Re: [Celtics' Stuff Howdy Pilgrim - NY Post

["hironaka@xxxxxxxxx"<hironaka@xxxxxxxxx>]

For all intents and purposes, Boston is now a team with a 
20-point scorer at three key positions: power and small 
forward plus point guard. 

Byron Scott may have to go back to drawing board in 
defensing Boston. Overloading the defense on Pierce can 
be hazardous to their health. Its back to trial and error 
for them. 

How about the 42 cans of whupass and 16 boards delivered 
by our pointguards?  "What were you doing out there Jason 
Kidd" his team might be wondering. I don't want to overdo 
that angle, I hope he gets over it fast. This is a guy 
who drew blood punching his wife in the face in front of 
his child, then spent the year parading his kid to 
midnight press conferences strictly as a prop.  

The Celtics game planned well. Obie knew that Richard 
Jefferson and Kenyon Martin are erratic jump shooters so 
far this year, and in their college careers too. Neither 
is anything like a superstar at handling the ball or 
creating shots for themselves. Like James Worthy in LA 
before, these guys are in the perfect place to showcase 
pure athleticism and cherry picking skills. Just dont 
tell me they are All Stars, because the numbers arent 
there. They are good defenders though. Amazing highlight 
film athletes. Richard Jefferson seems way ahead of 
Kedrick Brown in everything but shooting, rebounding and 
defense. They met once at Shaw, but I didn't see the game.

What Obie and Delk said they would do, the team went out 
and did. That still meant the usual number of 
unchallenged shots for New Jersey. But the Nets were 
hyped up or something. I think that contributed a bit to 
how poorly they played. They had eleven missed FTs among 
their many clangs. Its really dumb of them to put a 
monkey on their back that shouldn't even be there. 

One of the Nets announcers said early on that the team 
hadn't faced defenses this good all year. That's nice to 
hear. Mainly, you can't argue with the excellence of our 
transition defense. And the usual good job of clogging up 
the start of plays out beyond the top of the key. No more 
headless chicken style full court presses.

The Celtics did a good job of not letting the refs get 
under their skin. That's not going to be the story line, 
since we won going away, but the Celtics showed good 
veteran poise there. It was bad out there. That offensive 
foul on Walker's basket (the one that got Obie a 
technical) would not have been called at any level of 
refereeing I've ever seen. If Obie had gotten himself 
ejected a minute later on that foul on Pierce's dunk, I 
wouldn't have blamed him even though it was a tight game. 
On two other occasions, the (strangely unbiased) Nets 
announcers said the Nets got lucky on a call in the first 
half. One was that called jump ball with no one near 
Pierce. I don't remember the other.

I thought Pierce had a terrible first half. He forced 
almost every shot. And he wasn't even close on some free 
throws. That's five more missed free throws, on top of 20 
something misses in the Nets playoff series. He still 
looks like the 22% shooter he's been on his outside shot 
attempts. His closer teammates need to talk to him. Find 
out if he's bugging.

Walker had a sloppy and stupid garbage time performance. 
I think he wanted to make one of those long shots just to 
throw a wiggle. Its no big deal I guess. One nice thing 
about the game was there seemed to be no gloating 
afterwards. 

I loved that Larry Brown line the other day (quoting Dean 
Smith): "Don't act like youve never done it before." 
That is the kind of advice that transcends the context 
(celebrating too much after a sports victory). It applies 
to other situations too, obviously.

It really was "just a game". The Celtics scored the usual 
number of points, and executed their base defense like 
they needed to. They took care of business. Surprisingly, 
the fans weren't very vocal. Its still hard to get worked 
up about the Nets I guess.

There used to be a popular t-shirt slogan in Cambridge 
where my sister and I lived. It went: "Yale hates Harvard
Harvard's indifferent." Factually, that's not even true. 
But it's a nice retort to all of Byron Scott's efforts to 
hype up a Nets-Celtics rivalry. I don't hold it against 
him for trying, but get serious Byron the Boston Celtics 
have our own rivalries. 

(It goes both ways too. I seriously doubt the Yankees or 
Dolphins get as worked about Boston rivalries as we like 
to think.)

Game ball goes to Shammond Williams. This guy was 
like: "rivalry? What rivalry?". He was loose and having 
fun out there, like it was a Rucker game. It was another 
fun win at the start of what should be a promising 
season. Let's move on to the next game.

Go Celts!

Joe H.

-------------------
L'e-mail gratuit pas comme les autres.
NOMADE.FR, pourquoi chercher ailleurs ?