thoughts on the game

[Noah Evans <ishbak@forest.STUDENT.cwru.edu>]

These are pretty subjective. I haven't looked at any statistics or box
scores. If it's of interest I sat in section 125 row 11.

Wow... I'm not sure if this game was such a blowout because the cavs
suck or because the celts really have improved this much.

Thoughts:

Kenny Anderson is absolutely vital to this team. He may not be
anything special but his handle was under control and he made some
great passes. His shot selection was very good too. The difference
between him and palacio was enormous. Kenny can actually make the
offense work right. There were a couple of breakdowns, but kenny ran
the break well and didn't look for his shot too often. 

We had a pretty good post game going tonight, Antoine, Paul and Erik
all had quite a bit of success in the post. Paul's turnaround was
unstoppable, I can't count how many times he just turned and fired
---no fakes at all--- and made the shot perfectly. His drives were
great too. 

Antoine's post game is pretty good(at least against cleveland) he spun
around his man pretty easily most of the time and he did a pretty good
job of getting to the line. A couple of shots after the spin were
forces/blocked but he seemed really under control.

Erik's post game seemed great too, it looked like Cleveland was trying
to guard him with a shooting guard and Erik just destroyed the unlucky
defender with spin moves and layups. He didn't seem to convert much
but he got to the line or got his own rebound on most of them.

Antoine's threes seemed to be on too. How many did he hit? 4? The one
he hit as the buzzer ran out was superb. Pierce didn't seem to be
hitting from the outside but his posting and drives more than made up
for it.

Another note on Antoine during the first couple of plays of the game
Antoine seemed to be able to drive at will in transition. He didn't
hit all of the layups but he at least got the line on most of them.

Andre Miller and Michael Doleac were horrible. Almost every time
Miller would drive into traffic, get trapped, pick up the ball, pump
fake a bunch of times and make a difficult pass or bad shot. As far as
actual point guard play goes Kenny destroyed him as far as I'm
concerned.

Speaking of horrible, I really hope Kenny doesn't get hurt. Palacio's
shot is really good, but he's a horrible point guard. The offense is
much more fluid with kenny in the game.

Johnson was really smooth offensively and got a couple of rebounds
that I noticed. His outside shot is terrible though. He airballed an
open three in the beginning. He had some great moves close to the
basket though.

Potapenko and Battie did fine by me. Pot's battles very hard under the
boards and I think he frees up a lot of other celtics to get rebounds
by occupying the other center. By wrestling with the other teams
rebounders it seems like pots prevents both him and the other center
from having a chance at the board. The ball seems to roll away to a
point where someone like kenny can grab it(kenny seemed to have a lot
of defensive boards that came as a result of other celtics boxing
out).

I wanted to see more of Kendrick but he only got in towards the end of
garbage time.

Hoping this isn't an anomoly.

Noah