Celts blown out

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

Just got back from the Celtics preseason game against Milwaukee, a 36 point
blowout. The Celtics played very poorly on both ends of the floor. I didn't
take any notes so my comments are going to be more general.

The starters were Potapenko, Walker, Williams, Carr, and Anderson. The game
was close for a few minutes. The Bucks pulled away near the end of the
first quarter and never looked back. The 36 point final margin was the
largest of the game, I believe. 

There is a box score at ESPN.com that is more accurate than the one at
NBA.com: http://espn.go.com/nba/2001/20001011/boxscore/milbos.html

The offense was absolutely terrible. The Celtics shot 31% from the field
and looked completely disorganized, with only 10 assists total. Kenny
Anderson only played 14 minutes, leaving the bulk of the minutes to Mike
Jordan, who looked somewhat lost and frustrated. He lost the ball quite a
bit and couldn't stop the opposing point guard. Fortunately we have two
real backups in Brown and Herren who were missing today. For a short
stretch Adrian Griffin was playing the point with no success. The Celtics
gave up an amazing 34 points on turnovers.

The defense was pretty bad, but part of that was that Milwaukee's offense
was pretty good. They shot 50% from the field and 48% from 3-pt range. Lots
of layups, but they also hit a lot of jumpers that our players just
couldn't seem to get down. The press was caused a few turnovers at first
but gave up easy baskets, and really broke down at the end, leading to
several Pryzbilla dunks.

At the center position, Potapenko was about the same as always. Fumbled the
ball away on several occasions and took some ill advised 18 footers
especially near the end of the game. Scored 4 pts and grabbed a team high
10 rebounds. Battie looked more active than usual, with 8 points, 7
rebounds, 1 block, and a few changed shots. Blount was pretty decent. He
was on the floor at the same time as Vitaly at times and also alongside
Battie on separate occasions. He scored 10 points (2nd on the team) and
grabbed 3 offensive rebounds, but 0 defensive rebounds because he tried to
block every shot and was usually out of position. He did have 2 blocks
(only 1 listed on ESPN). He generally struggled on offense in the low post,
as did our other centers. Many of his points were on putbacks.

Walker didn't show anything new, unfortunately. He scored 8 points on 4-11
shooting and had 5 rebounds and 3 assists in a team-high 28 minutes. He
scored on a goaltend, a circus shot drive, a normal drive, and a pretty
nice looking midrange jumper. His assists were on some pretty nice passes.
Everything else was pretty bad. He turned it over 6 times. Near the end of
the third quarter, with the Celtics completely incompetent on offense, he
went into his "take over" mode in which he played 1 on 5. He threw up an
ill-advised three pointer early in the shot clock and drove into traffic
several times into succession. After that Pitino sat him for the rest of
the game.

Eric Williams led the team with 19 points, most of it from the line using
his usual tricks. He was the only one who looked halfway competent on
offense. Walter McCarty looked active as usual but didn't accomplish that
much. Griffin wasn't particularly effective this game. His passing was a
bit off

Chris Carr was not Paul Pierce insurance in this game. A couple of his free
throws were off illegal defense technical fouls. He scored 6 points (4
non-technical) and had 4 rebounds in 24 minutes, shooting 1-5 from the
field. The one shot he hit, he was knocked down, with no call from the ref,
and threw up a prayer right before he hit the ground which went in. Rodney
Elliott didn't help his NBA hopes with a 0-5 performance.

Alex