After every game, we’ll take stock of how each individual performance affects the player’s overall value.
Starters
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Offense:
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Rondo was having a so-so game until the “fight”. But that has the potential to be a very damaging reaction from Rondo. If the league drops the hammer because things spilled into the stands, then the C’s and their lack of a back-up point guard are in real trouble.
I appreciate Rondo sticking up for a teammate. I really do. But a 2-handed shove to the chest isn’t the way to do it. You can get up in his face… p0ke a finger at him… earn your tech. But now the C’s face losing Rondo for a while.
I guess it’s easy for me to say 12 hours later while sitting at a keyboard. But there’s a certain level of control that has to be maintained.
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Offense:
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You’re not going to see a lot of green arrows here today, but most of them are going to be right here. KG did some good work in 29 minutes on the floor. I wish he could play 40 minutes.
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Offense:
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Pierce finished with 14 points, 9 rebounds, 7 assists, and 2 steals… and it’s one of the worst games I’ve seen him play in a long time. He also shot 4-13 from the field, 6-11 from the line, and had 5 turnovers. This was more than Pierce missing a few shots… but I guess it’s a testament to how good Pierce really is when his crappy games result in stat lines most guys would kill for.
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Offense:
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Bass made his shots (except in that 10-15 foot range. He was 0-3 last night). He was also one of the few guys not in a negative +/- last night.
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Offense:
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He did some good things… like get to the line and make his free throws. He hit what should have been a big 3 in the 4th quarter to cut the lead to 10 with nearly 11 minutes to go… but then the Celtics offense devolved into a mess of frantic hero-ball. It looked like 4th quarter Terry MIGHT take over… but he could never get into that gear.
Bench
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Offense:
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I’ll just let Doc Rivers do the talking:
“I know he’s better and I know he can be better,” Rivers said Thursday morning in an interview on Boston sports radio station WEEI. “It’s gotta be some of what we’re doing and then some of what he’s doing. I have to figure out whatever we’re not doing as a staff and team right, we gotta fix that and then whatever Jeff’s not doing he’s got to fix that.“
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Offense:
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Wilcox had 4 points and 3 rebounds in just 6 minutes before leaving with an undisclosed illness. He was a -13, though, as he was on the floor for a good portion of that meltdown that started late in the first 1st quarter.
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Offense:
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To me, Lee is the hardest guy on the team to evaluate on a nightly basis. It seems like he either plays well and gets no results, or gets results somehow without having his best game. I saw flashes of some good stuff out of him last night, and I saw him get lost plenty of times too.
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Offense:
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Couldn’t hit squat, turned the ball over a bunch, and was so terrible with the ball that the Nets switched to a full-court press in the second quarter that made the game look like a varsity-vs.-JV scrimmage for a while. Rough night.
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Offense:
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Some decent stuff out of Sullinger. As always, he’s in the rebounding mix and he can hit the mid-range shot. But Reggie Evans took the rookie to school a few times out there, twisting and turning his way into contact that turned into Sullinger fouls.
Coaching
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Play Calling:
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In a weird 2+2= not 4 moment, the “hold” plus “down arrow” don’t usually equal the overall positive. My major problem with the substitution came with keeping Rondo off the floor for too long in the second quarter when the C’s were imploding. But the overall positive is Doc lighting up the team after the game and calling them out for being soft.
Doc chooses his tongue lashings wisely. He’s usually good for maybe 1 or 2 a season. This was one. This one was warranted. And I love him for it.
Overall
For a while there early, I felt like the Celtics were just going to be in a dog-fight the whole way. Then everything unraveled and they could never get the toothpaste back in the tube. The fight at the end of the second quarter was just the ugly capper to an ugly quarter.
It was a bizarrely ugly game. It felt like Paul Pierce was having one of the worst games of his life, but he had a legitimate shot a triple double. The Celtics looked so horrible that I was getting “let’s blow this team up” tweets in the middle of the game, yet they had the lead down to 9 with just under 9 minutes left.
I felt like the Celtics lost by 40, and they probably should have, but they also were a couple of makes away from a chance to win the game. They got torched from the perimeter and the block, but instead of Deron Williams and Brook Lopez, it was Jerry Stackhouse and Andray Blatche.
It was just weird to watch.
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