No D, No Win

A ton of missed opportunities for the C’s tonight. Rondo’s missed free throws. Pierce and Wallace tried to play the hero a bit too much for my taste.

you’re right, j.c.- you can’t win them all. amidst the no defense, a lot of bricks. perk played d but was a bricklayer.pp was out of sorts. and nash outplayed rondo. amen again-j.c. the sun is so much better off without shaq. much more room for outside pick and rolls.

By playing their game from the start, we let Richardson out of the bottle. On top of that they out hustled us.

Finally, to top it off, Tommy’s homerism was too much to listen to.

I think our biggest problem was a lack of energy. We turned on the defensive jets with 5 minutes to go but the Suns were already in rhythm and confident and they used our hectic defense against us. The biggest blows were Channing Frye’s 2 4th quarter J’s (taking advantage of KG’s aggressive help) and Amare’s drive on Sheed when Sheed got way to far up on him. The KG-Rondo miscommunication on that last Nash 3 was pretty painful too: KG effectively screened Rondo.

PHX won but to me until they learn to play defense they will go nowhere. C’s had an off night defensively but it will be back.

Thirteenth 3-point basket by the opponent—-with less than a minute remaining—-in Boston`s 3rd game in 4 nights——to finally bring about a Celtic defeat…that should indicate that the Celts are one tough team to put away!

our defense was fine. The intensity was then. On offense we were great. Sheed maybe should have given it to Ray more down the stretch, but other than that we had great play from everyone on the offensive end.

We wanted this game. Suns just hit everything. It happens. I’m not calling it bad defense… it’s just better offense by the Suns tonight.

…why does everyone think our window is only about 2 more years? Why not 4 or 5?

Anyway…. Cs didn’t deserve to win, but they still could have. Tommy was right about the refs… they were ridiculously one-sided tonight. For all the atrocious perimeter D (what D?), the missed FTs (they shot better 3 pointers than the Cs did free throws), and the hustle imbalance, Cs still had a shot at this game. If 2 or 3 of the calls had been made correctly, who knows? That’s pretty amazing to me, considering how much better the Suns seemed to play tonight. It’s hard to imagine anyone beating the Celtics if/when they play reasonably well.

Lots of aberrations (hopefully) tonight:
1. Bad bench play, outside of Daniels. House put up an 0-fer, proving once again that he can be taken out of a game if the defense focuses on him. He also should never play point again; not sure why Doc continues to beat that dead horse. ‘Sheed was good inside the arc, but terrible outside of it.
2. Tired or Old? Both, at least tonight. No energy out there in the 1st half, and we let the Suns set the pace of the game all night long. Our defensive rotations were BAD. Suns seemed to make all the hustle plays (though Rondo’s offensive rebound putback was beautiful).
3. Bad shooting, from the line and the arc. Of course, we could have gotten to the line more (there was a real bad stretch of questionable calls from the early 3rd to late 4th); and we could have gotten to the rim more too. I’d like to see more self-consciousness from this team, we could have gotten a layup pretty much ever possession if we worked for one. But we didn’t. We just kept taking and missing 3 pointers. Rondo, especially, spent too much time seeking out people spotting for 3s than he did probing the defense for layups. He could have scored 30 tonight. He had a nice line tonight, but I thought Nash totally controlled the game throughout. Rondo could have taken that control away from Nash by scoring against Nash’s terrible defense—for the most part, he let Nash rest.

“They made shots and we didn’t” isn’t really what the game came down to. It was more the Celtics settling for playing Phoenix style basketball and making only a half-hearted defensive effort that cooked their goose tonight. Some may argue that the Celtics are feeling the effects of a rough stretch, but Phoenix is on a long East Coast swing that should be tiring them as well. It looked to me like some players have been reading their press clippings a little too much.

To beat a team like Phoenix, you need to slow the pace not run with them. Use the 24-second clock and make them chase the ball on defense.

This was the least entertaining game of the year to this Celtics fan and not just because they lost. It looked like a squad of individuals most of the time rather than a team.

as the suns. We lost because they out hustled us. Cs need to play with full intensity to beat the good teams. The Cs seemed to lack confidence tonght. No clamp down D. Missed a ton of shots in the paint 3Ps and FTs suns were playing with playoff intensity and Cs needed to do the same but didn’t. Should be a wake up call.