Some food for thought on the C’s preseason matinee up north.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, this one was played and coached as close to a regular season contest as any fan could hope for throughout the first 3 quarters. Normally, you have to dig long and hard to find anything meaningful to take out of the overall play in these preseason contests. However, both coaches stuck with their main rotation players in the first 36 minutes, going only 9-10 players deep on their bench so viewers were left with a fairly decent sample size of how these teams matchup overall.
Besides KG’s stand out afternoon, Allen was responsible for the offensive fireworks in the first quarter as the Celtics stormed out to 33 first quarter points on 76% shooting. Not too shabby for a team that is usually sluggish out of the gate in the afternoon starts. It will be interesting to see if this carries over to the numerous regular season day starts this year.
Like Garnett, Allen utilized all parts of his offensive arsenal early on, getting the long range stroke going early, which allowed for some easy paths to the hoop later in the period. All of this led to Raptors rookie Demar DeRozan getting a crash course in how not to defend one of the best pure shooters in the league. The kid is athletic but he has a lot to learn.
The scary thing about this Celtic team for their opponents this year was the fact that Paul Pierce only had 4 points today. That may be alarming to casual readers of the box score, but the fact is, Paul really made no attempt to get involved in the team’s scoring output. Ray was hot, KG was on, and Paul was perfectly content to take an afternoon off and help the team in other ways. Thus he became a distributor with the ball and tallied 5 assists on the day in his 26 minutes. And the team won easily going away.
Again I know it was a preseason game, but if everyone stays healthy, the amount of options this team has for offensive outputs is staggering. It will be tough for teams to keep up with all year long.
Aright let’s shift to bullets here since I’m spending far too much time talking about a preseason game here.
• Perk and Andrea Bargnani spent much of the day in foul trouble, with Bargnani even fouling out in 21 minutes. The guy sure can score, but will have trouble staying in games when playing defense against elite big men.
• The unselfishness and ball movement throughout the first quarter and the second half of the 3rd quarter was simply beautiful to watch. Whether it was fast break or making an extra pass in the halfcourt to take advantage of slow Raptor rotation, the starting unit strove to get everyone involved while making Toronto pay for their mistakes. Made for some fun basketball to watch.
• A couple items of concern on the day would have to be the dreaded turnovers. Countless moving picks for both teams set the tone for the day as well as a case of butterfingers for the C’s during the middle 2 quarters which led to a couple of dry spells. These turnovers will be what this team lives and dies with all year.
• Saw the debut of the Daniels, Allen, Pierce trio in the 2nd quarter resulting in a couple easy hoops. Rondo, House and Quisy also saw some team together as well….not sure how I feel about that combo yet. It is intriguing to think about how many bench options combos Doc will have to play with this year.
• C’s sure do like to run off of made baskets. I felt like I was watching the 7 seconds or less offense for awhile there. Fun to see them beat the Raptors at their own game.
• Really weird to see Eddie House not wearing a headband in the 2nd half. Mike Gorman was spot on in noting how he didn’t even recognize Eddie without it. That made two of us. Luckily, the missing headband didn’t affect Eddie’s shooting (5/9 for 13 points).
• Re: Toronto Raptors: Their starting five will be able to hang with most teams in the league on any given night but their bench leaves a lot to be desired outside of Jarrett Jack. There is a lot of athleticism in there but also a lot of recklessness and inconsistency. Nesterovic can barely run out there anymore and we all know what Patrick O’Bryant brings to the table. There is just not a whole lot of talent there They will have to play their starters 35-40 minutes most nights to stay in games.
• One final funny sequence to end things from the 1st quarter. Chris Bosh gathered an offensive rebound under the C’s basket and bizarrely his teammate Sonny Weems ran into him. The officials calls a foul on Paul Pierce and KG loudly contests the call, claiming Pierce did not touch Bosh, a statement that seemed true to naked eye. A look at the replay showed the real perpetraitor was Pierce after all.
The Truth was fighting for position with Sonny Weems on the other side of the lane and Weems obstructed any path Pierce had in contesting Bosh’s putback attempt. Instead of conceding the 2, Pierce shoved Weems into Bosh forcing the power forward to put up a wild shot as the referees whistle the foul. I had never seen anything like that while watching the NBA as did play by play man Mike Gorman. Tommy Heinsohn recognized what was going on immediately and laughed about the maneuver, claiming it was an old trick to push an offensive player into his teammate during a shot attempt. Glad to see Tommy’s advice is not fooling on death ears in the C’s locker room after all these years.
Loading ...