Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big storyline. Because there's nothing quite as satisfying a good morning dump.
“We could have took our time on offense more. There were a couple possessions where we, myself included, shot it real quick. We didn’t make them play defense. The times we did make good passes and shared the ball real well, with at least three or four passes, they were running all over the place and we hit a majority of our shots. We have to go back to the drawing board and correct that.’’
– Rasheed Wallace (0-6 3pt fg), Boston Globe – Quick fix is to show more patience
“But we have a pretty mature team. They know that because of the amount of games that we’ve had, it’s impossible to practice. They can see the slippage. We’ve showed it on film. We talked about it. The last three games it’s all we’ve been talking about. But it’s tough to do something about it until you can get some real practice time, and we’ll get that on Monday.”…
“The only thing I didn’t like . . . I thought with about 3 minutes left, instead of searching for wide-open 2’s that we had, we went into 3 mode, and I didn’t think we had to do that. I thought several times we could’ve easily gotten to the basket for a quick 2 and we passed up 2’s to look for 3’s. And that, to me, was uncharacteristic of us.”
Doc Rivers, Herald - Cracks in armor create imperfection
You know, I'm glad the Celtics got their first loss out of the way early. First, we put an early end to that scrolling down the calendar "looking for the first loss" crap. Second, it was a nice early lesson to everyone on this team: You're not going to get away with not playing your game against good teams.
The Celtics are, obviously, a defensive team. They, obviously, didn't play good defense last night. Somewhere in almost every play, someone didn't make the right rotation… and that's what led to wide open Suns and easy baskets.
And on offense, the Celtics work the ball around. They make the extra pass. Hell, they make TOO many passes sometimes. And THAT'S what leads to wide open 3's. The Celtics are shooting lights out from 3 because after 5 or 6 passes, they've broken down the defense and they're wide open… y'know… kinda like the Suns were last night.
Let's be glad for early lessons. The good thing about a veteran team is that they learn quickly. If they come out tonight and thump Jersey with the style of play we're used to… then it's message received. If they come out and win but still play like crap… then Doc's gonna have some fun in practice on Monday.
After the jump: Page 2, where KG looked 12 years old
That's KG as a rookie, courtesy of SLAM. Compare him to last night…
The rest of the links:
Herald: Celtics D gets burned from too much Suns | Dudley and above-par sub | Grant Hill too tough to move | Scouting report: Celtics at Nets | Globe: Stoudemire stating his case | Sunburned | CelticsBlog: Live by the 3, die by the 3 | WEEI: Flannery – Reality check for C's fans | Worcester Telegram: Davis thumbs his nose at injury
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