Celts extend Pacers, BUT: Indiana 98-Boston 95

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

	Playing for the second night in a row, the Celts got off to a
good start against a superior Pacers club, that seemed to be in the
doldrums for this particular game.  The Celts had any number of
chances to honorably give up on this game, but they kept competing.
It took 6 consecutive free throws, by the not always dependable Mark
Jackson, to seal the win for Indiana.

	The Pacers were going inside to their big men (Smits and Dale
Davis) early, and in paid dividends as they jumped out to an 8-2 lead.
The Celts responded with a couple of jumpers by Wesley and 3 points
from Brent Szabo, to put up 13 unanswered points and take a 17-10
lead.  Fox picked up his second foul, and the Celts had to go to Todd
Day to guard Reggie Miller.  Miller scored the final  8 Indiana points
of the period to tie the game at 24-24.

	The Celts regained the lead early in the 2nd quarter, powered
by 7 points, from of all people, Steve Hamer (I would have guessed
that Cousy stood about as much chance of scoring 7 points in a
quarter, in this game,  as Hamer did).  Fox and Conlon, both fed Hamer
for easy hoops as the Pacers were sagging off him, and then Steve
grabbed an offensive rebound and gracefully(!), hit a turnaround and
drew a foul from Smits (and calmly drilled the free throw, to boot).
After that outburst the Celts were up 35-32.  The C's were leading
38-36, when they went on a 10-5 run (keyed by 5 points by Rick Fox) to
tale a 48-41 lead into halftime.

  	As you might, imagine, the Pacers came out, of the no doubt
unpleasant halftime, with a grim determination to put the pesky
Celtics away.  They turned up the defensive intensity and applied full
court pressure for much of the third quarter.  The Pacers outscored
the Celts, 12-2 at the start of the period, as the Indiana big men
were dominating the boards, and the Celtics were settling for the
perimeter shot.   Things got worse, and the Pacers extended their lead
to 65-59.  At this point it really looked as though, the Celts might
get blown out.    All of a sudden, though, the Celtic's outside shots,
began to drop.  Day hit a three, and Antoine Walker (who was 1-10 up
til that point) also hit a three.  Including a whirling dervish,  off
the back board, buzzer beater by Day, the Celts scored the last 12 of
the third period to take a 71-65 lead.

	Reggie began to heat up with 8 points in the early portions of
the period, as the Pacers outscored the C's 17-4, as the Celts were
still settling for the jumper, but were back to missing them.  Much to
their credit, the Celts kept battling,and with 2:08 left in the game
Walker hit another three to tie the score at 87-87.   Things looked
grim for the C's as the Pacers reeled off 5 unanswered points
(including an improbable21 foot jumper by Ferrell) to lead 92-87.
Walker reared up again, and hit another crucial three (this one was
off the dribble form 24 feet, folks) to pull the Celts within 2 with
just 24 seconds left.  The Celts had to foul Jackson, who hit both
free throws to push the Pacers lead back up to 4 (94-90: 21.0 left).
After a Marty Conlon 3 point attempt resulted in an airball, the Celts
got possession out of bounds, under their own basket.  Fox, threw the
ball off Mark Jackson head (it was more like a very high dribble),
grabbed the ball and scored a layup (the replay showed that Fox still
had a foot out of bounds,when he touched the ball).  The Celts trailed
by 2 with 5.9 seconds go.  Jackson hit 2 more free throws, (96-92, 3.8
seconds left), then Fox hit Day cutting towards the basket for a three
pointer, to get the Celts to within 1 points with 3.1 seconds left
(96-95).  The Celts quickly  fouled  Jackson, though not quickly
enough to keep the Pacers score keeper from running .7 off the clock.
Jax hit both throws, and the Pacers  lead was 98-95 with 3.1 seconds
left.  Fox tried to inbound the ball, for another clean look, but none
of the Celts could shake open (I'm not sure if the celts were out of
time outs).  Fox bounced the ball of Dale Davis and passed/fumbled the
ball to Williams, but time was  out and all Eric could do was fling
the ball in the general direction of the basket, an effort that missed
by ten feet.

	The Celtics, who shot around 48% in the first half, had
dropped to .444 by the end of their game, due to the defensive
pressure from Indiana and their own tendency to take the jump shot.
The Pacers shot .493 for the game, even though they missed a lot of
easy shots, and should have been well over 50%.   The Pacers had a big
edge going to the free throw line (40-24) and after a shaky start, hit
most of them down the stretch (27 made to the C's 15).   The teams
were even in the hustle categories as each team had 16 turnovers, and
the Celts had 1 more offensive board (9-8).   Each team had, roughly
the same number of offensive opportunities, the key difference was the
Pacers advantage in going to the free throw line.

Lineups
Celts: Wesley, Fox, Williams, Walker, Szabo
Pacers: Jackson, Miller, Ferrell, D. Davis, Smits

Players
Wesley: Had a tremendous first half with 20 points, but could only
score 2 in the second, as Jackson tightened his defense considerably
and Wesley's fatigue related 2nd half slump kicked in. =20
Shot 8-12, had 2 boards, 5 assists, 3 steals and 0 turnovers.

Walker: his line is not a pretty sight.  Despite the three crucial
long bombs, scored only 14 on the night, on 5-17 shooting, 3 rebounds
(none offensive), 5 assists and 5 turnovers.  This could be Antoine's
darkside as he looked more like Todd Day, than the hustling scrapper
we've come to know over the last half of the season.  All of his
three's looked great by the way (he was 3-5 from behind the arc).

=46ox: very mixed bag for the Celts in this game.  Early on, he made one
of the top ten moves of this career, as he posted Miller, spun around
Reggie and lost him completely, got picked up by Smits under the
basket and wiggled/adjusted his shot over Rik.  Great Play.  He kept
Reggie under control early, but picked up the two fouls.  Carr had to
keep using him though and Fox played the rest of the way, without
fouling (until the final seconds of the game when it was intentional).
Rick went to the perimeter in the second half and was 1-6 on threes in
the game.  Down the stretch, although he made some good plays, he also
twice missed a switch and left Dale Davis wide open under the basket
(at least Tommy and Couz agreed that it was his fault).  Fox scored 15
points on 7-17 shooting, 4 boards, 4 assists and 4 turnovers.

Williams: Played a nice solid conservative game.  His inside moves
weren't available, so Eric took what was there, shot 5-9, and scored
13 points in 32 minutes.  He was in some foul trouble for much of the
game, due to trying to guard the Pacers big men for much of the game.

Day: after a shaky first half, Day came through with some big hoops in
the second half.  Scored 19 points on 7-14 shooting (Day must have had
more .50% shooting nighst in the last month, than he's had previously
in his career).  Also had 7 boards and 0 turnovers in 32 minutes.  Had
some trouble following Miller through all those screens.

Conlon: Rough night for Marty, as he shot poorly (for some reason,
he's shooting 3's all of a sudden), and none of his cute stuff seemed
to be working.  scored 2 points and had 4 boards in 22 minutes.

Hamer: 7 points and 4 boards in 8 minutes.  Some of his offense was
the result of smart passing by his teammates, but there was no
question that this was far and away, the most active that Hamer has
been so far. =20

Szabo: 3 points and 2 boards in 10 minutes.  Actually didn't do too
bad a job against Smits early, though it seemed that Smits was having
a very poor game on his own.  He was trying to post the Celts so deep
that they just played in front of him.  When Jackson passed the ball
to Rik over his guarding players head, another Celt would come off the
weakside and severely bother Smits shot.  Szabo had to sit out the
second half of the game against Toronto due to a bad reaction to a
drug he was taking to reduce the inflamation on his injured elbow.

Lister: Alton's first game where he really contributed in along time,
had 5 boards in 12 minutes and gave the Celtics some size and defense.

Coaching: good job by M.L. getting the guys up for the game.  He was
too complacent in the second half, letting the C's go outside way too
much and letting them go without a timeout during the big Pacers run
early in the third for too long.   In general, the Celts handled the
Paces full court pressure pretty competently, except for  plays where
the Pacers fouled and the refs missed the call (this was not a good
night for the refs).

Opposition Player of note: Mark Jackson- totally ordinary game for
Jackson, with 12 points nd 13 assists in 43 minutes.  I just wanted to
mention him, because I think his reacquisition by the Pacers is the
outstanding example of a team's management having to eat crow in my
lifetime (I can't think of anything else that even comes close).

The C's are now 12-47.  They visit Dave Cowens and the Hornets on
Thursday night in the Hive.

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.com

=20