Celtics Win an Ugly Game Against the Nuggets

The Boston Celtics starters shot out to a big lead in the first quarter, 35 - 21. Unfortunately a five man bench unit was unable to sustain the starters strong effort and allowed J.R. Smith and Ty Lawson to shoot the Nuggets back into the game. The Denver Nuggets closed to within one point before the starters pushed it back to 7 at the half. 

In the second half the Celtics slowly but surely pulled away ending the third quarter up 11 points and eventually building it to 20 point lead in the fourth quarter. After that the game went into garbage time with some late fireworks between Glen Davis and Nene being the only thing of note.

A solid win for the Celtics over a Nuggets team that was without their best player, Carmelo Anthony, who missed the game with a knee injury.

• This was an ugly game despite being a fairly easy Celtic win. Both teams turned it over a lot, 18 for the Nuggets and 19 for the Celtics. Both teams also fouled a lot, 28 team fouls for the Nuggets and 17 team fouls for the Celtics.
• I can't help but think George Karl hurt his team by going small to start the second half with a line up of Ty Lawson, Chauncey Billups, Arron Afflalo, Al Harrington, and Nene. That unit got them back into the game in the second quarter, but they were unable to do much against the Celtics starters. Then
• The Nuggets bench kept them in the game outscoring the Celtics bench by 47 - 30 at the end, the margin was even bigger in the first half as the Boston bench scored most of their points in the second half.
• Speaking of the bench, Glen Davis added three more offensive fouls to his league leading total. I believe that gets him to 27 for the year.
• Kevin Garnett had a superb night putting up 17 points and 9 rebound on nearly perfect shooting. (8-9 FGA and 1-1 from the line)
• Ray (28 points) and Paul (17 points) were also efficient with their shooting going a combined 15 - 28 from the field and getting to the stripe 13 times.
• Another quiet game from Rondo, with a brief scare when he was tripped and briefly left the game to stretch his left calf. Of course even with a quiet night Rondo piled up a typical 13 assists.
• This is was a game the Celtics should have won at home against a team missing their biggest offensive threat. The winning streak is up to 8 games now, and Philly is up tomorrow on TNT at 8:00 EST.