C's Take Lumps: Milwaukee 99-Boston 84

[Bill Cooper <wfcooper@tiac.net>]

	A pretty lackluster effort, especially by the Celts starters.
If not for the effort off the bench by Fortson, Williams and Barros,
this might have been a debacle on the order of the New Jersey or
Golden State losses.  Walker looked like his head wasn't in the game
at all in the first half,  Pierce was playing on tired legs, and Kenny
Anderson wasn't up for playing against Sam Cassell at all.

	The Bucks got out quickly, getting out to a 14-6 lead midway
through the period.  The Celts really tried to contain Ray Allen by
having Calbert Cheaney concentrate on him, but in the first half, Ray
was having none of it.  Meanwhile, the C's were very turnover prone on
offense, and the Bucks were adept at cashing in those mistakes for
easy baskets.  Walker actually picked up 2 fouls in the first 1:30 of
the game, but Pitino still wouldn't let him out of the game.  Williams
and Barros, got into the game, and gave the Celts some offensive
spark: Meanwhile the Bucks began to cool off.  Just before the end of
the period, the Celts got the lead down to 2 (21-19).  The Bucks
closed out the period with a 4-0 run, 2 of those points coming when
Dana rather foolishly fouled Tim Thomas with just 1 second to go.

	The Celts continued to hang around at the start of the second.
The tailed 38-31 midway through the period, and it still seemed as
though, If the C's starters could get into the game (not on the court,
but actually  start playing effectively) they could make a game of it.
The starters were just as ineffective in the 2nd period, as they had
been in the first, though, and the Bucks had the lead back up to 13 at
the end of the half (53-40).

	I thought that Rick might junk the starting lineup for the
second half, but he went with the normal starting group, and they
failed to deliver yet again.  Actually Walker began to play a bit
better, and led the C's as they cut the Bucks lead to 8 at 53-61.  The
Bucks counters with a 9-0 run to move the lead up to 17.  Very
surprisingly, Pitino let the Bucks score 9 unanswered points without
calling timeouts, the first time I can remember that happening in his
time with the Celts.  With about 3:00 to go in the period, Pitino got
all the starters off the court except for Pierce and went to the
press.  Maybe it was coincidence (the Bucks really didn't turn if
over), but the Celts were able to but the lead down to 11, 74-63 by
the end of the quarter.

	The bench continued to make some inroads, and had the lead
down to 8 (78-70) with 8:48 to go.  Pitino was faced with a tough
choice here.  The bench guys, especially Fortson, were beginning to
run out of gas, but could he go beck to the starters?  Pretty much,
Pitino tried to finesse it, putting in Anderson and Walker, and it
blew up in his face.  The Bucks came back with a 13-4 run to put the
Celts out of the game.  They really picked on the Cassell/Anderson
matchup.  The Bucks cruised home for the 99-84 win.

	The Bucks outshot the Celts by a large margin, much of the
difference coming on their easy conversion of Celtic turnovers
(.506-.405).  The Celts hit 4-23 threes in the game, quite a few of
them early in the possession.  The Celts had 5 more turnovers than the
Bucks and 1 less offensive board (Fortson was the only Celtic to have
more that 1 offensive rebound in the game).

Lineups:
Celts: Anderson, Cheaney, Pierce, Walker, Potapenko
Bucks: Cassell, Allen, Robinson, Ham, Johnson

Players:
Williams: Had a very good first half, with 13 points, but only scored
1 in the second half.  He ended up shooting 5-12 in 29 minutes.

Barros: had a nice game shooting the ball.  5-7 for 11 points in 13
minutes.

Fortson: just killed on the boards.  Before the ran out of gas in the
4th quarter, had 16 boards in 17 minutes.  Still ended up with 8
points, 17 boards and 2 assists in 24 minutes (and just 1 foul).  

Walker: Toine may have been suffering the effects of his 52 minutes
effort on Friday.  He certainly started out slow.  He actually ended
up with reasonably good stats for the game, with 22 points, 6 baords
and 3 assists in 33 minutes (but had 5 turnovers).  He played with
very little energy, though.

Pierce: shot 1-9 on threes.  I actually thought he was giving
reasonable effort (and he didn't play all that much on Friday), but
nearly all of his jumpers were bouncing off the front of the rim.
Ended up shooting 4-16, for 13 points in 46 minutes (Rick must have
thought this was the last game of the season: maybe he wasn't far
wrong).  

Anderson: didn't quite make the Steve Kerr level of play tonight.  Oh,
he didn't have many assists (2) and got used by Cassell.  But he shot
just 5-12 in 32 minutes.  Cassell was able to post over Kenny, and
drive around him (of course Sam can do that to quite a few players).

Potapenko: Obviously he's not used to playing 40 minutes.  Had 3
points, 1 board and 3 turnovers in 23 minutes.

Cheany: bit of a mystery to me.  Does the nice job agasint Iverson,
then gets abused by Ray Allen.  Woulnd't you think a 6-6 player would
have an easier time with Ray, than Iverson?  

Battie: Fallen off the face of the earth again.  0 points and 2 boards
in 9 minutes.

McCarty: Heee's Back!  0-1 and a turnover in 5 minutes.  On the whole,
I'd rather have Pervis.

Coaching: I know this verges on a conspiracy theory, but is it
reasonable to suppose that Pitino's near benching of Fortson the last
couple of games is because he doesn't intend to resign him, and
doesn't want too many 15 point, 16 board performances to generate
pressure to resign him?  Or is he intentionally driving down Danny's
value to that he'll be easier to resign?  and why did he give Danny so
many minutes tonight? Desperation I suppose.

	I thought that Rick wasn't giving it the full Pitino treatment
in the game.  He was really out of character in not calling timeouts.
In general, he's dropped his annoying habit of calling a timeout every
time the opposition scored 2 succesive,unanswered baskets, but
tonight, he coached in the4 second half, like a  loss was a foregone
conclusion.  Definitely in live-to-fight-another-day mode.

The Celts are back to 10 games under .500 at 30-40.  They trudge onto
Orlando Tuesday night.

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.net