Pacers Nip Celtics: Indiana 95-Boston 88

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

	The Celts played their 3rd solid game in a row against tough
competition.  After surrendering a 17 point lead and falling behind by
as many as 8 points they rallied to take a 2 points lead with 5:30 to
go in the game.  The Pacers were too tough down the stretch, and
outscored the Celts 11-2 to take command of the game.  Dee Brown
rejoined the team for tonights game.

	Early on, the Celts broke from their recent pattern of
eschewing the jump shot in the opening quarter.  They sent up a
barrage of 3's, and hit them.  Billups hit 3 and McCarty added one as
the Celts built an 18-13 lead (the Pacers missed a bunch of makeable
shot early in the game).  Travis Knight hit a pair of free throws to
give the Celts a 22-14 lead at the end of the quarter.

	The Celts were able to take advantage of the Pacer's reserves,
as they built a 30-14 lead.  Slowly the Pacers began to increase the
defensive pressure and to hit some of their shots.    They got to
within 11 at 37-26.  At this point L.B. put most of his starters back
into the game, but they were just as flat as they had been in the 1st
period.  The Celts went on a quick 6-0 run to take their largest lead
of the game (43-26).  It looked as though the C's might hold the
Pacers under 30 points for the half.  but the Pacers improved their
offensive execution and got to the free throw line.  Meanwhile they
held the Celts to just 1 point over the last 3 minutes of the half,
and saw their lead cut to 10 (44-34) at the close of the half.

	Unsurprisingly, the Pacers came out with a vengeance at the
start of the 2nd half, quickly cutting the Celts lead to 4 points at
52-48.  The Celts got a little offense from Walker and Billups to slow
the Pacers advance, but Indiana mounted another 8-0 rush to take the
lead for the first time, since early in the first quarter 60-57.  The
Pacers closed out the quarter with a 68-63 lead.  The 3rd period was
played at the Pacers preferred, slow plodding tempo, which favored
their strong half court execution.

	The Celts fell behind by 8 early in the 4th at 75-67.  They
also got a potential break when Antonio Davis was slightly injured and
had to leave the game, and Dale Davis picked up his 5th foul (McKey
had already demonstrated that he couldn't guard Toine).  The Celts
really did not try to take advantage of the situation and try to get
Dale Davis out of the game.  The did get some very energetic play from
Andrew DeClercq, that allowed them to get the lead back momentarily at
79-77.  Reggie Miller got the lead back for the Pacers on the next
play as the Celts left him totally unguarded on the weak side of the
defense.  Smits looked over the top of the Celts trap, hit Miller, who
responded with a 3 to give the Pacers the lead for good.  The veteran
Pacers outexecuted the C's down the stretch, and hit their free throws
well enough to win the game 95-88.

	Both team shot horribly from the field in the first half (well
under 40%).  In the second half the Pacers got better, while the Celts
actually got worse.  For the game the Pacers shot .443 and the Celts
shot .353.  Both team were very careful with the ball (Pacers 13 T/Os
while the C's had just 10), but the Celts had a big advantage on the
offensive boards 17-9.  That allowed the Celts to take 15 more shots,
which nearly resulted in an equal number of basket being made by each
team (C's 30, P's 31).  The Pacers hit better from the free throw line
(29-35/23-31 the number of free throws taken was absolutely even up
until the last couple of seconds of the game when the Celts gave up a
couple of intentional fouls).  

Lineups:
Celts: Billups, Mercer, McCarty, Walker, DeClercq
Pacers: Jackson, Miller, Mullin, D. Davis, Smits

Players:
Walker: tough shooting night at 8-25.  Toine worked extremely hard and
pulled down 16 boards (8 of them offensive, I think that's a season
high), but he had a very hard time converting anything.  The larger
Pacers just stood between him and the basket and made Toine put the
ball up over them.  Walker generally couldn't get the ball to go in,
and was unwilling to take the ball a few feet further out on the court
and try from there.  Toine has got to get his medium range game (12-18
feet) going so that he doesn't have to keep taking the ball in low
against much bigger and stronger players.  He played for 41 minutes
and had 1 assist and 3 turnovers.

Billups: After an early fast start with 3 3's in the first 8 minutes
of the game he ended with 14 points (5-10), 4 assists, 1 steal and 1
turnover.  In general the Pacers did a good job of keeping him from
penetrating, for good or bad.

Mercer: Hit a few shots early, but went cold for the rest of the game.
Shot 5-17 and seemed to have a tough time finding Miller who scored 32
on 9-15 shooting.  Continues to try shots with a great degree of
difficulty.

McCarty: is increasingly becoming an irrelevant footnote to the Celts
efforts.  He shot 1-5, had 4 boards and 2 assists in 22 minutes.  With
the Celts going away from the full court press, Walter's value to the
team is falling fast.

DeClercq: The Celts centers combined for 23 points in the game,
compared to 19 from Smits and A. Davis.  DQ had a very nice stint in
the 4th quarter, racking up a block, a couple of offensive boards and
6 points in about 2 minutes.  He ended the game with 9 points, 4
boards and 2 blocks in 17 minutes.

Barros: Scored 8 points and had 3 assists (over 20% of the Celts total
for the game) in 16 minutes.  Only took 3 shots (hit 1) but penetrated
consistently and was rewarded with 3 trips to the line.  A well as
Billups is shooting the ball, and as well as Dana is driving and
dishing, I can't understand why Rick won't play them together (he
plays Dana and Dee together all the time, so it can't be defensive
concerns).

Knight: played very aggressively in the first half, and was rewarded
with 31 minutes (I suspect that Pitino is trying to get Travis out of
his funk).  Travis scored 10 points and had 5 boards.

Dee: Got 16 minutes, and shot an exasperating 1-8.  didn't go to the
basket once that I can recall.

Thomas: Just got into the for 4 minutes in the first half.  Didn't
play in the second.

Minor: Got ten minutes but didn't accomplish anything.

Coaching:  Indiana shot a very leisurely 70 shot tonight (the Celts
tried 85, mostly because they kept missing and then retrieving their
misses and trying again).  Pitino has a real dilemma: he's going away
from the full court press, which is allowing the opposition to play a
slower pace on offense, and he's trying to get the Celts to go to the
basket more on offense, which takes more time.  All of this adds up to
much more slowly paced games, which deprives Rick of his deep bench.
It doesn't really do any good to go 11 deep (you can hardly even count
Edney as being on the roster) if the opposition can play it's starters
as long as they want to.

The Celts are now 18-23.  They host the Knicks this Monday evening (I
checked this time :-).

Bill C.
wfcooper@tiac.com