good 'un

[Eric Albert]

>Kim Malo <kmalo17 at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>Yeah, but dammit, Doc's back at it. WHAT was Gomes, who had been 
>critical to our getting the lead with hustle and boards doing sitting 
>so long on the bench in the middle of the second half when NY began 
>coming back. Yes, I know he'd gotten 2 fouls. Whoopdedoo. This isn't 
>Perk still shaky on handling playing with fouls, and it was only two 
>anyway. Gomes and West are the two highest basketball IQs on our team 
>and I think he can handle figuring out how to play with two fouls

Agreed.  But Doc *did* show one major sign of improvement: The Celtics
started the fourth quarter up ten points.  The Knicks went to work on
that lead.  When it was down to six (I think), after just a few minutes,
Doc brought back Paul and Wally (and I think Sebastian) -- the bench
just wasn't getting it done.

I actually called to my wife and son, "Whoa, Doc is taking this seriously!"
*All* last season, in many identical situations, Doc let the subs give the
game away before bringing the starters back, and we ended up losing
the game by two to four points.  It drove me crazy.

In fact, here's my post from March 1st of this year:

==========
  Subject: Doc's death wish

  Yet again, Doc goes to his one-good-player-four-others rotation at the
  start of the fourth (end of the third, actually), and once again it takes
  two minutes (game time) for the team to be down 10 - 12 points (11, in
  this case), a deficit from which they can't recover.

  I want to know: what would happen if he played the starters those two
  extra minutes.  Would they fall apart?  Foul out?  Pick up more injuries?

  Because it's a shame to see them battle good teams to a standstill for so
  much of the game, only to give it away in such a predictable fashion.

  -- Eric
==========

I think we would have won this game with a bit more ease if Wally hadn't
been removed from the game on a phantom foul call.  I'm not one to
complain about the refs, but they made four calls against the Celtics
(two goal-tending, one over-the-back on Delonte, and the sixth on Wally)
that were clearly wrong.  How many DQs does Wally have for his career?
Maybe they were calling just as poorly against the Knicks -- Isiah seemed
to think so -- but Fox Sports isn't going to replay those.  I thought the
Celtics showed a lot of grit in bearing up under the calls and pulling out
the game anyway.

In any case, my point is that Doc absolutely changed his start-of-the-
fourth-quarter strategy (if you want to dignify what he was doing last
year as a strategy).  There's no question that we lose this game last
year.

Also, Doc's moved Gerald ahead of Tony in the rotation, after saying at
the start of the season that Gerald wasn't going to get much time.

Neither of the above changes is subtle or brilliant.  In fact, they should
be filed under "glaringly obvious."  But they show at least a tiny ability
to look at what's not working and to improve it.

I don't know if this is a positive in the larger scheme of things.  Doc has
seemed to me to be a very bad in-game coach.  Improving to a mediocre
in-game coach -- just good enough not to get fired -- could hurt the
Celtics more than staying awful.  I guess there's always the chance he
could improve all the way to decent, but, boy, that's a long shot.

Well, I'm not going to worry about that today.  Celtics have a three-game
winning streak!

-- Eric