Forgettable: C’s 96, Nets 87

ESPN Recap • Nets Are Scorching • Nets Daily

Pace: 84 possessions (excruciatingly slow)

Offensive Efficiency: 114.2 points/100 possessions (league best)

Defensive Efficiency: 103.5 points allowed/100 possessions (top 10)

Thumbnail: The Celtics beat a very bad basketball team despite allowing that very bad basketball team—easily the worst offensive team in the league—to score 55 first-half points on 63 percent shooting. But then the defense showed up, the Nets got a little turnover happy and Eddie House went crazy in the 4th quarter.

Quick Friday Bullets:

• I don’t want to say the Celtics didn’t take this game as seriously as, say, the Lakers game last weekend, but they didn’t take this game as seriously as the Lakers game last weekend. I mean, the game was in the balance, and Doc Rivers still sat KG the first 9:20 of the 4th quarter. Bill Walker played more minutes—9:21—than he had since the final game of last year’s regular season. Eddie House logged his 2nd-highest minutes total of the season while Ray Allen played about four minutes fewer than his average. 

Those of us—and I include myself in this group—who have called Doc out on his unwillingness to follow his own declarations about playing the stars fewer minutes need to applaud him tonight. Facing the possibility of a humiliating home court loss to a 4-44 team, Doc stuck with what was obviously a pre-arranged plan to make this a light night for Garnett, Perk (25 minutes) and Allen. My guess—and this is purely a guess—is that someone as competitive as Doc was itching to put KG back in the game earlier than he did.

• I don’t want to discredit the Nets, but there is no way that team should shoot 63 percent in a half against Boston. The Nets score 97.5 points per 100 possessions; the 29th-ranked team in the league (Minnesota) is three points better than that. The Harris-Lopez screen/roll isn’t exactly Duncan-Parker or Nash-Stoudemire. It’s a nice play, but it’s not devastating enough to tear apart the best defensive team in the league for 24 minutes. 

• But it did. For most of the game, the C’s defended NJ’s screen/rolls in their customary way—Rondo chasing over the screen while Lopez’s guy (usually Perk) drops back to stop Harris’s penetration and the rest of the defense rotates around to find Lopez on the roll or the pick-and-pop. Two things happened: 

1) Devin Harris, for one game, became the floater-making machine he was last season (and hasn’t been in any other season in his career). Harris shot 6-of-8 from 16 feet and in and 0-of-7 from everywhere else. Courtney Lee got into the mid-range/rim act, hitting 3-of-4 from 16 feet and in and 1-of-4 from everywhere else. 

If there’s a soft spot in Boston’s defense, it’s the mid-range game—and that’s by design. The C’s goal is to protect the rim and run teams off the three-point line, and they execute it well. If you can hit some 15-foot runners, you can go on decent scoring runs against Boston. But can you do it the whole game? 

2) The C’s big men just weren’t up for this game in the first half, and it’s hard to blame them. Just watch the tape at the 1:56 mark the 2nd quarter. Lopez comes out and sets a screen to Harris’s right at the top of the key. Rondo chases over it while Perk, who sees the play right in front of him, for some reason decides to slide a few feet to Harris’s left—away from the Lopez screen. You’ll see bigs do this now and then to hedge against the possibility that the guard drives away from the pick in hopes of catching the defense by surprise. 

But we had seen no indication Harris was going to try that. And he didn’t. He dribbled around the screen and moseyed all the way down the paint for an uncontested lay-in. 

• With a few late exceptions, the C’s defended the screen/roll the same way in the 2nd half, but they just did it better and with more intensity. That helps explain New Jersey’s nine second-half turnovers and 11-of-38 shooting over the final 24.

• Something else that explains those stats: The Nets are really bad.

• Bill Walker: Still not ready. He blew a sure dunk when he took his eye off a Sheed pass and fumbled the ball out of bounds. He also committed an obvious traveling violation by shifting his pivot from his right foot to his left foot in order to gear up for a drive. He did this even though he had all the time he wanted to set up for his move. 

Bill Walker’s a nice guy with great athleticism and some potential, but he won’t contribute to this team this year. 

• Rajon Rondo played 43:56  tonight. Rondo has logged 40 or more minutes in 12 of Boston’s last 20 games. I’m not sure if this is something to be concerned about. 

• Glen Davis and Eddie House were huge tonight. They combined for 23 points on 9-of-17 shooting, with House scoring all 10 of his points in the 4th quarter. That number could have (should have?) been 13 points, but the refs waived off an Eddie three, claiming he didn’t release the ball before the shot clock expired. It was impossible to tell from the angle the YES Network gave we New York City viewers. 

• Big Baby was 2-of-2 on jumpers tonight, with a 14-footer and a 21-footer. Before this game, Baby had been 5-of-20 on shots longer than 10 feet for the entire season, according to Hoopdata. It would be very, very nice if Baby could rediscover last year’s jumper in time for this year’s playoffs—especially if he can somehow do that and remain a force on the offensive glass. 

• Also rediscovering his jumper, at least tonight: Ray Allen. Walter Ray scored 26—one off his season high—on 9-of-17 shooting, including 3-of-7 from deep. He also pulled down seven rebounds, which ties his season high and gives him at least five boards in each of the last four games. In watching tape of a lot of enemy offensive boards, a few problems repeat themselves over and over again, and one involves Ray Allen’s occasional failure to box someone out. 

It seems as if he has made a renewed commitment to sticking near the paint just in case the board falls his way. That’s a good thing.

• Rajon Rondo: 17-11-3 on 6-of-8 shooting with three steals. For anyone who missed the game, one of Rajon’s baskets should really go to Kris Humphries and/or Brook Lopez. Perk missed a lay-up on a nice screen/roll, and Lopez and Humphries both went up for a completely uncontested rebound. No Celtic was anywhere near them. And the ball bounced so softly off of one of their hands and through the net that it almost looked as if the Nets had forgotten what end of the court they were on and intentionally tipped the ball in. 

Hilarious, and perfectly fitting for the kind of season this sorry team is having. The basketball gods repaid the Nets—and even added a point—by ordering the refs to waive off that House three. The basketball gods can occasionally be kind to those who have suffered much. 

• Rondo made both of his jumpers tonight, and they were among the smoothest he has ever taken. 

• He also threw an insane pass to Wallace early in the 2nd quarter. Rajon blew by Dooling on the right wing and drove into the paint. He noticed Sheed’s man slide in from the right baseline to help, and, while still facing the hoop, Rajon threw a backward pass over his head to Sheed. It was right on target, and Sheed hit an easy 12-footer from the baseline. There are maybe five point guards in the league who could have thrown that pass. 

• Of course, Rajon also tried an impossible 85-mile-per-hour bounce pass through traffic to Perk on a screen/roll, and Perk (predictably) couldn’t handle it. Rondo needs to remind himself that Perk is not KG when it comes to quickness, hands and finishing ability. 

• Even so: Just 12 turnovers for Boston tonight. The Celtics record since the start of the 2007-08 season in games in which they commit 12 or fewer turnovers? 50-11, according to Basketball Reference. (Note: That record might be even better. There’s a gap between turnovers in Basketball Reference box scores and ESPN box scores; the ESPN box scores occasionally show more turnovers than do the BR boxes, and it appears to be because BR does not count team turnovers, such as shot clock violations. Of the 11 losses in that BR search linked above, the site has Boston committing 12 turnovers. I bet that if I went back and looked at those games, there will be two or three in which the team actually committed 13 or 14 turnovers, meaning their record in 12-or-fewer turnover games could be something like 47-7). 

In any case: The team wins when they don’t throw the ball away like crazy. 

It’s Friday. That’s it for me. We’ll be back tomorrow to prep for Sunday’s pre-Super Bowl game against Orlando. A win against a contender would be very, very nice.

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