rondo, meanwhile, slips over the screen and is clearly still capable of guarding Williams. Sheed keep guarding Williams for some ungodly reason. Okur is wide open and knocks down a three. Happened far too often.)

--Several missed layups and, more important, missed and-ones in the second half. Perfect way to shoot yourself in the foot when you're missing FREE throws (i.e. FREE points, but the league couldn't just give them to you...they had to come up with something more official=free throws--surely professional basketball players can hit a wide open shot from 6 feet!, says Mr. Naismith. And they should. But we didn't.)

--Nate Robinson and Davis doing jack in the second half. Nate, buddy, I know you want to run the offense and pass the ball and really buy into our system, but we got you to score, score score. Ya know, like you did in the first half when you got 8 points in 25 seconds. And Big Baby. You get a thump on the nose and can't do ANYTHING in the second half? 13 points in something like 7 minutes sounds amazing, except when you consider that was all in quarters 1 and 2. Come on.

That's all I can think of for now. I could talk about the refs and how they most likely went into halftime, saw the free throw discrepancy (attributed to the Celtics actually attacking the rim the entire half), and deciding to try and even it out by letting the game get out of control in favor of the Jazz....BUT I won't get into that :)

Oh well, back to home for a season-long 6 game homestand. Hopefully that will help right the ship a bit, eh?