Celtics Get Burned—You Knew It Was Coming

The Denver Nuggets, renewed by the re-acquisition of Chauncey Billups, played toe-to-toe with the NBA Champs. The Celtics have been playing with fire for a while now. It was the 3rd team in a row to really challenge the Green Team. This time the challenger won, 94-85.

The Celtics can't seem to put a strong 48 or even 36 minutes of basketball together this season. They used to dominate for 24 to 36 minutes and that was the game. This is 2008.

They are getting off to slow starts or giving leads away, always playing catch up, and looking unimpressive as they do so, only to claw back into the game with solid, determined play. It looked like they could turn it on anytime they wanted to...until the Hawks game. Now Denver hopefully sends a wake-up call to the Green Team.

Denver went up by 15 points at the 8:37 mark of the third period. Just when the Celtics looked like they were out of the game, they clawed back to take the lead on an Eddie House three pointer in the final period at 70-67. Denver would build another 8 point lead, before Boston would come back to tie again at 84 for the last time with 3:10 left on a Garnett dunk.

Those would be Boston's last points until Patrick O'Bryant hit a meaningless free throw with 35 seconds left. J. R. Smith had 9 of his ten points in the period.

Boston loses its first home game and Denver goes 4-1 since the trade for Billups, as Boston's offensive woes continue. They scored just 36 points in the middle two quarters.

A "bought -in" Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups led a balanced Nugget attack with 18 points a piece with 6 players in double figures total. They responded to numerous Boston challenges and re-took the lead a number of times.

The Bad News

Denver controlled the paint, unusual in a Celtic game as they outscored the Cs there by an astounding 42-20. That never used to happen to these Celtics. They out ran the Cs with 18 to 8 on fast-break points. They outrebounded the Celtics by 50-40 including team rebounds. All three numbers are highly uncharacteristic of this Celtic team. And the Celtics had a day's rest while the Nuggets played last night.

The Celtics were led by Ray Allen's 26 points, 18 of them in the first quarter. Paul Pierce had 19 points, and Kevin Garnett added 16.

Bench Needs to Improve

They are not getting the support they were earlier from the bench. But it goes beyond that.

The simple answer is that the Nugget bench outplayed and outscored the Celtic bench 26-16. But that was only part of it. The Celtics were actually outplayed by 16 points with Eddie House, Glen Davis and Leon Powe on the floor. But it was worse than the points scored differential.

With between 6 to 8 minutes each, on the floor in the first half, Tony Allen, Glen Davis, and Eddie House had registered goose eggs in rebounds, assists and steals - combined. Not a single one. Leon Powe added 2 rebounds. The four of them scored 3 points total in the first half.

Davis, Allen and Powe finished 0-8 shooting combined on the night. House heated up shooting with 11 second half points, but wasn't able to make the defensive effort to contain Denver. Leon Powe, particularly, did not have a good game.

This was a night the plus/minus numbers would not tell you all of what really was happening.

Rondo in Slump

Rajon Rondo is in a scoring slump. 1 for 7 tonight but he is just 5 for 23 over the last three games, and is exacerbated by low output from Kendrick Perkins. And most of that is at the hoop. His outside shooting is almost non-existent. He put a few jumpers up tonight without success and one wasn't even close.

Kendrick is not getting the easy dunks he got last season and his field-goal percentage shows it (48 percent vs. 61 percent last year). Props to JB of CelticsStuffLive for pointing that out a few games ago. Perk also had a critical turnover when Nene took the ball away at the top of the key with Nuggets leading only 87-84. It led to a fast break two points and the Celtics were done.

Kevin Garnett is usually setting up at the high post to hit the jumper, to open things up underneath, and to facilitate his passing. Perhaps he needs to make more shots from there early in the game for it to work right. He also doesn't seem to play down low as much as last year.

As a result, KG is not getting to the foul line as much either. He is at less than half of last season with 2.2 vs 4.7 free throw attempts.

With the bench unable to get points on the board and Rondo and Perkins not scoring, it is putting tremendous pressure on the Big Three to score. They can't keep this up for long, if they want to be fresh at the end of the season.

If things don't get better in a few games, I suspect we will see Patrick O'Bryant, Bill Walker, and possibly Gabe Pruitt or Sam Cassell getting a chance to help and get some valuable playing time. Maybe it happens sooner than that.

One game is an exception. Two games means pay attention. Three games is a mini-problem.

The season is long. It is only game nine. Will Doc take the Greg Popovich approach and just look for better execution from his anointed 9 player rotation? Or will he experiment with his other roster options?

One thing that almost never happened last season was getting outhustled by their opponents. Tonight the Nuggets were the aggressor and were far more energetic for most of the night.

The lack of scoring support will take a toll on the three stars as I see it. With two non-scorers and two poor foul shooters in Rondo and Perkins, something had to change soon.

At 8-2 it probably looks like I'm doing unnecessary hand wringing. But I'm looking at the improved competition this season, both in conference and out. The Celtics have time to figure things out, but so far this not quite the juggernaut we saw last season.

Unusual Stat of the Night

Tony Allen—13:50 minutes, one point, zero rebounds, zero assists, zero steals, zero turnovers

This article first appeared in Tom's CelticsCentral blog on the Connecticut Post website.