Jazz Tune Out Celtics

I didn’t watch the game so I’m wondering why the starters played so few minutes…

The rest — blah. Physically dominated by Utah in the second half and the C’s seemed to back down. With two minutes left in the first half and a 12-point lead, the Celts stopped playing defense, rebounding and moving the ball on offense. Rondo let Deron Williams get into his head and our big men, except for Davis, were not good. Successful road trip winning two out of three, but nothing I saw changes my mind about a second round exit. Another loss after having a double digit lead. How many is that now on the season, 17 or 18? They have to be closing in on some sort of record with this stat.

i thought the effort was there. slj did get physical but i don’t think we backed down. okur got hot and so did boozer. deron williams was allowed to drive into rondo and get away with it. it’s been a long trip and this was not one of those earlier low effort defeats.

The Jazz were fantastic in the second half. Just took it to the Celtics, hit their shots, and were incredibly aggressive on offense and in denying penetration.

Rondo – against the best PGs in the league he gets WAY too focused on proving he’s better. Gets out of his game, loses control, starts gambling for steals more than usual etc. Williams is essentially unstoppable in transition, which also doesn’t help.

Pierce looked good for a while in the first half until the Jazz clamped down on him.

The refs had nothing to do with this loss.

Ray looked clumsy off the dribble.

Again – too many careless passes tonight.

Baby can get it done against teams without strong interior defenders. Which will be… uh… nobody in the playoffs. Maybe Toronto.

We played okay in the first half, but missed 2-3 chances to take it to a deep double digit lead, but we had no closing power tonight. We played soft. What killed us was Okur, he hit two 3’s that caught the entire team on fire.

The starters played so little because they played like hell, Rays first shot hit the side of the backboard. Combine that with about 10 shots that rimmed out.

We lose, and ready there are as many posts as after our big won in Dallas.

Man, people around here sure do get over excited easily. We played a bad game no doubt, it happens. As long as the team continues to improve going into the playoffs, we should be fine. At least we will have ad good of a chance as any, anyways.

I see we’ve gone back to 3rd quarter collapses. Well, actually it started a little before half. This team infuriates me sometimes. So which team are they? The team we saw the last three games or the team we saw tonight? And our player of the week was pretty much absent tonight. At least Atlanta lost, just too bad we couldn’t take advantage of it. Oh, and one more thing, why is Boozer (was he the one?) immune from a T when he hung on the rim waaay longer than Nate did the other night?

Celtics were basically the exact same across the shot attempts they just made 4 more shots, and had 3 more rebounds. There threes were raining in the third quarter. But look at the bright side… We had 11 offensive rebounds… 11 offensive rebounds! Yes that’s around good enought to crack the top 15 in average per game. But then again the celtics are at the bottom of the list with a 8.5… And between 11-12 offenisve rebounds rank from 15 place up to 4th!! Are they making the effort finally? I also wanted to point something out..
Celtics- (no one was in foul trouble)
Rondo 28 min
Allen 30 min
Peirce 30 min
Garnett 26 min
Perkins 24 min

Jazz (semi in foul trouble)
Williams 39 min
Mathews 37 min
Okur 32
Michaels 39 min
Boozer 31 min

To me it hasn’t seemed like doc is content with whatever spot we land in. I’m just not gonna feel really bad about a loss when none of the starters on our team averaged 25 minutes each started and the opposing team, also a contender for the finals is getting 36… That 11 minutes is 44 percent more time then our starters. Not really to many complaints but it was nice to only have 3 less rebounds then this team. Also saw the bench get alot of playing time, which wasn’t to upsetting. Docs trying to get the 2nd unit to mesh.. He knows the starters will. Aldo testing out Marquis at point and Nate at shooting guard.. Saw a few new things, guess docs taking the last few games to see bring any new ideas that may work to the table

After a more than week with no internet or cable, good to be back and see our C’s play, too bad I missed the wins and got an L tonight.

I thought the barrage of 3’s in the third ended the game. We went from up 5 at half to down ten before I knew what happened. The Jazz has all the momentum and energy and maintained it until the end.

Ah, so it’s YOUR fault. Just joking! Really!

Jazz played the 2nd half like this was a playoff game or something. Don’t particularly like their brand of basketball. At least 20% of their points were scored by Williams and others simply putting their shoulders down and driving till a whistle blew. Is that how the game is played? I thought there was more to it than that. Pretty simple game, I guess. All you need are 3 moron refs.

Without reviewing the game at all, I saw five instances of Paul being fouled hard with no calls. Rondo called for a travel that was CLEARLY wrong. Multiple blocking fouls, especially on Rondo, that were clearly charges of the elbows-and-shoulders-flying-into-the-defender type.

On the other hand, guys like Okur, Miles and Matthews played great games. And the whole Jazz team played like this was a life-or-death game… in the 2nd half, anyway (and the end of Q2).

Whatever… Cs played an excellent first half right up to the last few minutes, but came out kinda weak in Q3 and then couldn’t catch up. Their effort level was about a B-… right about where it should be for this kind of game. No point killing yourself over another meaningless game on the road, last of 3 games in 4 nights. Want it that bad, Utah? Fine, take it.

Next.

Had Utah not played what was probably their best half of basketball all year {2nd half}, the Celts would`ve swept this road trip.

Boston`s effort was there, but the ball wasn`t bouncing their way.

They actually looked better tonight in defeat…than they did in some uninspiring wins earlier this year at home {LAC, NY}.

Now, all feel free to attack “Satan” : Celtics were out-rebounded tonight…and lost

Why can’t our bench and our starters both play a complete game. Our starters played bad and our bench good. Imagine how good we could be if they both played well the same night???

Argue away! Hope somebody picks up the flag and runs with it…………

Maybe we can use the power of Celticsblog.com to request that the NBA simpy cancel the rest of the season due to the fact that all of these games are meaningless. And, if they do not cancel the games, that all season ticketholders will get a 50 percent refund because they have to attend these games that have no meaning. In addition, we need to request that beginning next season there be no regular season and that the playoffs start on day one with teams seeded by the commissioner. That way we will not have to worry about 82 meaningless games and season ticketholders won’t get suckered into spending thousands of dollars to watch meaningless games about which no one cares and in which no one tries.

Good night.

C’s management have decided that we will not get the number 1 or 2 seed anymore and are trying to keep minutes down. If we finish 3rd then most likely we will have to play Orl in the 2nd round and Cle in the CF. If we finish 4th then we’ll have Cle in the 2nd and (probably) Orl in the CF so whats the point in straining your aging stars and increasing their chances of injury with 13 games to go before the playoffs.

…there is no arguing with people who wanna believe whatever it is they wanna believe. Especially when they’ve got dark glasses on. We are just going to have to wait for the playoffs, and see.

Far as I can see, the Celtics are handling things very well these days.

vinnie: Of course you think that. You want to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, and winter will turn into spring, and then summer, etc. That doesn’t make it true. The Earth is not flat only if it PROVES it’s not flat EVERY SINGLE TIME we look at it. If it can’t prove it, it’s not true. I need PROOF before I believe that, or anything. I’m not drinking the Koolaid! And besides, one day the sun will become a reg giant and destroy the Earth. Betcha it’ll be pretty flat then!

hooray: No, that’s wrong! It’s flat if you carve out a flat area! I look out at my patio, and that is FLAT, sir; I checked it with a laser. That football field is absolutely FLAT. You can’t just make a general statement like that. The Earth is flat IN PLACES. You must be more accurate.

TheOutletPass: That’s pretty professorial and arrogant of you, DRJ1. Now come here and kiss my stinky feet, y’hear!?!

CavsFanfrLV: Uhh…umm… bla bla bla… I don’t know why you all hate me…I’m pretty flat, really I am…. blablablablablabla…. driveldriveldrivel…

just think about the ‘Popovich philosophy’
Celts are trying to limit their minutes for the playoffs and fine tuning.
if the starters played more than 30+ minutes then you can compare it to the bad streak that we had.
its not really worth hustling for this game.. for me the way they played MAVS and ROCKETS. thats enough for me to believe that they truly have a switch!
and one good thing about this is for the 2nd unit to gel..
we cant win this with an average 2nd unit, they have to step up big time! especially you Quis! eyes on you!

i’d say stay healthy! and ohh beat DENVER!

I’ll rephraise my last post a little. Docs trying to see the starters rest more… And wants to see the second string click note

ok- it was only one loss but it was a real step backwards for a team trying to build some momentum. Last night we exhibited all of the flaws that have cost us so many games this year and will in the end cost us a chance at another title. Poor rebounding,poor transition defense,lack of ball movement,turnovers, lack of performance from our stars, too much individual play and not enough team play ,lack of focus and lack of toughness. We played a great second quarter up to about 3 minutes to go before the half. then the wheels came off and we never recovered. I agree with many of the posts that Rondo let his matchup with Williams affect his game and in turn that affected the rest of the team. IN fairness to Rondo though, the help D on Williams from KG,Perk etc was poor. We can’t win anything with KG getting 3 rebounds and playing passive defense. THe Jazz are better coached and execute better. They run their offense consistently and they stick to thier defensive assignments. We, on the other hand, go into panic mode and go away from our schemes the moment things go south. everyone tries to do it on thier own. Last night was another reminder of all of the problems this team has and the fact that we still haven’t fixed them. Again, it was one loss but it was the way we lost. I was very discouraged by last night’s performance.

But we can’t take anything away from Utah in the second half, they came out with guns blazing and reallly could not miss, its just really one of those games that if another team gets waxing hot, there is nothing you can do about it, They stayed to their schemes and executed to perfection their second and third options on the drive and kick outside for the three ball and swiish..Its practically the same formula that made us lose to the Cavs the last time and these two games are reallly abit identical in the way we lost them.

Could we have prevented it sure…we should have closed out better to their three point shooters, PP was practically giving Miles 5 ft of shooting space for his three ball, and so was Okur free all day to take the three ball,…we chose to clamp down the inside lane for Deron but failed to execute defense on their perimeter game, and them shooting lights out from the outside in the second half didn’t help either.

But in a series, we would flat out win against the Jazz coz we would adjust our defense, this is why the Jazz won’t win against the Fakers…they would win a couple maybe, but the Playoffs are all about adjustments, so I really wouldn’t put much in this loss..we obviously didn’t scout them well and we thought we could come to their building and just win..Didn’t happen, so we move on.

I thought we had pretty good energy. Utah had tremendous energy in the second half. They were hungrier. But I like the development of our bench. I think they are going to become a factor for us come playoff time. I like that we are starting to rebound better. I think last night was more a case of another team just having a great second half, rather than us mailing it in. Plus it was the last game of a long travelled trip.