Erick Blasco's Sunday NBA Review, Jan. 4 Edition: Celtics Mired in a Funk

Celtics Need To Turn The Page

The Boston Celtics must’ve lost more than the game when they fell to the Los Angeles Lakers on Christmas Day. They must’ve lost their confidence too.

How else can you explain them losing three of their next five games after falling to the Lakers? Sure, they were drained emotionally when they lost their next game to the Warriors, but they should’ve gotten over that. Instead they lost to the Blazers without Brandon Roy?

And to the Knicks 100-88?

The Celtics allowed the Knicks to shoot nine more free throw attempts. They were outrebounded by their smaller counterparts. Those are both physicality stats the Celtics usually dominate.

And the Celtics usually extraordinary defense allowed two Knicks, Al Harrington and Wilson Chandler, to score 30-plus points, as Harrington and Chandler scored 31 and 30, respectively.

Paul Pierce played well offensively, scoring 31, but Ray Allen missed all nine of his three-pointers, and Kevin Garnett never showed up with his offense, scoring just six on 1-6 shooting.

In the long run, the Celtics probably will need a backup ball handler, a better wing defender than Tony Allen, and more length in their front court, but they didn’t need those things to beat the Knicks. They needed to play with the same inner passion and swagger that allowed them to win last year’s championship, and win 19 games in a row earlier in the year.

Even though Boston’s an elite team, not playing with confidence is an equalizer against lesser opponents. The Knicks, on the other hand, believed they could beat the Celtics and played with enthusiasm the entire game. Again, confidence was the equalizer. At least for one night, the Knicks were more than equal with the Celtics—they were better than them.


Big Loss For Cleveland

Zydrunas Ilgauskas misses his second game after straining his ankle and the Cavs are outscored in the paint 38-28, and outrebounded 52-35, in an 80-77 loss to the Wizards.

Coincidence?

Cleveland earns its bones by being a power team focused on defense, rebounds, and scoring in the paint. Ilgauskas is the lynchpin of Cleveland’s defensive and rebounding identity, and the best post up player the Cavs have. With him in street clothes, the Cavs had a lot of problems keeping the Wizards from finishing in traffic, or running an efficient offense.

The Cavs shot 39.4 percent, but most of that was due to LeBron shooting 11-22 from the field.

Cleveland has to hope that Ben Wallace and Anderson Varejao—neither anywhere near as accomplished offensively as Ilgauskas, and neither anywhere near as massive—can hold down the fort while getting contributions from rookie J.J. Hickson (four points, four rebounds). If not, the Cavs may have to look outside the organization for some size, or slip a little in their hopes to overcome Boston for the top spot in the East.

And by the way, yes, LeBron did travel.


Bosh Fuels Victory

In Toronto‘s 108-102 victory over Orlando, Chris Bosh played the way he was supposed to play this season. He only shot 5-12 from the floor, and only scored 23 points, but he was relentless in attacking the rim early and often and putting Dwight Howard in early foul trouble.

And late in the game, Bosh sank seven of eight free throws to give the Raptors the lead and preserve the victory.

Toronto doesn’t have the strength to handle any of the league’s upper-echelon teams, so they need Bosh to be active and physical putting opposing bigs in foul trouble.

That’s the only reason why they beat Orlando.

The Raptors still had nobody to stop Dwight Howard who went for 39 points and eight rebounds. But that foul trouble kept him on the bench in the first quarter and allowed the Raptors to take a 16-point lead early in the second. Orlando stormed back, but they spent so much energy that they couldn’t pull through in the fourth.

Anthony Parker had a huge game, shooting 13-16 for 26 points, and picking up a key fourth quarter steal.


Mavs Suffer Bad Loss

Keeping on the disappointing losses track, the Mavericks fell to the Grizzlies by 20, 102-82.

The Grizzlies played an outstanding game as their offense generated 44 points in the paint. Their balanced attack was led by O.J. Mayo with 21 points, but Rudy Gay, Hakim Warrick and Marc Gasol scored 18, 18, and 19 points respectively.

For Dallas, Dirk Nowitzki scored 28, and Jason Terry had 18, but the rest of the team shot 13-40 from the field.

In the cutthroat Western Conference, the Mavericks simply can’t take days off defensively like they did against Memphis, and they must get production from players other than Dirk and Terry.

As for Memphis, progress is being made, albeit slightly. They’re now the best of all of the Western Conference teams that have no chance in making the playoffs. That isn’t much, but at the end of the season, after several barren seasons at the bottom of the league, a tenth place finish would look like a nice stepping stone into 2009-2010.

Notes

In their 100-86 loss, Portland played hard, but they don’t have the talent without Brandon Roy to overcome the Lakers on the road. Meanwhile, with Zydrunas Ilgauskas injured for Cleveland, and the Celtics soul searching, the Lakers are the undisputed best team in the NBA—for now.

Hooray! The Pistons won on Sunday! Still, despite the 88-87 victory over the Clippers, the fact that they only inched past Los Angeles on a goaltending call with five seconds is another indicator that Sunday isn’t Detroit’s best day of the week.

And with so many selfish, one-dimensional players, with awful contracts, and playing awful basketball, don’t the Clippers look a lot like the Isaiah Thomas-led Knicks?