Clets put on Mad Rush: San Antoinio 103- Boston 94

[Bill Cooper <wfcooper@tiac.net>]

	The Celts deserve and A for effort, and an H for heart, and
pretty much every other letter in the alphabet except a C for
competence.  They were down by 18 with 5:00 to go, Walker had been
thrown out of the game for excessive verbiage, Griffin was out of the
game with an injured knee, and all of the Spurs starters were on the
bench planning their post game meal:  The stub of the Celts team
mounted the basketball version of the Charge of the Light Brigade,
outscoring the Spurs 19-8 to cut the lead to 7 with 1:13.  Finally
Popovich woke up and got some of his starters, including Duncan into
the game, and the Spurs were able to hold off the Celts charge and
take away the 103-94 win.

	The Celts and Tony Battie got off to a very quick start.  The
C's were trying to utilize some of the lessons they learned in their
recent game against the Knicks, and they were looking for Battie, when
the Spur's big men came over to block the ball.  Battie scored 8 of
the Celts first 10.  But the Spurs took advantage of some defensive
lapses against Johnson and Duncan to take a 16-10 lead.  With 7:00 to
Battie committed his second foul, and left the game (not to return in
the first half).  Walker also picked up his second early, but Pitino
chose to gamble and leave him in the game.  The Spurs got their fist
quarter lead up as high as 9 at 23-14.  The Celts, with mostly bench
players on the floor ended the quarter with an 8-1 run (some very nice
ball movement) to pull to within 2 (24-22) at the end of the quarter.

	The Celts bench continued to play well at the start of the
2nd.  About 4:00 into the quarter, Waltuh hit his second 3 of the game
to put the Celts up by 1 at 31-30.  Popovich called timeout, and got
his players back in the game a bit more.  The Spurs increased their
intensity and pushed out to a 5 point lead at 42-37 (mostly starters
in at this point).  The Celts fought back (they were actually playing
McCarty at center for a stretch).  The C's ran out of steam at the end
of the period, though, as the Spurs scored the last 8 points in the
period to take a 52-42 lead into the half.  Despite trailing the Celts
played a strong half.  If not for defensive breakdowns (not that those
don't count), they could have been in the lead.

	Maybe the Celts were demoralized by that Spur run at the end
of the half.  Whatever the reason they came out rather flat at the
start of the second half.  The Spurs pushed the lead up to 19 at
68-19.  It looked for a moment as though the Celts might have another
injury on their hands when Kenny Anderson drove to the basket, and
made a nice feed to Battie, who attempted a 2 handed stuff.  Battie
lost his balance and fell on Anderson's leg (Kenny went down to the
floor after he made the pass).  Anderson was in definite pain, and for
a moment, vision of a lost season were flashing through my mind.
Kenny got up though, and returned to the bench:  Later he made it back
into the game.  Meanwhile, though things continued to go the Spur's
way.  The had gotten the lead up to 74-53, when Pitino went to the
bench.  The Celts closed out the third with a 7-2 run to cut the lead
to 15, 76-61.

	The Celts couldn't keep that momentum going in the 4th though,
and they quickly fell behind again 82-63.  For some unknown reason,
Walker and Malik Rose started jawing at each other.  They were each
called a double technical foul with 9:00 to go.  With about 5:30 to go
in the game, after Rose had fouled Toine, the yap level between the
two got so bad, that they were both tossed.  Meanwhile Griffin had
injured his right knee (they showed a shot of LaCerte putting a very
big wrap on it).  Battie began to get the C's back in the game with
some free throws, but with 4:30 to go he fouled out.  Barros and
McCarty hit some shots, to keep the pressure on, and the Celts got
closer and closer.  McCarty put back an errant Barros shot, and a
moment later Dana drove to the basket successfully, and the Celts had
the lead down to 9 with 1:45 to go.  After a great steal by Cheaney, a
Barros 3, and another Barros drive, the Celts were trailing by just 7
with 1:13 to go.  Duncan finally came back into the game, and Cheaney
fouled him, sending Tim to the line, and sending Cal out of the game
with his 6th.  Even then the Celts kept pushing, and after another
McCarty 3, they were actually with 6 at 100-94, but with just 20
seconds to go.  Finally Dana missed a jumper, the Spurs hit some free
throws, and it was all over with the score being 103-94.

	The Spurs won this game with a mind boggling 54-22 advantage
in free throws taken (admittedly about 8 of those were the result of
intentional fouls late in the game).  The Celts committed just 12
turnovers, while the Spurs had 20, but the extra 8 shots couldn't
really make a dent in the free throw difference.  The Celts were 6-16
on threes, while the Spurs were only 3-11.

Lineups:
Celts: Anderson, Griffin, Williams, Walker, Battie
Spurs: Johnson, Ellie, Brown, Duncan, Robinson

Players:
Battie: 16 points and 3 (?) boards in 22 minutes.  The most aggressive
offensive game I have ever seen from Tony.  He was trying 20 foot
jumpers, and wild turn arounds.  Not that he made any of them.  But
his teammates got him enough good normal shots for him to shoot 5-9,
plus he had nearly half of the Celtic free throw attempts.  He just
kept committing dumb fouls on defense.  Really hurt the team that way.

Griffin: continues to push his offense, but maybe was a little smarter
than in the last game.  He drove the ball at the basket, and had
pretty good success despite the presence of the shotblockers.  He had
had a nice dribble/jump shot combination, albeit he was being defended
by Avery Johnson at the time.  Ended up with 13 points (6-12), 6
boards, 5 assists and 2 steals in 31 minutes.  He apparently hurt his
knee sometime in the 3rd period.  He tried to get back into the game
in the 4th, but just the knee just would support him. No word on the
chances of him playing in Houston.

Williams: got 39 minutes tonight (I bet it's been a long time since he
got those kinds of minutes.  He played a good floor game with 4
assists , 3 steals and took a couple of very hard charges.  But he
couldn't get the ball to go in the hole (3-14) and had just 3 boards.
Fouled out just before the end of the game.

Walker: was as far out of this game tonight as he was in the game on
Wednesday.  He was rushing his shots, and settling for senseless 3's
early in the shot clock.  He did make a game effort on defense against
Robinson, but shot just 2-13.  After the really good job of selecting
and executing shots against the Jazz his effort in that regard was
dissapointing.  don't know what was going on with Rose.

Anderson: he did okay with 10 points and 5 assists in 26 minutes.  he
did get undressed a couple of time by Johnson.

Barros: Very aggresive shooting the ball.  At one point he got Duncan
to lean back a bit, and then pulled up and shot the ball over him (it
didn't go in but ...).  Dana was 7-12, had 5 boards, 2 assists and 2
steals in 23 minutes.  Most of those points came in what a normal team
would have regarded as garbage time.

McCarty: Another decent shooting night for Waltuh (2 this month, some
kind of personal best).  He was 3-6 on threes and 7-13 overall.  15
points in 23 minutes.

Ellison: with the Battie foul trouble, he got 21 minutes.  he did the
big body thing on defense, had one nice block and 4 boards,  he didn't
take a single shot.   Actually the other C's tried to get him some
shots, and turned the ball over 3 times, trying slip the ball to
Pervis on the pick n roll.

Cheaney: continues to look for his shot more.  He was 2-5 tonight for
6 points, 5 boards and 2 steals in 20 minutes before fouling out.

Overton:  by the end of the game, the Celts must have had one of the
shorter lineups in recent memory out on the court, as they had
Overton, Barros and Anderson all out there together.

Thomas:  You could here Pitino yelling at Thomas to come off the
screen and shoot the ball when he was out there.  They must have seen
him do a nice job in practice.

Coaching:  I liked the way the Celts (most of them) played tonight.  I
thought they had some of the Kamikaze/Divine Madness elan of Rick's
first year with the team.  They played as though there was very little
pressure, and to a man (well except Pervis) aggressively tried to get
their shot off, but still tried to move the ball around and get good
shots.  They displayed a nice mental approach to a difficult
situation.  Now if they could just defend against easy fast break
baskets from the start of the game, instead of waiting until the
second half.

Amazingly Stupid Opposing Coaches of Note: What was Greg Popovich
thinking?  I thought he was rushing things a bit, when he took his
starters out with 10 minutes to go in the game, up by 18.  That's an
unusual amount of risk taking by an NBA coach.  But how could he
justify waiting until 1:13 to get his main guys back in with a 7 point
lead.  I mean can you imagine him taking Duncan OUT with a 9 point
lead with 1:13 to go?  Did he just fall asleep?

The Celts are now 10-12.  They're in Houston tomorrow.

Bill C. 
wfcooper@tiac.net