Hawks Game

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

I'm not complaining, but this could be the worst mail-in 
job by a Celtics opponent all year.

Atlanta missed wide-open jump shots, not just from 3-
point range (0-9). The 52-39 rebounding edge hints at why 
Heinsohn likes Antoine's best friend Nazr Mohammed. Any 
balance to our one-dimensional bench would be helpful.

Last night's 3-18 shooting by the Celtics bench (0-8 on 
treys) is part of a negative trend. Our "Wallace/Gaston 
special" was 3-20 against Houston (2-12 on treys), and 3-
17 against Dallas. I hate to say it, but they might 
actually be THAT bad. I agree that Vin Baker is getting 
worse with each game, at the moment.

When Boston took it to the hoop last night, we built a 
lead and also got to the line. That should be a good 
lesson about balance and going with what works. 

But it seems like Boston, including the starters, jacked 
up a ton of shameless threes once the lead seemed safe, 
even though that shot wasn't working for us. We shot 24% 
from that range, yet jacked up 29 threes. Go figure.

I'm not sure our 86 points of output would have been 
enough against most NBA teams that put out a decent 
effort, but, again, I'm not complaining (nor should I). I 
bet this sounds like whining.

Its nice to see the game's bounces fall Boston's way. 
Apart from Dallas, four of our last five losses were 
within a basket or two in the closing minutes (Portland, 
Wiz, Spurs and Houston). If Boston had any semblance of 
good karma, we'd be out of our losing skid about a week 
ago. We ended too many games this month with 8-0 type 
scoring runs by the opponents. There's no particular 
reason why that should be.

Still, the Celts have to be positive and grind it out, 
but they also have to correct some dumb play masked by 
this easy win. I wouldn't call the game something to 
build on. We just caught a breather.

If as a trend, the Celtics can only generate 84 ppg of 
total offense in the past four games, then they shouldn't 
be jacking up quite so many three-pointers.

Boston is much more skilled at getting to the FT line 
than they apparently give themselves credit for. They are 
one of the better teams at it. And doing that also means 
it will be the Celtics, not the opponents, that get a 
parade of freebies late in the 4Q off of every ticky-
tacky foul. I hope they address this, and expect that 
they will.


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