Mike Fine Lays A Whammy On The Celtics

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

PRO HOOPS: Going nowhere: Celtics playoff chances are dimly viewed


By MIKE FINE
The Patriot Ledger

If Boston Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck thinks fans will be back in droves
next season, he must know something nobody else does.

Perhaps Grousbeck has a grand plan for attracting some competent,
high-priced free agents who will woo the fans. Perhaps he's going to say
that the recent ticket price hike announcement is just a joke. Perhaps
he knows something that the average fan doesn't know in saying, People
will be coming back in great numbers.''

He'd better because season ticket holders are up in arms about those
price increases and, if Grousbeck thinks that a strong playoff
performance is going to change some minds, he might take one look at the
way this team has performed through the regular season, which came to a
close last night with a 99-92 victory over the Detroit Pistons at the
FleetCenter.

The Celtics closed out the season at 8-11 after coach Jim O'Brien
challenged his players to finish 14-5, which translates into a very good
reason for the absolutely abysmal TV ratings for late-season Celts
games. The Celtics may be in trouble at the gate next season because
they played so poorly this season. Fans have noticed, which is why the
Celts didn't complete their 20th sellout of the season against the best
of the East, the Pistons, last night.

The Celtics' offense is woeful. It's predicated upon a 3-point barrage
that leaves fans cringing. It's a 3-point barrage that's incredibly
inadequate, too. The Celtics entered the last night of the regular
season ranked 21st in 3-point percentage and 28th in offensive
rebounding percentage, a lethal combination.

I don't really see the Celtics doing much,'' former Celtics Danny
Ainge said during a visit last week. From what I've seen so far, I
don't really see the Celtics advancing in the playoffs this year and
it's a really bad combination when you're 27th in basketball in field
goal percentage and 29th (now 28th) in offensive rebounding. That is a
really bad combo.

There's a lot of teams that shoot bad, but they make up for it by
getting second-chance points, and I don't like how the Celtics rely so
much on the 3s, and I think in a seven-game series that makes it really
tough, especially with the percentages that they're shooting.

Unless (Paul) Pierce and (Antoine) Walker get that magic that they had
last year ... and I think they missed Kenny Anderson this year, too.''

So did the fans, apparently.

Many of the fans who won't be renewing are holdovers from the days when
the Celtics were really good, such as the South Shore man (who wishes to
remain anonymous), whose late father bought tickets when the team was
founded and sat behind Red Auerbach at Boston Garden. The team has sent
an invoice for more than $30,000 for next season. I just can't afford
it,'' he said, adding that the product - a team that has no apparent
offensive cohesiveness and cannot even run a basic fast break - doesn't
warrant such an expense.

O'Brien started his usual starters last night, but altered his rotations
quite a bit, knowing that the playoff opener against the Indiana Pacers
is Saturday in Indianapolis. The Celts met a team that was without three
of its best players, Ben Wallace (an MVP candidate), Clifford Robinson
and Zeljko Rebraca, and still showed many of the same stand-around,
isolationist tendencies that keep the offense from running smoothly.

Yet, talk to the players and they're positively effusive about their
performances of late, which includes back-to-back wins over Miami and
the Pistons and close losses to Orlando, Washington and Sacramento. Of
course, the latter were at the FleetCenter where the Celtics were only
25-16 this season.

It would be nice to be playing good,'' said Pierce, but, y'know ...
there's really some positives. I can take some positives out of the last
eight games. Regardless if we won three or four of them (the Celts won
six of their last 10), I see a lot of positives that we can take into
the playoffs.''

Nobody's really on a roll if you really look at it,'' said his
sidekick, Walker. More important for us is getting healthy and getting
guys back to playing good minutes. When we played well early in the
season, we had Tony Delk playing well, Tony Battie playing well, so ...
over the last two weeks it was good to get them back and in the flow.''

A year ago, the Celtics rolled into the playoffs with an 18-6 finish,
playing some of the best defense in the league. They came into last
night on an 11-13 run.

This year they dropped like a rock, partly because of injury, mostly
because of their execution. Several times last night, Walker would lower
his head and simply bull toward the basket regardless of the Detroit
defenses against him. On one play he isolated against Corliss
Williamson, put on several dribble moves and fired up something that
could charitably be called garbage - an 18-foot fallaway jumper. Not
once did a teammate get a sniff of a pass.

Plays like those - Pierce was just as guilty - mandated that instead of
a fourth-place finish in the East, the Celts would finish sixth.

The Celtics think this is the dawning of a new day. They feel they've
got new life, but they're a playoff disaster waiting to happen - which
brings us to next year. Attendance at the FleetCenter this year was up
more than 1,000 per game, at about 17,300, but when you mix together the
dysfunctional offense, the shaky and inconsistent defense, the ticket
price increases and the smugness of the owners, the Celtics aren't just
staring at disaster in the next two weeks, but perhaps the next two
years, too.

Mike Fine may be reached at mikefine@ledger.com.

Copyright 2003 The Patriot Ledger
Transmitted Thursday, April 17, 2003