Celtics beat the Heat

[Frank Willison <frank@oreilly.com>]

The Celtics did look good last night; Mark Blount was very active, 
especially. (I was dismayed at how little he played because he really had 
an impact on the Heat, and on the speed at which the game was played, when 
he was in.) But there were some disturbing elements.

1) Truth is, the Heat looked terrible. Someone put soporifics in their 
Gatorade. They had no big men, but they still got a disturbing number of 
offensive rebounds. Tim Hardaway looked really bad. As my son pointed out, 
there was no need ever to back off for fear of a drive. He wanted to shoot 
threes. When someone covered him, he was toothless.

2) Virtually all the scoring came from Antoine and Pierce. Antoine was 
doing a nice job all night driving inside. Pierce, on the other hand, 
missed a bunch of layups and free throws. If he'd hit the easy shots, the 
game would have been put out of sight. In the fourth quarter, Pierce and 
Antoine took over the offense, not out of selfishness, but because nobody 
else could put a ball in the hoop. Stith, in my view, was bad. He hit that 
big three, but he missed so many others. For someone who camps in the 
corner, waiting for a pass, he needs to make more.

3) The offense shut down when Kenny hurt his ankle. Say what you will about 
Kenny, but he can run an offense. Brown was ineffective. Palacio (nice to 
see him) did a good job, but only for a few seconds. If Kenny is going to 
be out long, we're in trouble.

Frank