Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner

Baby was our PJ Brown tonight. Great game by him. He always plays hard. Tonight he played hard and well. We do not win this game without his 4th quarter stroke and hustle. Way to go, BBD.

Solid defensive game for the Cs, who showed they can win one day on their 3s and the next day WITHOUT MAKING A SINGLE 3-POINTER all game long. Amazing. Big Baby was awesome, saved the game – I am forced to take back my negative opinions on him; now if he could only lose some weight… Turnovers were under control (though there were still 3 or 4 of them that could/should have been avoided), and energy was up. Excellent game overall.

I dunno… playing like this — not spectacular by very solid, especially on D — Cs could win it all even without another big.

One more thing — HATED the officiating in this game. These guys were just blind. Against BOTH teams. Love the NBA (teams and players), hate the NBA (Stern and his idiot crew of refs).

Baby was unstopable!!

baby’s jumpshot would start falling. it will keep falling too.

pierce looked like he was playing at a totally different (and faster) speed tonight which was good to see.

great win, it wasnt as close as the final score indicates either, we dominated that game defensively, and from van gundys interview before the 4th, he agrees. the refs seemed to want to keep it close with those ticky tack fouls on nearly ever magic possesion…Pierce was awesome 25/10 is huge in a game like this, most of the offense ran through him and rondo wasnt as key in this game, but he really helped on the boards and defending jameer good for 3 quarters

great bench production on this florida trip….but once again whats up with powe? dreadful

now if he could only lose some weight

Why lose weight, when one can lose fat, gain muscle, and stay the same weight.

I’d rather see opponents, bouncing off a granite block during an offensive rebound.

well,well,well-this one was a biggie and yes bbp,pp,kg, but it was a real team effort. no pts for eddie or gabe- so what- they played good team ball. i really disliked howard’s posing in the 1st quarter- looking at his fingers and making faces after made baskets and rebounds. well mr. poserman howard, what happened to you and your hands for the rest of the game. rashard is as smooth at his position as ray is at his. too bad i didn’t see them play much when they were sonics.

But a lot of people were and the majority here may well have felt powe was better. its all nonsense anyway. some posters have followed the celts around for years at home and away and see all the practices before the game. a poster wrote about this recently, and mentioned baby is almost always shooting early, as much as anyone else and makes his shots in these practices, at a high %. it was time for him to hit some shots in the games. in practice he makes a fair share of threes but mostly he is solid from 15-18 feet so it was no fluke tonight.

but he was absolutely a beast tonight. Clutch shots to give us that win down the stretch that Rondo tried to give away. (Don’t know where these stats guys come up with 2 turnovers because he had 2 in the last couple minutes of the game alone.) He rebounded the ball well. He shot the ball without thinking like he needs to do to be successful. He did commit a few fouls he shouldn’t have, but a couple were also bogus. Very good bodying up of Howard making it tough for him to back down in. I was very impressed and hope he keeps this up.

That officiating was absolutely stupid. Touch fouls both ways that disrupted the flow of the game. I can’t stand it when refs act like we are there to watch them and not the players. Those guys were awful.

Huh?

A propos, I wonder what Kyle Dwyler has to say about Baby. He was watching the game tonight, right? Davis is killing the Celtics. Destroying this team.

PER doesn’t account for his defensive attributes. Which are awful. Ruddy awful.

Awful, yeah…

http://www.celticsblog.com/2009/1/12/718211/about-big-baby

Looks like the stifling D is back. Great win. Next up Mavs Celtics seem to like these early games so I’m hoping for a solid win.

The next time BBD has a bad game, his detractors will be ready to trade him for a bag of peanuts, or trade the whole Celtics bench for Joe Smith.

But you saw a glimpse of BBD’s potential. He will reach that potential with a team other than the Celtics after becoming a free agent in June.

I’ll just point out Tony Allen has the occasional gem game, does that make up for 10 stinkers? I actually don’t think BBD is useless, just that he’s not as good as Powe, and Doc should alter his rotation to accommodate that fact.

Longer term the C’s would do well to pick one guy and play him more, but they both are capable of staying in the rotation so for the sake of the other guy, I hope he gets to a team he can get minutes.

What I hate most of all is seeing BBD and Powe playing together, anecdotally that lineup (whicih usually had House at the point) seemed to get outscored by a large margin.

Did any one notice that no matter what the score the commentator just HAD to say well with 3-4 three pointers the magic are still in this game. It must of been said like 5 times a quarter and by the end of the game i was tired of it. I kept thinking well if the C’s make 3-4 three pointers we will be up by 20.

So people wanting Powe the first off the bench would rather have KG sit down first? and have a frontcourt of Perk/Powe? call me crazy but Id rather see Perk sit first and go with BBD/KG

Is Howard injured? In the first quarter after hitting a few shots he was constantly looking at his hand as if it were ?hurt. He only seemed to do this when he made a shot. Fortunately for him he had lots of time last nite for his ?injury to heal. And, is it legal for Howard to remain in the lane for more than three seconds on defense when Perk is at the top of the key setting picks for Ray Allen? Oh yeah, the announcers explained away Howard’s off nite by saying he arrived late because he was stuck in traffic.

This game was one of these (grind it outers) which I think are more significant as to the state of a team than blowouts one way or the other. This was a playoff type game. I thought Orlando played some pretty good defense, but not as good as the C’s.

Gary Payton was, in fact better than John Stockton— at least until Payton became the Mitten instead of the Glove.

Developing a jumper has added to BBD’s ability to score. He’s a lot more effective with a consistent midrange shot. His defensive quickness has always been strong. Establishing an offense game that can work, significantly improves BBD’s game. Too early to say for sure, but if he can consistently nail the midrange, then thats a different BBD. I would also agree that BBD can bring little things to the team. He is quick enough, and big enough, to set very effective picks, screens, block outs. This is only his second year. And he needs to get familiar with the refs.

…unless you’re Danny trying to decide whether to keep one or the other. (I think they’re likely to keep both.) Reason: Celts play opportunistic basketball, as they should. Whoever’s hot gets the minutes… and the ball. If Eddie makes his first 2 or 3 treys, he stays in and gets the ball. If Baby starts hitting those jumpers and playing great, he becomes the go-to guy for the day. If Powe (ever) has a great game, he’ll stay in. Did you see PP looking for Baby to pass to?? That’s great stuff… that’s a TEAM for ya.

Who’s better? Depends on which day. Changes all the time. Powe is in a deep funk right now… can’t even make layups and dunks for some reason. But he’ll break out of it one of these days. Baby is inconsistent, great on some days. But Powe is physically ready to play all the time. Baby is fat (surprise!) (which is why announcers all over the league always chuckle when he’s playing — except last night), and he will NEVER be the best he can be until he loses the extra weight. Basketball is a game of running and jumping, but Baby can’t jump worth a damn right now because, hello? – he’s trying to move about 300 pounds straight up! Another thing about BBD’s great Magic game – keep in mind that he hit most of those shots uncontested, because the Magic didn’t think he was a threat. If he becomes a threat, opponents will start guarding him for the jumper, and then he has to make those shots under duress, which he has not shown he can do. Remember, the kid can only jump a few inches off the ground.

But if BBD ever got in shape (a fantasy, I think), he would be the better player of the two, because Powe’s only got the inside game when he’s hot.

I knew Big Baby could shoot, last year I remember reading he was shooting almost 70% in practices. This year with his expanded role. . .I knew it was just a matter of time. The Portland game incident on national TV took me back a bit, thought maybe he was trade bait.

But I am thoroughly impressed/relieved that he has turned it all around since then. one of the few bright spots of that slump was Baby and Powe leading the defense of the second unit, for the last 3 games of that slump. the bench was actually outdefending the starters. . . .. . .then Phoenix happened, and Big Baby showed up. and then Orlando.

of course his shooting is an abberation and won’t likely happen again for a LONG time. But all things considered, I look forward to big baby being a Celtic for a long time to come.

and by the way, did anyone but me notice that Rondo’s shot has been falling pretty consistently lately?