Philadelphia 89, Boston 86
Well, I'm happy for the fans of Philadelphia. Judging by the reaction from Philly's play by play announcer, I'm pretty sure they'll hang a banner after this one. I guess that's the solace we can take here, we helped make someone else's day with our own schadenfreude.
And honestly as a Celtics fan, you ought to be happy it was as close as it actually was. Excuses are fun for gym class or pretending to miss work or something, but I'm not going to offer any for tonight's game. There really shouldn't be one for the way the starters played tonight. Jeff Green had the best performance of the night, with a solid 50% shooting to get to 18 points and 4 boards, but from there I don't have a lot of great things to say about the rest of the guys. Krstic played well, managing 16pts and 15 rebounds, which is one away from a career high. But, on the defensive end I wasn't too pleased, as for the second consecutive game an inferior team's bigs managed above their means against our depleted defense, which can partially be blamed on our depleted depth, I suppose.
Paul Pierce was the only starter to shoot above .500, but he managed to do that in a measly 4-7 performance that could be expanded to 4-9 if you count missed attempts he was bailed out on later in the game by whistles. Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett both had pretty terrible offensive showings, which really was the difference here.
Carlos Arroyo at least to me was encouraging tonight though. While he wasn't the offensive force Nate Robinson or even Eddie House are capable of being when they're hot, he displayed again a game managing ability neither one possessed, and to that end Rajon Rondo played his lowest minutes count (30) since January.
The one cool take-away tonight: Troy Murphy dunked. Beyond that, I'm happy to put this game in the rear-view and move on.