Warriors Wallop Celts : Golden State 112- Boston 100

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

       	With the Celts employing M.L. Carr's newly modified starting
lineup the C's were able to get their largest contribution off the
bench in a long time as Todd Day and Marty Conlon led the bench to 50
point in scoring.  However the usual Celtic mainstays (Fox, Wesley and
Walker) had very flat games and the ball hawking Warriors were able to
cause 27 Celtic's turnovers. =20
     	Early in the first quarter this game pretty much looked like
the high turnover-no defense game that it in fact became.    The Celts
opened the quarter by going into the low post (Szabo twice!)
unsuccessfully three times in a row.    But after Antoine Walker hit
his second three of the period the score was tied at 10-10.    With
Golden State playing pressure defense the C's began to turn the ball
over and the Warriors got an 9-0 run going to take a 21-12 lead.  the
Celts came back with a 6-0 run of their own, which the Warriors
quickly matched (26-19).  The C's managed to close the gap a little by
the end of the quarter with the score at 30-26.  The Celtics committed
9 turnovers in the period.
     Behind strong play by Marty Conlon and Todd Day, the C's got back
into the game.  Marty and Day combined for 18 of the celts first 24
points of the period, as the Celts took a 50-44 lead (outscoring G.S.
24-14).    The Warrior's and Celtic's first strings came back into the
game and as was the case throughout the contest G.S. dominated.  Over
about 2:00 the Warriors outscored the C's 10-0 to take a 3 point lead
(54-51).  The half ended with the Warriors on top 58-54.
     	The Celts scored the first 2 baskets of the second half to tie
the score at 58 apiece.  TheWwarriors responded with a long 23-8 run
during which Latrell Sprewell actually brought a can of gasoline and a
lighter out onto the court and merrily toasted Rick Fox.  Sprewell
scored 14 points over the first 6:00 minutes of the quarter.  With the
score at 83-68, the Celts scored the last 9 points of the period to
pull to within 6 points at the end of the 3rd period 83-77.
     	Todd Day opened the 4th with a three pointer to pull the C's
to within 3 at 83-80. With the score at 89-85, though, the Warriors
got another long 16-4 run together, to take control of the game.
Sprewell (who ended the game with 41 points) and Coles were able to
penetrate the Celts soft defense any time they wanted.  The Warriors
lead eventually got up to 23 at 112-90 (both teams starters were long
gone at this time).  Todd Day (who honestly deserved it) engaged in a
little gratuitous stat sheet stuffing with two treys in the last
minute of the game, to make the final 112-100 Warriors.
     	As has been the case several times on this road trip, the
Celts had their usual disadvantage in field goal percentage (.472 to
.550), but also lost the hustle categories, as they tied the Warriors
in offensive rebounds (11-11) and got 11 steals compared to the
Warriors 20.   The Celts only saving grace was a hot .529 shooting
form the three point line.

Lineups- Celts- Wesley, Fox, Walker, Williams, Szabo
                Warriors- Coles, Sprewell, Mullins, Smith, Spencer

Players- Wesley- Is just about played out.  He had a good three minute
period in the second quarter, when Mark Price was playing him, but for
the rest of the game (playing against Bimbo Coles) he looked like a 40
year old man out there.  Scored 11 points on 4-7 shooting, had 3
boards, 5 assists, 4 steals and 4 turnovers.  Coles played Wesley very
tough, and Wesley was all too willing to give up the ball, which put
added pressure on the rest of the Celtic's ball handlers.

=46ox- 3rd stupendously awful game in the last 4 outings.   He shot 1-8
from the field,  scored 5 points, 3 boards 2 assists and 2 turnovers
in 26 minutes.  Also had 5 personals.  He couldn't even grab Sprewells
jersey as Latrell blew by him (which is no disgrace, not many 3's in
the league could check him either).

Walker- scored 6 points on two threes in the first 4 minutes of the
game, and largely fell silent after that.   Scored 14 points on 4-13
shooting, 12 boards and 4 turnovers.  The Warriors play a collapsing
inside defense, and it seemed to bother Walker a lot.  He tried some,
to take Joe Smith outside and drive on him, but usually ended up
turning over the ball when he did so.

Williams- Probably had the Celts only favorable matchup versus Mullins
and didn't do too bad a job with 19 points off 6-13 shooting, 5
assists and 3 steals.  Typically Mullins was very clever in playing
Eric and managed to steal the ball from him several times.  E.W.. led
the C's in turnovers with 5.

Day- Todd's second strong game in a row coming off the bench.  He
scored 27 points, and had 4 boards, 5 assists and 3 turnovers in 33
minutes.  He shot 9-14, including 5-8 from behind the arc.  Naturally,
he did a far better job on Sprewell than Fox did Sprewell and Day are
mirror images of each other physically).

Conlon- Marty had a very good shooting game at 7-8 for 17 points in 25
minutes.  Had a weaker floor game than usual, with just 2 boards and 0
assists.  I thought that a good way to test the Warrior's defense
might be to put Marty at the top of the key and see if some of the
Celts could cut behind the Warriors defense, but the C's never tried
it.

Szabo- got (I think) a career high in minutes with 19 minutes.  Played
with a lot of hustle and managed 2 points, 6 boards, 1 assists, 2
assists and 3 turnovers.   Szabo's big weakness as a player seems to
be that he's unaccustomed to playing against guys his own size.
Several times he got good opportunities to score and was outmuscled by
Spencer and DeClerq.  He needs to spend the summer playing against
some real warriors, not working on his 3 point shot.

Hawkins- Played 14 minutes, mostly against Price.  Mark led him on a
merry chase through a bunch of picks, but didn't actually do too much
damage.   Hawkins only scored 4 points , but did manage 8 assists
(mostly because he was on the floor when Marty and Todd were so hot
from the outside).  He got one assists for a pass he threw while flat
on his back to Conlon.  Marty got the ball 20 feet form the basket and
calmly drove it through the hoop.

Lister- fouled out in just 10 minutes.   On his last play of the game,
one of the Warriors threw up an air ball, and Lister, anticipating
that the ball would come off the backboards lost his balance and fell
into Mullins.  Chris was smiling and gave Alton  a pat on the back as
he left the game.

Hamer- Played for 7 minutes and scored 2 points.  for the first time
he did something that made me take notice as he got a pass, on a
medium break, in an awkward position, wrenched his body around and
jackknifed the ball into the basket.  Wasn't bad.

Coaching- I'm not sure what M.L. is thinking with this new lineup.
=46or some reason he seemed very reluctant to put Todd on the floor with
the normal 4 starters.  He seems to genuinely want to use Day as a
backup.  When the Celts tried to make their final push in the middle
of the 4th, he actually took Day out of the game and put Szabo back in
so he actually had the  starting 5.   Even though I think it was
pretty plain that Day was a much better match for Sprewell than Fox.
It seemed that the Celt's coaching staff is as weary as the team.

Opposition Players of Note- Bimbo Coles- You might hear about Sprewell
and Mullins play (Mullins had a triple double and 7 steals), but I
though that Bimbo was the key to the Warriors dominance of the Celtics
starters.  At the beginning of the game he put fierce pressure on
Wesley, and pretty much took David out of the game mentally.  Coles
(who started because B.J. Armstrong missed the first game of his
career, breaking a streak of over 500 games) scored 14 points. had 5
boards, 6 assist and 4 steals, but this far understates his importance
to the Warriors.  Of course Bimbo has played about 900 minutes this
year compared to Wesley's 2100.=20

This game makes the Celts record 11-41.  They play again tonight in
Utah.=20

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.com

P.S. Chris Mullins played his 757th game with the Warriors, tying Nate
Thurmond's mark.    Ironically, if has been widely reported, he's
traded, it will also be his last game with them.