Attack of the Domes: Boston 97-LAC 96

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

	It may not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the
Celtics season hung in the balance in the 2nd half of this game.  It
looked as though there was a real chance that the C's would blow their
second chance at a West Coast patsy, and move the road trip from the
disappointing to the disastrous category.  The Celtics came back from
an 8 point deficit in the 3rd quarter to take a 10 point lead, which
they then squandered and barely escaped with the victory.  The C's
sported a revised look tonight, with Ron Mercer in the starting
lineup in place of Walter McCarty, and both Antoine Walker and McCarty
displaying shaven coiffures.

	The Celts got out of the gate fast, jumping out to a 10-4
lead, as the Clippers initially had serious trouble getting any kind
of decent shots.  The Clippers settled down, and began to display some
excellent interior passing among their big men, which shredded the C's
half court traps.  The Clippers came back to grab the lead at 19-18,
before Chauncey Billups got hot and pushed the C's to a 25-22 lead at
the end of the quarter.

	The Celts brought out the full court press in the 2nd quarter
(when Derrick Martin went out of the game).  With James Robinson and
Brent Barry operating together in the back court it had little effect
as the Clippers came back to tie the game at 36-36 midway  through the
quarter.  The Celtics committed a number of silly turnovers in the
last half of the 2nd quarter (twice passing the ball to a player with
a foot out of bounds) and the Clippers where able to take advantage to
take a 52-46 lead into the half.  The Celts committed 10 first half
turnovers to the Clippers 6.  John Thomas was apparently injured in
action at the tail end of the half and was unable to play in the 2nd
half (no word on how serious the injury was).

	The Celts opened the 3rd a little confused on defense as they
picked up 2 illegal defense technically (both caused by Toine) in the
early going.  The Clippers took advantage to take their game high lead
at 57-49.  They maintained most of that lead till about 4 minutes to
go in the quarter (leading 68-61).  Pitino brought in Barros for
Billups and Dana got the team going, as the Celts ended the quarter
with a 14-4 run to take a 75-72 lead.

	The Celts continued to play well in the early stages of the
4th, seemingly taking command of the game with a 12 point lead at
87-75.  The Clippers came back, as the Celts began to go perimeter.
The Clippers pulled to within 5 on a 7-0 run (87-82).  Dee Brown broke
the run with a three pointer (90-82).  Frankly this was the last
positive thing that Dee did in the game, as he nearly sunk the Cel;ts
single handed over the last 5:00 of the game.  Ron Mercer stole the
ball and went in for a jam to push the lead back up to ten (92-82).
After the Clippers hit a couple of free throws Dee tried another 3,
but missed.  The Clippers then got to within 5 at 93-88.  After a
steal, Dee tried another long shot, and hit the side of the backboard
with it, and Maurice Taylor went in on the other end for an easy jam
to pull the Clippers to within 3 (93-90).  Pitino pulled Dee from the
game, and was visibly angry with him.  After Billups missed a drive,
Robinson pulled the Clips to within 1 at 93-92.  Dee put up another
shot that didn't hit the rim (and not because it swished).  It looked
like Robinson had beaten the C's defense and was going in for a shot
to put the Clippers ahead, when DeClercq got a hand on his shot, and
then grabbed the ball and outletted it long to Billups who was fouled.
Chauncey hit both shots to put the Celts up by 3 with 1:18 to go
(95-92).  Lamond Murray closed the gap to 1 again on an offensive
putback (95-94 53.1 left). On the next play Billups made a strong
drive to the basket and got the foul call, but only hit 1 of the free
throws making the score 96-94.  On the next play, Bruce Bowen stole
the ball from Robinson (could have easily been called a foul on
Bowen).  Robinson fouled Dee, who went to the foul line and missed
both shots (31 seconds left).  A loose ball foul was called on
DeClercq (a questionable call, I thought, but the Celts got plenty of
breaks from the refs in this game).  Wright hit both free throws to
tie the game at 96 apiece.  On the next play the Billups drove to the
basket again, but missed the shot.  DeClercq missed the offensive put
back, but kept the ball alive for Toine, who was fouled.  After Toine
missed the first free throw, Bill Fitch called a time out to ice him,
but Walker hit the second to put the C's up 97-96 (18 seconds left).
The Clippers had to burn  their last two timeouts to get the ball
inbounds (Fitch called 3 timeouts without the clock moving at all).
When the Clippers finally got the ball inbounds they held the ball.
Robinson drove the ball to the basket, made a 360 spin and took a
decent shot.  The Clippers got the offensive rebound, but Robinson had
waited so long to start his move that they had no chance to take a
second shot.  The Celts pulled out the win 97-96.

	After the poor tunrover situation in the first half the Celts
were able to come back and reverse the situation in the second with a
14-7 advantage.  They also tightened up their interior defense closing
off all those interior passing lanes the Clippers exploited in the
first half.  As a result they were able to hold the Clippers to 12-31
shooting in the second half.  It was a good thing as the Clippers had
a nice advantage in free throws attempted at 42-27 (they hit 13 more).
The Celts ended the game shooting .434 to the Clippers .405, and the
C's were able to hit 6-12 on threes.  The Celts only had 10 assists in
the game, not so much because they didn't pass the ball well: they
just kept blowing easy shots.

Lineups:
Celts: Billups, Brown, Mercer, Walker, DeClercq
Clippers: Martin, Piatkowski, Murray, Rogers, Wright

Players:
Billups: a good effort from Chauncey.  I thought he did a nice job of
driving and distributing the ball, although he only had 2 assists (a
lot of his passes seemed to result in easy shots that the Celts just
missed).  He is showing some improvement in running the fast break.
Billups scored 21 on 7-12 shooting (he was 3-4 on threes) and had 6
boards in 32 minutes.

Walker: better night for Toine without the hair (maybe he was in a
penitential mood after the last couple of games).  He hit 9-21 and
10-12 from the line for 28 points, had 13 boards and 4 turnovers.

Mercer: didn't have the outside shot going tonight, and Lamond Murray
was definitely taking advantage of Ron in the low post early in the
game.  Ron ended up with 11 points (5-14) and 3 steals  in 29 minutes.

Brown: Up until the last 5 minutes of the game, was playing pretty
well, but he nearly sunk the Celts single handed at the end.  Finished
with 12 points on 4-11 shooting and 2 steals.

DeClercq: Stretched 5 fouls out over 29 minutes tonight, and he ended
up with 5 points and 10 boards.  Made any number of nice plays that
didn't show up in the stats that helped the cause mightily.

Knight: If the Celts had lost the game, he would have been back up
goat of the game to Dee.  He missed 3 extremely easy shots in the
first half and seemed to lose all his confidence after that. he scored
1 point and  had 2 boards in 18 minutes.  Pity is, he actually had
some nice moments on defense.

McCarty: got his head shaved along with Toine, but not much else
rubbed off.  He scored 4 points in 10 minutes.

Bowen: made some nice defensive plays as Pitino was shuttling him in
and out with Mercer at the end of the game.  He only scored 2 as he
continues to try the outside shot, instead of going to his slashing
game (at Pitino's urging).

Dana: came off the bench and hit for 11 points on 5-8 shooting.  He
helped out a lot in the run at the end of the 3rd that got the Celts
back into the game.  I think that teams have scouted Dana's recent
tendency to drive to the right.  A couple of times, he went left of a
screen and got free for a jumper.  He doesn't seem comfortable trying
to penetrate, going to his left though, so he's strictly a shooter
when he does that.

Minor: Played 9 minutes. not oto effectively.   Still, as long as the
C's aren't going to press full court he's probably a more useful
player than McCarty.

Thomas: was only in the game for 3 minutes before he injured himself.
Tommy said it was a sprained achilles tendon.

Edney: you know.

Coaching: Rick is using the full court press less and less as the
season goes on.  So the pace of the games is dropping (both quarter in
the last half were under 45 possessions).  In fact, at this point the
Celts are more effective when the tempo is slow than when it's fast (I
think because the Celts will play tough defense for the whole 24
second clock,unlike most teams).  The Clippers best quarter tonight
(the second) was also the fastest paced.

Opposition Players of Note: He's no secret, but I thought that I'd
mention that Maurice Taylor played a pretty impressive game.  He
scored 17 points and pulled down 10 boards in 27 minutes.  He does a
really good job of mixing up his offensive game, shooting from the
outside, penetrating, posting or going to the offensive glass as the
situation demands.

The Celts play this Sunday night against Golden State.

Bill Cooper