Worst Loss of Season

["Josh Ozersky" <jozersky1@nyc.rr.com>]

I suppose it was inevitable that, coming off our best win of the season,
our next effort should be our very worst.  But with a chance to beat
a top three team in their building, guarantee a winning road game,
make a statement, and take a game that the Mavs seemed desperately
intent on handing us, we came up with our worst second half effort yet.

Let the record show that after a brilliant first half based on ball movement,
passing, fast breaks, and Kedrick Brown's empowering energies, the
second half featured:

-- Kenny Anderson walking it up the floor in slow motion, again and again,
getting stripped by a not-particularly-nimble reserve forward, and generally
behaving as if he had never been on a basketball court with other men before.
This game might have been scripted by Omar Cook's agent; right now I would
trade Rogers, Delk, and a lottery pick to be named later for him.

-- Antoine, standing dead still with his hands on his knees 25 feet from the
basket,
in crunch time;  Antoine throwing up hideous, no-look half-hooks against
double and
triple teams.

--Walter McCarty taking three shots off the dribble in a row, and bricking all
three.

-- Eric Williams posting up three times in the entire second half.

-- Paul Pierce, completely taken out of his game by Michael Finley (no
disgrace there)

-- and of course, it goes without saying, Kedrick Brown sitting on the bench
for the entire
half, where his energy and enthusiasm could do no harm.

The Celtics phoned in the entire second half; they looked as if they had been
out the night
before and spent all their energies in the first half.  They didn't even try.
What does Jim
O'Brien say to them when he sees offense like that?  Does he even recognize
how bad it
is, how morally wrong?  Or does he just say, "everybody put a body on the
boards...Eric,
keep rotating back on Finley...try to get the ball inside."  The Celtics
deserve two Ls for this
game.  It was theirs for the taking.  I'll tell you something else, too:  if I
was Kedrick Brown
or Joe Forte, I would twirl a loaded shotgun in the direction of Jim O'Brien,
Kenny, and Walter
tonight, and let the chips fall where they may.  Awful!