Rajon Rondo is a tremendous player, but he tends to have a little bit of an issue scoring the ball late in games. I won’t go as far as saying he is scared, but he does pass up shots and defer to teammates in crunch-time….well a lot. Last night though may have been his coming [...]
Garnett followed up his season-best effort against Atlanta in Game 6 with a new season-high in points and another sensational double-double, as well 60 percent shooting (12-of-20) from the field. Over his past two contests, Garnett is averaging 28.5 points, 12.5 rebounds, two steals and four blocks a game. After the game, KG was candid [...]
Before every playoff series this season, we’re doing some rundowns on the opposing roster for each team. Now that the Hawks have been dispensed with, we’re onto the Sixers. Here’s Part II. Players are listed in alphabetical order. Andre Iguodala: There are five guys in the league who have a claim on the title of [...]
Mike Fratello had it right: the NBA announced today that Al Horford should have been given a free throw on Marquis Daniels’s off-ball foul at the end of Thursday’s game. At the time, ref Eric Lewis ruled that Daniels’s foul had occurred after the throw-in, making him probably the only person in the arena who [...]
Boston will face off with the Hawks on Thursday night at 8pm at TD Garden. The broadcast can be seen on TNT or CSN locally. There was a risk that it would be a 6pm tip for Boston-Atlanta, if the Nuggets failed to extend the series last night against the Lakers. That would have created [...]
Desperate times call for desperate measures and after a blowout in Game 4, Atlanta’s head coach Larry Drew is going to shake things up a bit and add some bulk to his starting five at each position. Kirk Hinrich and Jason Collins will head to the bench, while Marvin Williams will be inserted at small [...]
The Celtics easily played the worst game of the season tonight. Wait a second, that’s unfair. The Celtics were present for their worst game of the season. The truth is no one played in this game. No one played defense. No one played offense. No one put in the effort necessary to do anything.
Tonight’s game puts Doc Rivers a giant leap closer to the hot seat. The Celtics were more unresponsive to Doc’s coaching than the Kings were to Paul Westfphal. Furthermore, despite having everyone available except for Sasha Pavlovic, Keyon Dooling, and Jermaine O’Neal who were out with injury, there were two DNPs tonight. If Greg Stiemsma and E’Twaun Moore aren’t good enough to participate in what transpired tonight than they aren’t NBA players. The truth is, they are good enough to play but despite the Celtics’ obvious heavy legs and dearth of desire to play, let alone win, this game neither Celtics’ rookie logged any court time.
This was absolutely Doc’s worst coaching job of the season. The second game of a back to back and the starters play long minutes with Chicago looming on Sunday. Add that to the two DNPs and the failure to motivate his players and I wouldn’t be surprised if he brought his whiteboard tonight. Obviously it’s not all Doc’s fault. He can only do so much and the players have to do what he tells them. All I know it that if the Celtics don’t get destroyed by Chicago, it only further validates how much they didn’t show up tonight.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we hear some news in the next couple hours about injuries or sickness or something that prevented the Celtics from playing the type of basketball they should be capable of playing. The listless demeanor was so uncharacteristic I started to get delusional with my rationalizations. I literally considered that a terrorist plot was afoot and some nefarious characters were releasing some chemical weapon into the arena that made the Celtics so sluggish. Like carbon monoxide poisoning that was only activated by people wearing green. The lack of effort was that ridiculous.
What bothers me the most is the fact that the Celtics weren’t the only ones that were on a back to back. I was at the Garden last night, writing the recap at CelticsHub, writing for the Daily Dime, Tweeting and I’m on recap and highlights tonight. Add working full days at my day job on today and Thursday along with walking, taking the T, and taking the commuter rail to and from the Garden and it just really put me in a foul mood. Why bother? I could have gone out tonight. I could have went to bed early. It’s not covering a loss or a bad team that frustrates me. There’s plenty of merit in blogging about teams that need work. It’s covering a team that had every opportunity to ramp up the effort and beat a bad team and just didn’t. Instead they got frustrated, argued with the refs, got into shoving matches with Raptors’ players, and did all this because they just absolutely sucked.
I really cannot wait to hear the post game comments about this one. If this comes close to gaining any consistency than Danny Ainge needs to blow it up. If he needs anyone to light the fuse I’ll make room in my schedule.
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