Hawks Outlast Celts: Atlanta 110-Boston 105

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

	A wild, streaky game.  Basically, the Hawk's starters
outplayed the Celt's starters by a substantial margin, while the
Celt's bench dominated the Hawk's bench.  This resulted in a game with
dramatic ebb and flow.  Kenny Anderson seems to be troubled by his
knee more and more as each game goes by.
 
	The Hawks started off the game playing extraordinary
basketball.  They shot the ball well, controlled the tempo., and
smothered the C's in the half-court.  They took leads at 8-2, 15-4,
and 28-13.  Pitino went to mass substitutions to modest effect.  As
the quarter wore on, and as it appeared that the Hawks would dominate
the game, Atlanta's control of the tempo began to slip.  Wilkens made
his first substitution at the 2:00 mark of the quarter (Recassner for
Blaylock).  With Mookie out of the game, the Celts immediately began
to realize benefits from the press.  They outscored the Hawks 8-3 over
the remainder of the quarter to cut the lead to 10 at 33-23.  Just
before the end of the quarter, Pitino got a T for complaining about
the NBA rule that allows Steve Smith to run without dribbling the
ball.

	The Hawks were clearly wilting under the fierce Celtics
defensive pressure (almost all of the Celts in on the run were subs,
except for DeClercq who was playing power forward).  The Celts
outscored the Hawks 11-2 to start the quarter, with major
contributions from McCarty and Barros on offense and Bruce Bowen on
defense.  The momentum continued after Pitino went back to the
starters and the Celts forged ahead to take a 6 point lead at 47-41.
The Celts were still leading by 6 at 49-43, when Wilkens put Mutumbo
back in the game.  With Dikembe in the lineup, the pace of the game
began to slow and the Hawks took better care of the ball.  Atlanta
outscored the Celts 14-2 over the remainder of the quarter, to take a
57-51 lead into the half.

	Pitino elected to start Bowen in the 2nf half, in hopes of
injecting some defensive energy into his starting group.  In didn't
work though as the Hawks started of the quarter with a 14-2 run
(scoring on their first 6 possessions) to push the lead up to a game
high 71-53.  Kenny Anderson hit a 3 to cut the lead to 15, when Pitino
brought in 4 new players (4:00 into the period), replacing all his 2nd
half starters except for Bowen.  This unit quickly cut the lead to 8
at 75-67.   The Hawks stabilized (Wilkens left Mookie and Mutumbo in
the entire quarter) and the pushed their lead back up to 10 at 82-72.
Pitino went back to the starting group, and Anderson was able to
supply some offensive energy, as the Celts finished the quarter with a
6-0 run to cut the hawks lead to 87-82.

	The Celts hit a long offensive dry spell at the start of the
4th and fell behind again by 9 (93-84: 8:30).  Pitino started
shuttling in players at random, trying to find a combination that
would work, but the Hawks held on defense.   As the quarter wore on
the pace of the game began to slip dramatically.  The Celts fell
behind by 10 (101-91 4:00 to go), when Kenny Anderson started driving
to the basket with determination.   He scored 9 of the Celtics final
14 points, but it just wasn't enough as the C's fell 110-105.

	One of the few times this season, where the C's opposition had
more total shots at the basket then the Celts did.  The Hawks took 72
fga and 39 fta, to the Celts  79 fga and 20 fta.  Both teams shot the
ball quite well with the Hawks at .500 and the C's at .494.  The C's
were 19-20 from the free throw line and 8-12 on threes (but the Hawks
were 32-39 and 6-10 themselves).  The big numbers were that while the
Celts caused 23 Hawk's turnovers (not bad against a team with Mookie
Blaylock on it), the Celts coughed up the ball 19 times themselves.
And the Hawks outrebounded the Celts, especially hurting them with an
edge of 15-11 on the offensive boards.

Lineups:
Celts: Anderson, Mercer, Minor, Walker, Declercq
Hawks: Blaylock, Smith, Corbin, Henderson, Mutumbo

Players:
Anderson: Undoubtedly Kenny's least effective performance since coming
to the C's.  He scored 19 (most in that last rush), had 5 assists, a
steal and 5 turnovers.  He was trying to pace himself, and when he
went full speed at the end, his knee was clearly bothering him. I
would be surprised if he doesn't miss any games before the end of the
season.

Walker: Nice shooting by Toine, but the rest of his game was pretty
lousy.  He shot 10-18 (2-2 on threes) and scored 24 points in 35
minutes.  He collected 6 boards (all defensive), 0 assists, 0 steals
and 4 turnovers.  He made several wild passes to inflate that turnover
number.  He just didn't play with a lot of energy. especially on the
defensive end,as a Henderson and Laettner seemed to collect a lot of
loose balls in the game.  Walker got out of control at the end of the
game, shoving Laettner, taunting Henderson, and collecting a technical
with about 3:00 to go.

McCarty: had one of his best shooting nights of the season, hitting on
7-12 (probably 5 of those were 18'+ jumpers) and was a force,
especially during the Celts dramatic run in the first half.  Excellent
energy.

Bowen: Played 37 minutes tonight, mostly because any time someone else
guarded Steve Smith, he started hitting every shot he put up.  Bowen
scored 16 on 5-12 shooting and had 5 steals.  Tremendous effort.

Minor: Because of Bowen and McCarty's play he only got 11 minutes in
the game.  Didn't score and had 1 boards and 1 assist.  Pitino tried
him on Smith, but Greg just couldn't handle him.

Mercer: Ineffective night for Ron as well.  He only attempted 7 shots
in 23 minutes (scored 6), though he did gather 5 assists (mostly the
kind where he passed the ball to someone who shot a 3, though).
Pitino was reluctant to give him the assignment of guarding Smith.

DeClercq: Seems to be developing a problem catching the ball.  He
muffed another pass for an easy lay-up and had some problems pulling
down the ball on the defensive board.  He did a fine job on the
offensive board (6 out of the Celt total of 11) and scored 8 in 26
minutes (also had 2 blocks).  He did a good job of making it hard to
get the ball into Mutumbo, although once it got into Dikembe he was
dead meat (the Celts didn't double down to help Andrew once the whole
night).

Dana: was effective in the first half, but not in the second.  he
scored 9 and had 6 assists in 17 minutes, although most of those
assists came on McCarty bombs.  In the second half he had to play
against Mookie and had a hard time getting his shot off.

Knight: Pitino put Travis in the game early, I think in hopes that he
would hit the outside shot and pull Mutumbo out from under the basket.
Travis couldn't get the jumper to go down and hit just 1-5.  He did
gather 5 boards in his 21 minutes (DQ and Travis got 9 of the C's
11offensive boards, McCarty was the only non-center to get one in the
game).

Pervis: Played for 9 minutes and was relatively effective.  2 points
and 2 boards.  If he gets healthy I think we'll see more and more of
DeClercq at the PF position.

Jones, Edney: DNP

Coaching: I thought that Lenny had his players better prepared to play
this game, than Rick did the Celts.  Although it wasn't easy (Blaylock
played 46 minutes in this game), the Hawks understood that to win this
game they had to keep the Celts in half court as much as possible and
keep the C's from having a big advantage in shot's taken.  The Celts,
especially the first unit, really weren't ready to play the game.
Obviously, Rick is gong to have to make a decision on Anderson.  It
doesn little good to have Anderson out there if he feels that he can
only play at half speed for most of the game.

The C's are now 29-33.  They host the Whiz this Friday.

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.com