Celtics drop scrub-fest to New York Knicks

Doc Rivers let the a bunch of guys who’ll probably never make the team finish the game against the Knicks, and they ended up dropping this one in OT, 98-95.  Chris Copeland

….. I’ll wait for you to Google him…..

…. dropped 21 second half points for the Knicks in the win.  The Celtics were led by 14 points out of Jared Sullinger, who was among the “close out” group that played down the stretch in the 4th and in OT.  In reality, if the Celtics were actually in a ridiculous situation where this group was out there trying to close a game out, Sullinger would have gotten the ball every time down.  But guys like Dionte Christmas, Jamar Smith, and Micah Downs are trying to make either this team, or another NBA team, so they all tried to take over at various points.

As for the real basketball…

• Rajon Rondo is still perfect in the preseason from the line… going 3-3 tonight.  His stoke is a little different… smoother… and it’s paying off.  He also drilled a few long jumpers and was tied for the team rebounding lead with Jared Sullinger (7).
• Jeff Green had 12 points and 4 rebounds in 29 very productive minutes.  He’s continuing to give us confidence that he’ll be a major part of this team’s success this season.  And that dunk was kind of sick.
• Paul Pierce shot 3-11.  It’s no big deal.  I think at this point, he’s going to turn it on later in the year.
• KG only played 17 minutes.  He had 4 points and 5 rebounds.  Someone’s going to make a big deal of his single-digit preseason stats at some point.  It’ll be stupid.  There’s no reason for him to play much.  I think we know what he can do.
• I’m going to enjoy Courtney Lee this season.  11 points in 21 minutes…. nice.
• The Celtics finished up 12-2 in fast break points and 56-46 in bench points.   At one point, when guys who mattered were playing, it was a 24-10 advantage.
• Darko Milicic only played about 7 and a half minutes.  I don’t think we should read into anything at this point, but he didn’t play in the second half.
• I want to see the C’s run some more preseason stuff for Bass.  I think it’d be nice to get him the ball a little more.
• For some stupid reason, Jason Kidd played 34 minutes and was part of the scrub-fest late in the game and overtime.  Someone please explain to me why he played so much in a preseason game.  That was just dumb.

In the end, Doc let the end-of-the-bench guys try to finish it off and they largely didn’t do a bad job.  But I’ll tell you one thing about this team… they won’t feel like the same team we’ve known over the past few years.  Green, Terry, Lee, and Sullinger will make this team feel very, very different.  The Celtics are obviously still working on a lot…. but this won’t be the same team we’ve known.

Box Score