Recap: Matthews out-duels Pierce

The Blazers had lost seven straight going into tonight’s game, but Wesley freakin’ Matthews made sure that’s where the streak would end.  The C’s got big games out of Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, but those two didn’t get a ton of help.  They drop a very winnable game 92-86.

The Green:

The Truth came to play.  After early foul trouble, Pierce carried the Celtics and was the only reason why they had a shot to win this game.  Pierce dropped 8 dimes, mostly to KG, who was on fire in the second half  (5-9 fg in the second half, 4-7 in the 4th).

The Gross:

I should rename this section the “Another lesson in not overreacting to things that happen in 1 or 2 games”

Jeff Green followed up his “breakout” game with a 4-12 shooting performance.  He scored 11 points and grabbed 4 rebounds, but he was largely invisible out there.

Terrence Williams, the guy many commenters found so amazing that they were shipping Rondo off and signing TWill to multi-year deals, finished with 2 points, 2 rebounds, and 0 assists in just 7 minutes of play.  Trust me, he only earned 7 minutes.

Jordan Crawford didn’t hit any of the 4 shots he took.

The worst thing you can do in sports is overreact to singular events.  Green will have awesome games again, TWill might have a 10 assists game in him, and Crawford might drop 25 tomorrow.  We shouldn’t have overreacted to the Phoenix game, and we shouldn’t overreact to this one.

The Greenlights:

Lee finds Wilcox for the oop

The Grid:

• Pierce’s final line:  23 points (9-16 fg, 1-3 3pt), 8 assists, 7 rebounds
• The Celtics starters shot 29-59 (49%)
• The Celtics bench shot 7 of 26 (26.9%), 0-5 from 3
• Wesley Matthews:  24 points (8-11 fg, 5-8 3pt)

The Celtics bench failed them tonight.  Guys were going 1-on-1 a lot instead of moving the ball.  In the few stretches where the Celtics pushed the tempo and played the style of ball that made them successful over the past month, they were clearly better than Portland.  When guys started trying to go 1-on-1 too much, it led to breakdowns across the board as flat-footed C’s got torched in transition, lost their men on D and watched Matthews drop 3’s on them in the secondary break.

With each injury, trade, and free agent signing… the Celtics lose a little bit more of their margin of error.  Paul Pierce willed them to a competitive game, but much of the team let him down.  When it came down for one last dip into the well, Pierce came up empty.  Had they played the unselfish ball they’ve become known for recently, they would have won this game easily.

Now they have to go to Utah… and you wonder if they’re going to have their full squad as Doc starts resting guys more often.

Box Score