It's interesting to see the C's fresh out of the all star break. Last night their defense looked great. There offense was spotty. First things first, lets talk about Ray Allen who was on fire.
He's been struggling the most of the season. Last night in a post game interview when asked about the trade rumors he said "I knew coming into the season that come trade deadline my contract would look attractive." There is a lot to this statement. I never really thought about it. I thought the trade rumors were messing with his head in the past few weeks, but seems Ray has been thinking about this all year. He didn't feel safe. He is nearing the end of his career. Most trade situations would send him to a non contender that is trying to make cap room for next season. If I'm Ray Allen, I would not want to pack up my family when I'm 35 years old, with a sick child, and go play for a rebuilding team that will dump me next year. Sure, Ray is a pro. These rumors and thoughts shouldn't effect his game, but they do. And they did. It's not the rumors, it's the logic of the situation. It made sense to trade him. So last night, after deemed safe, he hits his first 10 of 11 shots, on the road, against the best team in the league. So after the game I spent a lot of time thinking about this and came to the conclusion that we will see the old Ray Allen again. Sure, he'll slump again. But he's going to be there.
Kevin Garnett is looking more and more like KG every game. Last night he fumbled the ball twice being careless and playing frantic. Did that bother you? Because it excited me. Why? He's playing frantic. He's playing young at heart. What do young players do? They make mistakes. Stupid ones. So what. Last night we saw him fight hard for loose balls. Do his turn around jumper and nailed it with a defender all over him. He threw down an insane dunk. (we saw some spring in the legs which we haven't seen in a while.) He fouled Pau extremely hard which I thought was going to be a flagrant. He pulled down a clutch rebound in the final minute. So a lot of good things from last night. Is he the way we want him to be? No. But he is on his way. We are starting to see him shine through. Remember these players are different in the playoffs. The last time we saw KG in the playoffs, well, we won it all. Enough said.
Perk and Rondo continue to be effective and amazing. Nothing needs to be said about them. Paul is going to be Paul until the day he hangs it up.
Rasheed, this is the key to the team. We need this guy to play better. Straight up. He needs to post up more. Every time he posts up he scores. I never want to see him shoot a three again. Ever. Unless it goes in.
All in all I think everyone freaked out during our losing slump. Teams go through slumps. We are just so used to winning that when we lose, we ask ourselves, whats wrong. Nothings wrong. Just a slump.
Now you can say if Kobe played we would have lost. Guess what...Kobe didn't play, and we won. We can play the what if game all we want. If you look at the stats guys like Kobe and Lebron, their numbers against our time are always below their averages. The Lakers are still the second best team in the west without Kobe.
As far as tonight is concerned, don't be shocked if we lose. Back to back road games are tough for any team. We are playing with house money tonight. If we win, that's great, if we lose, no big thing. The game I'm really looking forward to is the Nuggets. I said last year I think the Nuggets come out of the west. Well I'm saying it this year too. This team is a really good. They have a very strong bench and obviously Melo. (MVP) That's a big game for us. They just beat the Cavs, their the team to beat. If we beat them, then we are the team to beat, and we play the Cavs next Thursday. If we can beat the Cavs and the Nuggets I'd say we are back, regardless what happens in-between. We have a very tough schedule coming up.
As far as Nate is concerned. I wont be to focused on it. We traded one shooter for a younger one. They both suck at defense. The one thing Nate has is he can handle the ball. This means Daniels can play off the ball, which I expect him to put up some points now. He didn't even take a shot last night. He has to put some numbers up. Our second unit reads like this:
Robinson
(T) Allen
Daniels
Davis
Wallace
Thats better than some starting units. Nate completes that unit very nicely so I expect the bench to be more productive.
Rebounding. Come on guys. Rebounding is about effort. When we won it all we were 3rd in the league in rebounding. Are team isn't that different. Simple as that for your simple ass.
All in all I think the next 10 days could turn it around for the Celtics, or make us except we are no longer contenders. Hopefully Doc is preparing them for this.
No comments:
Post a Comment