What’s going on here?! Somebody give me my real team back!
So the Celtics decided to keep on sucking last night. By the time the first quarter was over the Pistons had something like 8 turnovers and Paul Pierce had 17 points. The Celtics went up by as much as 12, but they looked bored and only halfway involved while doing so. They could have easily been up by twenty plus, but instead of putting the Pistons away, their 12 point lead reduced to around 7 and stayed around there for the majority of the second quarter, and Mike Gorman commented that he didn’t like the way the game was going. I thought to myself, “Mike, come on, the Pistons don’t even have Ben Gordon or Tayshaun Prince out there. Paul Pierce scored 17 points in the first quarter. I know they’ve been bad lately, but the Celtics will wake up at some point and bury them, easy.” After the embarrassing showing against Dallas earlier this week, I honestly thought the Celtics were done with the slipshod, uninspired performances. Over the course of the past three years, while much of the basketball world has been busy celebrating the sexy basketball of Kobe and Lebron, I’ve fallen in love with this starting five, watching them enjoy enormous success by playing fundamentally sound, team first, inspired basketball. I was under the impression that this team had too much respect for the game of basketball and too much pride in their team to continually come out and blow games. I even thought that the Dallas game was a wake up call for them- how could they not be embarrassed by that game? I thought they had hit bottom.
Halftime rolled around and the Celtics trotted off in to their locker room and- what? Re-grouped? No, don’t be silly. I don’t know what happened in that locker room, but if I do say so myself, I have a pretty great imagination, so, you know, they probably sat around, enjoyed the company, popped a couple of Ambiens and chewed the fat. Remember when the Celtics used to come out with a vengeance in the third quarter and absolutely stifle the opponent? You could count on it. Well, last night they trotted back out of the locker room and scored 13 points in the third quarter. 13. And that defense that they like to pride themselves on, that Celtics defense they talk so much about playing? Needless to say, actually playing it would have required that they put forth actual effort, so instead they stood there and waved their arms around while the Pistons dropped 44 second half points on them. Normally, 44 second half points wouldn’t be considered that impressive of a showing. Factor in the fact that the Pistons were missing two of their biggest scorers and juxtapose their 44 with the Celtics 30, and it suddenly looks a lot better. To sum up their performance last night in a couple of choice words, because going in to it in any more detail by writing actual sentences about it would be a real waste of time: pathetic. Sorry. Oooh, and last but not least, execrable. That should do it.
Maybe there’s something going on internally that we don’t know about, some kind of inner turmoil on the team and their chemistry as a group isn’t as great as is publicly portrayed. I hope that’s not the case. These crappy performances are easily solved- they just have to stop dicking around. That’s easier said than done for the majority of teams in the league, but in terms of the Celtics, I honestly believe they could show up Friday night against the Blazers and dazzle us all. If these crappy performances don’t come from dicking around and the problem is deeper than the popularly tossed around theory of, “Oh, the Celtics think they can turn it on and off whenever they want and still win games,” than that’s unsettling and potentially very bad. But for now, I remain steadfast in my belief that this team will snap out of the funk and get in to a positive rhythm. They better be mad and frustrated with themselves. The quickest way to turn things around and get the morale up is to win some games. A couple of weeks ago when Cleveland was struggling, everyone was quick to say that they were incompatible and had no chemistry. All of the sudden they won a couple of games and like magic, nobody has any recollection of saying that and they’re at the top of every contender list. The same goes for this team- all they need are a couple of wins. Unfortunately their upcoming schedule is not very forgiving, but who better to turn things around with then against the elite? Who could they be itching to beat more than the Lakers, Magic and Hawks? The Celtics are plenty capable of beating anyone and it’s time for them to prove themselves all over again.
