Oh what a beautiful morning...

["Jim Meninno" <jim_meninno@hotmail.com>]

...I think I'm going to break out in song.

Everybody's had really great comments today, so there's not a lot left to 
say.  The couple of things I wanted to mention were....

Kenny was fabulous last night.  Twice the Raptors started to climb back into 
the game when Kenny had to sit down, and twice he came back in and steadied 
the ship.  I'm a little surprised that his stats don't look better, but who 
cares.  I also can't stress enough how much he seemed to be trying on 
defense.  There was one play where his man tried to drive baseline on him, 
and Kenny shut him off so he passed out to the top of the key where the 
defense had converged and stole the pass.  Kenny created that steal but 
nothing shows in the stat line.  It's way (of the ray) too early to say he's 
a changed man forever, but I loved what I saw last night.  They do need Dana 
back though, because Wayne Turner is going to take a while to develop.

Tony Battie was invisible.  Wasn't quite sure why.  Foul trouble, I guess.  
Vitaly wasn't all that awful, but looked clumsy on offense.  Pervis looked 
terrific.  That drive down the lane finger roll had me hooting.  He reminds 
me of Bill Walton in '86.  When he's involved you are always expecting him 
to collapse in a wounded heap, but as long as he doesn't, good things 
happen.  Toronto big men were awful, as has been noted.  Could it be that 
the new rules are just making it harder for big men in general?

When the Raptors closed to three points in the second quarter were you all 
thinking, "here we go"?  I was.  That was the most frustrating thing about 
the Celtics over the last two years.  They couldn't put whole games of solid 
play together.  They've got quality depth now, which should make a 
difference there.  Eric Williams doesn't even play in this game, and they're 
missing one of their top forwards in Fortson.  That right there tells you 
what kind of depth this team has.

Adrian Griffin is like the best parts of Greg Minor and Bruce Bowen rolled 
into one and on steroids.  Can't say enough good things about him.  The 
problem with guys like Minor and Bowen is that they do one or two things 
reasonably well, but are a complete liability in other departments.  I hope 
Greg makes a full recovery, but he'll never play for the Celtics again.  My 
favorite Griffin moment was, with the shot clock on about four, he drives to 
the hoop and, standing there surrounded by Raptors, picks out Pierce on the 
perimeter who cans the J.  Our point guards weren't doing that last year.  
That was even better than the driving stuff in the face of Antonio Davis, 
which was pretty damned awesome.

Last year the Celts produced a game against Orlando out of nowhere where 
they just clicked on everything and just blew the doors off them.  There was 
something about that game which made you realize it was an aberration, just 
as there was something about last night to make me feel it was not. Sure 
they're not going to shoot that well in most games, but they'll do it more 
often than last year.  The team finally looks like the well coached, well 
prepared team we have been expecting for two years now.  The players are all 
at least moderately talented, are hungry to win and are willing to work 
hard.  That sounds like a recipe for at least some success, folks.  I know 
they are not an upper echelon team, I'm not saying that.  It's just that 
looking at them in pre-season a lot of us on the list had a feeling they 
could win more games than they lose.  Last night was our first real bit of 
tangible evidence that we might be right.

OK, I guess there was more to say than I thought.

Jim

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