Two words: Rajon Rondo.

With the season 15% over Brian Scalabrine is on pace for perfection. After 46 minutes on the hardwood, the 6-9 multi-talented redhead is on pace for ZERO rebounds. The winner of the Walter (“I never saw a rebound I wanted or liked” ) McCarty trophy for rebounding incompetence for the 2009-2010 season has for all practical purposes already been decided.

Not gonna watch anymore Celtics games til the playoffs… The games just sadden me.

But they’ll get it back Then the 3s will drop. They do need more low post play and an agressive penetrating Rondo. Their D looked pretty good to me…keeping the magic to under 90. Main problem is offense now and it will come. But Rondo needs to play like a junkyard dog all the time. He’s so fast and has such vision … Just needs to play like 3rd quarter against golden state. Also gotta give magic D some credit… They blocked up the center and defended the perimeter…they played Cs type D. Also, as much as I hate the Yankees, recall that they sucked for the 1st third of the season and after the all-star break found their mojo and were unbeatable. Let’s hope the Cs soon realize how great they really are and stop all this lack of confidence foolishness.

Instead of looking for alternate reasons, I think you nailed the problem in your first paragraph. This team is old. There is very little athleticism. They really rely way way too much on jump shots and when these jump shots are not falling you wind up with days like last night.

With that being said, the playoffs are a different animal. The games slow down. The play becomes more physical. This team is built for the playoffs not for the quicker, faster paced regular season. We wont 65 games again this year but we will win our 50-53 and be one of the favorites to win the Eastern Conference.

I saw several glaring weaknesses last night:

(1) The shot selection was God-awful. While Rasheed’s looks were wide open, there is a poor understanding of tempo with this team. Getting fairly open threes early in the shot clock in a grind it out game like last night is S-T-U-P-I-D. I was pretty riled watching how well the Magic moved during there sets to get open shots while the Cs settled for jumper after jumper after jumper… typically after blowing the first 10 seconds of the shot clock with the ball in one players hands.

(2) What the hell is ROndo playing for perimeter defense? You cannot be lazy with the perimeter players for Orlando (how is Jason WIlliams getting so many drives into the lane) without expecting to be hurt by kick out 3s and dump offs to Howard.

and (3) Right now, too many players have forgotten their roles, and DOc needs to lay down he law.

Rondo > distribute and stop ball penetration
House > you’re an off the pass shooter, not off the dribble
Wallace > you can’t be effective working that far from the hoop
KG > ditto… get your back to the basket a bit more
Allen > in pressure situations, please shoot and don’t dribble

I have to say that I love Perk and hope the team will listen to the big guy. He knows his role.

There are enough players on this team to allow Doc to initiate some consequences for not playing roles. Pierce, Daniels, Perk, Shelden W., Scal, and Hudson – to the extent he’s played – have all shown the willingness to accept their role. Doc needs to remind these guys of the need to get back to what made them successful and play the guys who do that night in and night out.

—KG is a shell of what he was, and he won`t be getting any better. The despair on his face was heart-breaking after the game.

—Wallace is unmotivated, avoids contact, and is content to miss 3-pointers all night long. Leopards don`t change their spots when they change teams. He is what he is.

—Pierce remains a true warrior at heart. But, like KG last night, the realization that the championship window has closed shut has hit him full force. He just witnessed his team lose a “statement” game at home, where the opponent shot a horrible 41% from the floor, and 57% from the FT line.

—Rondo`s FT shooting {25%} will soon become the “laugh” of the entire NBA. Serious “buyer`s remorse” is spreading through the organization to the tune of $55M.

They’re old and they’ve lost a step. Guys like Pierce, Allen, KG and even Rasheed used to be able to put a team on their backs. They can’t do that any more. Rondo can, but he’s inconsistent. And if he can’t make free throws, he’s no good at the end of a close game.

Look at the bright side. The Allen and Garnett trades brought one great championship win against the Lakers. But after watching last night’s game, it’s absolutely clear to me that it is 1988 all over again.

I don´t care if his shots were “in the flow of the offense”. If that´s true, than there´s something fundamentally wrong with the offense.
And if you´re 0-5 from behind the arc, you should be smart enough to realize that you have a cold night and not shoot three more.

We have a PG who can rebound but can´t shoot, and big men who play on the perimeter.
What do people think why there are different height requirements for the different positions?
You want your big men under the basket and your guards with respectable shooting skills for a reason.

In theory, it´s great if your big men can draw the defender away from the basket for a penetrating guard or have a wide-open shot. Guards have so many advantages after the rule changes of the last decade, and Rondo is so fast that this should be a lethal offense.
In theory…

The most important things are always the necessary ones.
The truth is, the skills you need to execute this offense are mostly secondary skills, and should only be used to mix it up. If your big men lack the toughness to play under the basket and grab rebounds, if your PG can´t shoot and can´t even hit a free throw, than they lack necessary skills.

Don´t tell me that we won a championship with that offense.We won it because of our defense first, and Doc was forced to let them play a bit differently, we had different personal (Powe, P.J. Brown), who were able to go straight for the basket in the post, etc.
The comparison doesn´t really work.

Our opponents basically dare Sheed to shoot the three, and this should be a sign for how embarassing our offense works at the moment.
We don´t live and die by Sheed´s threes per se, and Rondo is not the one who gets this team going per se, it´s Doc offense that leads to these things..

There is hope.
If KG can come back to 90% of the 2007 Ticket, than our defense could be good enough to make up for our terrible offense.
If Rondo finds a way to beat himself (because that´s his biggest opponent) consistently and every night, our offense could get a big boost.

1986—Celts Dominate
1987—Injuries prevent a repeat tile
1988—Old age sets in, team goes out quietly

2008—Celts Dominate
2009—Injuries prevent a repeat title
2010—Old age sets in, team will go out quietly

The Celtics had tied the game but were not able to keep up the pressure by scoring the ball. There was no ball movement or intelligence to what they were doing in the last two minutes of that game. It looked like they hit the panic button. Pierce was not able to generate a clean shot for himself. Allen just fumbled the ball away. It was awful and hard to watch.

The defense alone is not going to be enough to bail them out against the Joe Johnsons,Vince Carters, and Lebron James of the world. They need to be able to score the ball too.

So did others. I’m worried about quite a few things, but as much as I love good smart offense, Jeff too is correct in that so much of it comes from our defense. Not sure if Big Baby’s return will make much difference there.
The most frustrating thing about all this to me is that I was REALLY happy with our bench, considering Rasheed and Daniels especially. Then I figured folks like Scalabrine and Allen would be gravy.
We have energy AND smart issues, and that’s a bad combo. I hope KG finds his legs; that’s probably worth an extra three points a game right there. But I’m also wondering if he will only come back so much from this thing.
I guess bringing in Iverson doesn’t make us younger, and might not spark the defense, but I do believe it’s time to move contracts now for help and not wait till the offseason.

The Celtics are putting in the physical effort. Sure they are older and will get beaten on some plays by younger teams. That really isn’t their problem. They have to come out from the start playing defense like mad like they did two years ago. They are not making a mental effort to make teams respond to them. They are inconsistent in everything they do now. To me this shows an absence of mental effort. Winning is so much more fun than losing I don’t see why the team hasn’t figured out that they are only going to beat smart committed teams by playing hard and smart from the openting tap. It’s also time for Doc to try a few minor adjustments here and there just to see if he can kick start this team a bit.

Right now their first quarters are setting the tone for their games. They start out playing lazy mentally, which sometimes looks like physical laziness but is not always the same thing. Right now they have to come out with the attitude that we are gong to win the first quarter. And then try to do exactly the same thing for the next quarter.

Sheed needs to take fewer three-pointers. Right now none of them are going in. When Antoine was here there were thre pointers he was going to make, when he was going to make those when he was squared up to the basket and with his feet set. None of the rest were going to go in. I haven’t a clue as to which of Sheed’s are going in and neither does he.

Rondo needs to work on his free throws and a little jump shot. A couple of years ago his free throw shooting was improving and he had at least a marginal jump shot. You get the confidence to make those shots by making them in practice. I can already see the hint of a trend of teams treatment of Rondo that does not bode well for the future.

Right now I want Doc and the team to challenge themselve to just go out and win the first quarter. Their losses haven’t been flukes, they have been to reasonably good teams that have made the commitment to play hard from the start because they saw that as the way to beat the Celtics. There is plenty of time to turn this around but the Celtics are developing some very bad habits. If they don’t change them soon this will not only be a long frustrating year, but a number of frustrating years. I don’t think that will happen but right now the possibility is far greater than I would like.

The big 3 were put in a position to win the game with the floor spread for them with Eddie house and rasheed wallace…

Rondo was having his worst game of the year, did what his coach said and was an observer from the sidelines…what he witnessed was the inability for the team to run a competent offensive set, old tired legs, missed shots, turnovers, and the inablity for pierce and ray to defend vince carter in the post.

So yes, rondo had a bad game, but all it proves is he remains the teams most important player…they can not win if he plays bad, the big 3 are too old, and too sluggish, and none are playing at an all star level.
spread the blame evenly, yes rondo played bad last night, but the inability for the rest of the team to even look competent when hes not playing good ball is a joke

The Celtics offense and defense look real bad, like a team working too hard on every possession but coming up short everytime (35% FG pct and 2 for 18 3’s last night???)

On offense, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett have been too unselfish. We need to see them drawing double teams more rather than passing the ball to Perk, Rashweed, Eddie whom have single coverage. I think it is a mix of pierce being unselfish and garnett being tired that we arent seeing more 1 on 1 play from them to get the offense running.

We also havent seen a few stapled celtics plays run this year. i’m talking about paul pierce getting the ball around the elbows and foul line. remember this all the time last year? getting to paul’s sweet spot? i havent seen it once this year and it worked 90% of the time everytime.

Celts need BIG BABY !!!!!

that being said, the young ref call on Pierce foul when down 2 with a minute to go was absolute b.s. !!!!

3 of the 5 starters are old and the other 2 have no offensive game. on the bench we have an old rasheed wallace and an undersized shooting guard in eddie house. marquis is not a scorer nor is williams. defensively ray allen is average at best and because we’re older we’ve lost a step in getting to the 3 point shooters. getting baby back wil help with picks as well as energy . did you notice last night that at the end of the game there was no one to set a pick for ray or paul. without perk or baby in the game they had to get open on their own. I think we’ll play better but unfortunately we’re not going to get younger. Based on what I’ve seen we’re not winning a championship with this team as constituted. I’d make the deal for nocioni or someone else. tony allen actually would have helped last night

This thread is looking at the problem to be too nuanced. Its not complicated.

The C’s are just plain shooting poorly. And it isn’t just Rasheed. He’s just more obvious because his misses are cannon shots from beyond the arc and highly visible. But far more painful are the number of shots that the C’s are missing from point blank. Even our lay-ups are an iffy adventure right now.

And I am talking about all the misses that are NOT contested and NOT poor shot selection. We are missing wide-open easy shots of all kinds.

Don’t give me this crap about bad tempo. There’s no tempo problem when you miss a wide open 3 footer.

This is nothing short of a team-wide shooting slump.

They shot the lights out in the first few games and the statistical pendulum has swung waaaayyy over to the dark side the last 6 games. It will eventually settle in the middle. And if they made just a tiny handful of those misses last night they win easily.