Spurs Dominate Celts: San Antonio 101-Boston 86

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

	A bit of a strange game.  The score is misleading in two ways.
The Celts were still hanging around in this game as late as the
closing moments of the 3rd quarter (71-61).  At the start of the 4th
the Spurs finally figured out the Celts half court defense and just
exploded, outscoring the C's 17-4, and putting the game away.  The C's
put up a bunch of points in the garbage time that resulted and made
the score look closer than it really should have ended up being.
Travis Knight was reactivated for this game.

	The Celtic's defense, together with Antoine Walker, joined
together to get the Celts off to a fast start.  The Celts stole the
ball from the Spurs on 3 of their first 6 possessions, as they assumed
a 9-2 lead.   The Spurs were having a lot of trouble with the C's
halfcourt defense, and temporarily solved the problem by going to the
running game.  They started releasing one of the 2 big men, along with
just about everybody else, and did a very solid job of running
transition.  They outscored the Celts 24-10 over the rest of the
quarter to take a 28-21 lead into the 2nd.  the few times the Celts
tried to put on the press in was totally ineffective.

	The Celts managed to slow down the Spur fast break at the
start of the 2nd and got the lead down to 3 at 30-27.  Most of the
Spur points in the early second came from the free throw line.  Pitino
gave Knight a try against the Spur big men, but Travis was totally
ineffective.  With about 4 minutes to go in the quarter, and the Celts
down 42-29, Pitino went with Walker and McCarty playing against the
twin tower and tried to get some pressure going.  It confused the
Spurs more than anything else, but it did get the Celts back to within
11 at the half, 49-38.

	Early in the third quarter the Spurs through a 10-2 run at the
Celts to push their lead to a game high 19 (59-40).  The Celts
scrapped back, and got to within 10 at 71-61.  Tyus Edney contributed
some nice play during this portion of the game, which was the only
period in which they ran any effective transition.  The quarter ended
with  the Spurs leading 74-62.

	The Spurs finally figured out how to attack the Celts fronting
defense in the 4th, and it was pretty much lights out.  The Spurs
scored on 8-10 possessions and took a 25 point lead at 91-66.  With
about 4 minutes to go in the game, and the score at 94-70, all the
Spurs starters went to the bench.  The Celts finally got some offense
going (amazing how much easier it was to score with Robinson and
Duncan out of there).  The Celts scored on 6 straight possession to
pull to within 11 at 97-86, with about .45 seconds left.  The final
was 101-86.

	You can't knock the Celts effort in this game, as they caused
27 Spur turnovers, to just 15 of their own.  They  managed to match
the Spurs in offensive rebounds with 8 (of course the Celts missed 52
shots and the Spurs only missed 29 so you might expect the C's to have
a lot more).  In fact the Celts managed to score more baskets than the
Spurs, 37-35.  The Spurs attempted 39 free throws to the Celts 10 (!)
and made 30 to the C's 8.  This is a result of the Spurs taking so
many shots close to the basket and the Spurs dominance on the inside
where they blocked 11 Celtic's shots without really committing any
fouls.

Lineups:
Celtics: Billups, Bowen, McCarty, Walker, DeClercq
Spurs: Johnson, Jackson, Elliott, Duncan, Robinson

Players: 
Walker: Actually had a good shooting night, despite only hitting
10-26.  By that, I mean that he bravely took the ball into the maw of
the Spurs defense and tried to get something done, and hit some shots
with a very high degree of difficulty.  He probably got rejected 5
times for his efforts too.  He scored 21 (he only got to the free
throw line 1 time all night long, even though he refused to settle for
the jumper), had 6 boards, and 6 turnovers.

Mercer: Probably the only Celtic who really had an answer tonight.  he
drove through the soft spurs outer defense and pulled up for 12-15
foot jumpers.  He shot 7-12 and scored 16 points in 25 minutes.

Billups: Had a couple of nice penetrations for scored, but also went
in a little to far several times and got rejected.  His deficiencies
as a floor general were very apparent tonight, especially compared to
Avery Johnson.   The Celts were unable to convert their many steals
into scores, and generally wasted a lot of time getting into their
offense with Billups being the worst offender.  He scored 10 points,
had 3 assists and 2 steals in 26 minutes.

DeClercq: Actually did a nice job fronting Robinson.  He got several
steals and made it hard to get the ball in.  Of course, once the ball
got in, it was lights out, but you can't blame Andrew for that.
DeClercq's best stat of the night was that he played for 23 minutes
and only picked up 3 fouls.  His offense was limited to 3 points, and
he had just 3 boards (all offensive).  He also had 3 steals.

Bowen: tremendous effort on defense with 5 steals and 2 blocks.  He
had nothing to contribute on the offensive end, as he attempted just 4
shots in 23 minutes, scoring just 2 points.

Barros: After his string of recent solid games, Dana couldn't even get
off a shot tonight (well, he took 1).  he was scoreless, but did have
3 assists in his 12 minutes.  The Spurs little people do a good job of
covering the three point line, but I don't see why Dana couldn't have
driven around them and gone for the mid range jumper, like Mercer.

Knight: looked woeful.  Pitino put him in a couple of times in the
first half, and jerked him out again quickly as it hurt to watch him
play.  Travis looked slow,  making mistakes on just about every play.
Against the Spurs scrubs late in the game, he managed to get a little
work done.  He shot 2-7 and had 3 boards in 14 minutes.

Minor: reportedly has been playing really well in practice.  Scored 7
points and had 2 steals in 15 minutes.  Even hit a 3.  Minor could
have been an effective player in this game if the Celt's had a point
guard to get him the ball in his comfort zone.

Brown: still rusty.  Pitino left him in late in the game just to try
to get him back up to speed.  I'm sure being on the road for the next
2 weeks will make it even harder for Knight and Brown to get back into
the swing of things.  Shot 1-4 and had 2 points in 9 minutes. 

Edney: the only Celtic to get anything done in full court all night
long.  Tyus scored 11 points and had 1 assists in 11 minutes of
playing time (most of that came in the second half, when the Celts got
to within 10).  Edney got most of his points driving to the basket
through Robinson or Duncan.  I guess it doesn't matter much to Tyus if
the opposition big men have a foot on him or a foot and a half.

Rogers: his brief stint in the 3rd quarter was the only portion of the
game where the Celts didn't go with a fronting defense on Robinson.
of course they didn't double team either, so Roy got left out to dry
pretty much.  Did have 3 boards in his 6 minutes.

Coaching: Pitino purportedly said that the Celts pressed 50% of the
time during the game and did a good job of producing turnovers off of
it.  Well, Rick must have attended a different game than the WSBK
cameras, because in the game I watched the Celt's press produced a big
fat goose egg.  I honestly don't think they got a turnover off the
full court press all night long.  Almost all of the steals the Celtics
got came off tough, deny half-court defense.  The press had nothing to
do with it.

	What Rick should have said was that the Spurs big men were
willing to run the court, and any time this season  when that's
happened i't' resulted in easy scores.  Sometimes I think that the
pressing mentality actually leads to bad habits when the Celts aren't
pressing.  The Celts big men will hang around in the offensive end an
extra beat, trying to steal the ball, and their counterparts get a
jump on them going back down the court.

Opposition Duos of Note: Robinson and Duncan.  R&D are probably the 2
most talented and team oriented big men to play together in NBA
history (I suppose 2nd place would be Chamberlain\Thurmond, I'm not
counting Parrish\McHale since the Celts generally didn't play McHale
at center).  Tonight they scored 57 points, shot 20-26, had 28
rebounds, and 11 blocks in 72 minutes.  I don't think that either one
took a shot from more than 5 feet from the basket all night long.
They're both pretty good interior passers (Duncan might be more than
pretty good) so they help each other out rather than getting in each
others way.
	
	Walker was able to take them on the drive a few times, but
when he did, the other one just covered up the basket and made it very
tough for Toine to finish.  Whichever one didn't get the defensive
rebound. Immediately took off up court on the break, and they both got
several easy shots that way.  and Duncan had 8 blocks in the game,
while picking up only 2 fouls, and, I would say, never being out of
control.  

Opposition Coaching: Of course they may never win anything, and I
suspect that Greg Popovich may be part of the reason.  At least the
C's had the sense to get rid of M.L. once he lost all those games.  It
took Popovich and his coaches 3 quarters to realize that if the Celts
were going to front Robinson, all they had to do was pull all their
guys out beyond the arc, so that the help defense couldn't get to the
hoop in time to do any good.  As soon as the Spurs employed the
tactic, the Celts got called for illegal defense 2 times in about a
minute.  Then, the inside opened up and Robinson (and Duncan after
him) just started throwing down easy slams.

The Celts are back to .500 at 13-13.   They play again this Sunday
evening against the Lakers.

Bill Cooper