The Celtics are off till Friday, so we’ve got plenty of time to look back at the 94-88 loss to Portland to see what we liked and didn’t like before looking ahead to Friday afternoon’s game.
Four Up:
1. Team Defense
The Celtics looked, for the first time all season, completely engaged on the defensive end. Rotating, fighting over screen, crashing the boards, and creating turnovers. Celtics accounted for 12 steals, part of Portland’s 16 turnovers while Boston only had 8. Inserting Gerald Wallace into the second team unit seemed to really pick up the energy on the defensive end, and with Marcus Smart reportedly set to return this Friday against the Bulls, our second unit may be a better defensive unit then our starters.
2. Rajon Rondo in a scoring mindset
During the first quarter Rondo came out like a man on a mission constantly attacking Damien Lillard and scoring at will. Critics usually point to Rondo’s lack of scoring to discredit his game, but theirs a clear difference between lack of scoring and lack of scoring ability. When Rondo is assertive and knows he wants to score he can be almost impossible to stop because of the fear he already strikes with the ability to make unreal passes.
3. Transition offense
Though we struggled to put the ball in the basket, one thing we did do was create a lot of fastbreak opportunities with our aggressive defense. Celtics won the fastbreak battle 15-4, and it could have been more if they didn’t squander some of the opportunities with costly turnovers.
4. Three point defense
Portland is third in the league in three point percentage at 38.5% and 2nd in the league in three pointers made per game with 9.9. The Celtics held them to only 7/19 shooting for 36.8%. Not that big of a difference, but Boston did do an excellent job of forcing them off the line and making them drive. It was a key part of keeping us in the game, and it forced Portland to take nearly 6 attempts fewer than they normally do and beat us in another way.
Four Down
1. Third quarter defense
Common theme for the Celtics all season has been to play the whole 48. Once again they couldn’t do it. Portland scored 28 points in the quarter highlighted by Evan Turner making Steve Blake look like Allen Iverson on two momentum changing shots. Celtics have usually been a solid third quarter team and outscored opponents in the quarter 7 of the 12 games. Coming out of the gates swinging to open up the game, and coming out of intermission strong is something that needs to happen, especially when going up against much more talented teams.
2. Rondo letting up aggressiveness
After scoring a majority of his points in the first half, Rondo went pretty silent offensively in the second half. Though by nature his not a scoring guard, when his team was in desperate need for baskets he should have shouldered some of that offensive load even at the expense of potentially creating for others because of how much everyone was struggling. Hopefully if put in this situation again he’ll take a more aggressive approach.
3. Shoot Kelly Shoooooot!!!
Olynyk did a great job on the boards in that first half finishing with 8 rebounds altogether which was tied for team lead with Brandon Bass. However, he only took 3 shots, missing all of them in what was another hesitant performance (as was highlighted in The Morning Dump today). Though he struggles a lot defensively it’s more frustrating to watch him offensively because he has so much talent and potential to win most of his matchups, and he instead hesitates to be assertive. Someone needs to get through to him if we want to turn this season around.
4. Brad Stevens to blame?
This is more of a question than a down because I wanted to give you guys some food for thought. Kenny Smith last week was talking on NBA TV and their was a segment on the Cavaliers coach David Blatt where he said ” I always say if we lose by seven points or more it’s the players, but under seven points it’s the coaches fault.” Last season the Celtics lost 63% of their games by 10 points or under, and this season have lost 5 of their 7 games by seven points or less. It’s almost to the point where fans are worried with having a lead throughout any portion of the game until the very end. Is it all just completely the players blowing opportunity over and over again, or is Stevens not creating effective enough game plans for those final five minutes? This will be something to pay attention to throughout the season as the Celtics figure to be in a lot of close games.
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