Heat Bake Celts: Miami 121-Boston 95

[bcooper@tiac.net (Bill Cooper)]

	This game was pretty much a massacre, as the Celts kept the
Heat margin of victory to 26, only by outscoring the Heat deep bench
32-19 in the 4th quarter.  And Pitino made his starters play much of
the 4th, even though the game was hopelessly out of reach.  Basically
this game was a defensive letdown by the Celts, and a shooting
exhibition by the Heat.

	Early on, though, the C's played reasonably well, especially
Walker, who had a strong 1st quarter.  The Celts were leading 22-20
with about 5:00 to go in the quarter.  All of a sudden the offense,
which had been flowing pretty freely for both teams, shut down on the
Celtic's part.  Meanwhile Vashon Lenard, went crazy for Miami, hitting
everything he put up.  The Heat ended the quarter, with an 18-2 run,
to take a 38-24 lead.  Lenard had 13 in the 1st quarter.  And Marty
Conlon appeared in a backup role for the Heat.

	The Heat continued to score too easily in the second quarter.
After the Celts narrowed the lead to 11 early in the period, The Heat
went on another run, 22-5 this time to push the lead up to 26 (64-38).
Dan Majerle was the main culprit this time, with his own avalanche of
three pointers.  The Heat slacked off a bit, at the end of the
quarter, and the Celt's were able to cut the margin to 19, with a
lineup that employed Walker, Declercq and Knight on the front line.

	I guess that Riley was mad that the Heat went into halftime
with less than a 20 point lead, because the Heat came out at full
speed to start the second half.   They had already outscored the C's
4-0, when the Heat threw a long down court pass to Alonzo Mourning.
DeClercq tried to intercept the pass, but instead collided with
Mourning (you could hear the crash up here  in Connecticut).  Both
players were knocked to the floor, and were unable to get up for a
minute or so.  There was an indentation on Zo's left cheek, and it was
learned later in the game, that he would receive surgery today to
repair the damage.  The absence of Mourning didn't slow down the Heat
a bit, as they outscored the Celts 25-5 over the first 10 minutes of
the quarter to push their lead up to 39 (94-55).  The Heat had
outscored the C's 73-33 since about midway through the first quarter.
Riley pulled his troops at this point, but they held the score even
for a few moments and the quarter ended with the Heat up 102-63.  You
could tell Pitino had given up on the contest, as he put Dante into
the game.

	The 4th quarter was total garbage time.  The only interesting
thing was that Pitino kept his starters in for part of the quarter
(for instance he pulled Tyus Edney in favor of Dana Barros part way
through the quarter).  The Celts outscored the Heat subs 32-19 in the
4th quarter, making the final 32-19.

	A lot of the stats in this game are colored by the performance
of the Heat subs in the last 15 minutes of the game.  For instance,
the Heat only shot  .592 for the game, it was probably closer to .700
at the end of the third.  And the Heat turned the ball over 18 times,
but nearly half of those were in the 4th also.  Still, even with that
handicap, Miami outshot the Celts .592-.456, and hit 11-19 on threes.
The C's had a slight (and artificial) lead in the hustle categories
with an 11-8 lead in offensive boards and a 18-16 margin in turnovers
caused.

Lineups:
Celts: Barros, Mercer, McCarty, Walker, DeClercq
Heat: Hardaway, Lenard, Majerle, Strickland, Mourning

Players: 
Walker: played well early, and several times made Mark Strickland look
foolish.  Had 19 points (7-14) ,5 boards and 5 turnovers in a rare 31
minute performance.

Mercer: Also had some good moments offensively, as he shot 7-13,
scored 16 points and had 3 assists.  He pretty much gave Lenard a free
pass on defense though (Vashon scored 26 points in 27 minutes of
playing time).

Barros: Scored quite a bit in the 4th quarter, which pretty much
disguises a weak game through the first 3.  He scored 15 (5-11), and
had 4 assists in 34 minutes.

McCarty: returned to form, with a 1-5 shooting performance.  He did
have 4 boards to go with his 2 points in 24 minutes.  

DeClercq: seemed a bit intimidated at times by Mourning.  Andrew had a
very active game, offensively, by his standards, attempting 7 free
throws and 9 shots.  He scored 12 points, had 7 boards and 2 steals.
And, of course the one big hit (he might be getting calls from some
NFL teams tomorrow).

Knight: actually played reasonably well.  He shot 3-5, had 9 points,
but just 1 board in 22 minutes.  Seems to be getting a little more
aggressive.

Minor: Poor shooting, but a nice floor game, as Greg had 3 points, 3
boards, 5 assists (a career high?), and 2 steals.

Edney: continues to display his improving jumper.  He had 11 points,
but just 1 assist in 14 minutes.  He was percolating in the 4th, and I
was very surprised when Pitino pulled him form the game.

Hanson: was much more active tonight than in his first game.  He
scored 4 points, and had 3 boards, to go along with 4 fouls in 9
minutes.  Probably a better player than Nate Driggers, and had much
more size.

Tabak.  Only got garbage time, but did get 7 boards and 2 blocks to go
with his 11 points.

Dante: Cousy, who hadn't seem Jones play until last night, but
apparently has been hearing about Dante's marvelous(?) offensive game
form Tommy, nearly fell out of his chair, when he saw Dante play.
Jones was 1-5 in just 6 minutes (he did have one nice jam).  Cous just
commented that while Jones clearly had a wonderful offensive game
(rather sarcastically) there was more to the NBA game than just
shooting the ball every time you touched it.

Coaching: I'm sure that Pitino was disappointed in the offensive
effort in this game.  While the Celts offensive performance continues
to improve (how many game did they lose this year that they would have
won easily if they shot .456), the defensive pressure seems to be
lessening every game.  The Celts were just not running out to the
perimeter and contesting the outside shots, like they were earlier in
the season.  And I don't think that the lack of Kenny Anderson has
much to do with that (though the lack of Bruce Bowen certainly does).

Opposition Ex-Celtics of Note: Marty just got signed to a ten day. He
had been playing in Italy this year.  Other than that it was the same
old Marty, as he scored 9 points, had 3 boards and nd 2 assists in 20
minutes.  And made the C's defense look foolish several times.  I
don't see how Marty could have fitted in with the Celts this year, but
it's mice to see him in the league again.

The Celts are now 31-41.  They play again tonight in Orlando.

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.com