Celts Ambused in Motor City: Detroit 124-Boston 115

[Bill Cooper <wfcooper@tiac.net>]

	The Celts (with a lot of help from the Pistons) dug a huge
hole for themselves in this game, getting down by as much as 25
points.  Pierce and Walker strove mightily to get them back in the
game, only to have their efforts obstructed by their own teammates.
The Celts fought down to the closing seconds of the game, but fell
short in the end.  Danny Fortson was not with the team.

	The Pistons struck, at the start of the game, like a bolt of
lightning.  They were up 20-6 (4 threes, 3 by Stackhouse) just 5:00
into the game.  The Celts were falling victim to their normal
weaknesses on defense, the inability to defense the 3 and giving up
the long pass up court for the easy basket.  The C's briefly rallied,
and cut the lead to 6 at 22-16.  Pitino went to the bench,but despite
come nice production from Eric Williams, the Piston got the lead back
up to 9 at the end of the quarter, 32-23.

	Dana Barros kept the Celts afloat in the early portions of the
second quarter with 5 points, but when Pitino went back to the
starters (and the Pistons to theirs) the roof just caved in.  the
Pistons put together a 14-2 run to push the lead up to 30.  The Celts
dug in again and got the lead down to 15, but Detroit put together
another run shortly before th half, and went to the locker room
leading 72-47.

	The Piston clearly had lost some of their intensity at the
start of the third.  The Celts came out determined to get back into
the game by shooting threes.  They took 8 three point shots over the
first 6:00 of the quarter (and hit 3 of them) cutting the Piston lead
down to 18 in the process.  Then, as the Pistons got into a bit of
foul trouble and the C's got into the bonus, Walker began to
concentrate on going to the basket.  He got to the foul line, and the
Celts were able to narrow the Pistons lead to 13 as the quarter ended
(94-81).

	Barros came back into the  game to start the 4th (with Walker
and Pierce on the bench for a short rest).  He scored 6 points for the
C's at the start of the quarter, and kept them in the game (more or
less ) while the starters took a blow.  Still the Pistons lead had
gotten back up to 15, by the time Walker and Pierce got back into the
game.  They both concentrated on heading to the hoop, with very good
results.  With 5:00 to go. Walker hit a rare outside shot to cut the
lead to just 7 (109-102).  Then Kenny Anderson, who had been having a
brutal game, tried to take control of the offense.  For 6 agonizing
possessions the Celts avoided giving the ball to Walker or Pierce
(well Pierce got a score when Walker passed him the ball off an
offensive rebound).  On the last two, Potapenko muffed an easy catch,
and then saved the ball in bounds to the Pistons, who converted for a
jam, and then committed an offensive foul.  The Piston got the lead
back up to 10 with 2:41 to go.  The Celts went back to Pierce and
Walker, and they were able to cut the lead down to 7 again, but the
opportunity was gone.  The final was 124-115.

	As is their usual habit the Celts spotted the Piston a huge
advantage in field goal percentage (.563-.444) and then tried to make
up for it on the boards.  The Celts did get 10 more shots, but that
wasn't close to enough.  After a first quarter in which their were
only 3 trips to the free throw line, the two clubs ended up totaling
94.  

Lineups:
Celts: Anderson, Cheaney, Pierce, Walker, Potapenko
Pistons: Hunter, Stackhouse, Hill, Laettner, Mills

Players:
Pierce: found the jumper.  4-5 on threes, 11-15 overall, and 12-17
from the free throw line.  He ended up with 38 points on, essentially,
24 offensive attempts.  Also had 7 boards and 4 steals.

Walker: nice game.  thought he showed a lot of intelligence, when
towards the end of the third quarter, and the Pistons in the penalty,
he just hammered the ball at Jerome Williams, either getting a basket
or a trip to the line on nearly every possession.  Toine had 30
points, 9 boards and 7 assists in 38 minutes.  Shot a relatively
anemic 8-21 but was 12-15 from the line.  Really did a nice job of
moving the ball around.  had a bit of trouble with Williams in the
first half, but got his revenge+ in the second.

Barros: 13 points in 18 minutes on 5-8 shooting.  got most of his
points by aggressively driving to the basket or flying off picks, and
then pulling up for jumpers.  Best form of the season.

Anderson: second off game in a row, and this time no foul trouble to
blame it on.  He shot 1-11, had 6 points and 4 assists in 31 minutes.
He's lost the mid range jumper and doesn't seem to want to penetrate
all the way to the basket.  He's getting closer and closer to being a
Steve Kerr imitation.

Potapenko: had 14 boards in 26 minutes.  and shot 2-7 with 6
turnovers.  I wonder if Vitaly has ever played this many minutes in a
season.  After playing so well in January and most of Feb., he seems
to have hit some kind of wall.

Battie: had a couple of good moments, but only scored 6 and had 6
boards in 26 minutes.  he had a couple of opportunities late in the
game to hit jumpers to help the cause, but couldn't get it done
tonight.

Cheaney: quiet night with 5 points in 21 minutes.  

Williams: got off to a nice start, but faded quickly.  Had 5 points in
22 minutes (all of those came in the first 3 minutes) he was in the
game.

Griffin: hit a couple of jumpers tonight.  Not too productive
otherwise.  

Coaching: I'm not sure I understand the barrage of 3's at the start of
the third, or putting the ball in Anderson's hand with 4:00 to go.  I
can't believe that Pitino directly asked for those things to happen,
but he didn't seem able to prevent them either.  The slow start, I
don't blame him for so much.  I don't think there was any way to keep
the young guys from getting swell headed after the recent success.  

Opposition Players of Note:  I can't help thinking about Stackhouse,
when I read about the worthless players (like Ron Mercer) from the
96(?) draft.  Stack was thought to be just as worthless as any of them
a couple of years ago and now he's having one of the best seasons in
the league at the 2 guard.  Maybe he shouldn't have been the third
pick in the draft, but he's become a fine player.  I think it just
goes to show that we don't have a method with which to judge the guys
who  come out early yet.  And we probably won't for a couple of years
now.  It impresses me that a lot of guys on the Red Sox list seem to
have a very good handle on how a player should be performing at a
given age.  It would be nice to see some similar work done for
basketball.

The C's record is now 27-36.  They host Golden State on Wednesday.

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.net