Archive for the ‘Boston Celtics’ Category

Fouling Out: Six Personal Thoughts on the Game – Raptors 86, Celtics 74

Posted by Joseph Casciaro under Anthony Carter, Boston Celtics, DeMar DeRozan, Jose Calderon, Recap on Feb 10, 2012

Game No. 28: Raptors 86, Celtics 74

As Scott pointed out in his game thread, the Celtics had beat the Raptors by a combined 59 points in their first two meetings, so despite the fact that the old-timer Celtics were coming off of an overtime loss to the Lakers on Thursday night, no one expected the Bargnani-less and Bayless-less Raps to hang with the Celts, let alone beat them.

So much for that. The Raptors jumped on the Celtics early and never trailed in a wire to wire victory.

Now here are some thoughts on the game:

1- What a start. After going 14 straight games without winning a first quarter, the Raptors have now won two straight opening frames, and did so in dominating fashion on Friday night. The young Raptors jumped on the older, fatigued Celtics from the tip, jumping out to a 16-point lead with some infectious energy on both ends of the floor. Eight minutes into the ball game, the Raptors had a 14-2 advantage in points in the paint and were holding Boston to just 25 per cent shooting. When it was all said and done, the Celtics matched their lowest scoring first quarter of the season (14), and Doc Rivers was hilariously steaming.

2- Despite a great start for the Raptors, the first half overall was a dud for basketball fans. The Raptors came crashing back to earth in the second quarter and easily could have lost their lead, but luckily for them, the Celtics were just as bad. That second quarter was one of the worst quarters of basketball I’ve seen this season in any game. At one point, both teams combined to turn the ball over on five straight possessions. By the time the comedy of errors was over, the teams had combined for 21 turnovers in the first half and were shooting just 28-of-72.

3- Is DeMar finding his game again? DeRozan’s month-long slump was well publicized, but it seems that he may finally be putting it behind him and getting back on track. During his rough patch, he was never able to build on one good performance and put a string of good games together. All the more reason why his 21 points on seven-of-13 shooting against the Celtics just two days after 25 points on nine-of-18 shooting against the Bucks was encouraging. In fact, it’s the first time since early January, right before his slump began, that DeRozan has put together back-to-back 20-point games. Since exploding for 27 points against the Nets on January 29, DeRozan is averaging 17.6 points on 45 per cent shooting over his last eight games and is going to the line an average of 7.4 times per game.

Perhaps the best indication that DeRozan is finally climbing out of this funk is this – Four of DeMar’s nine 20-point games this season have come during this eight game stretch.

4- From DeRozan’s good game to the down right horrible game of Anthony Carter. When the Raptors signed Carter in December, I was fine with the move. A one-year deal for a veteran point guard who could serve as a mentor to a young team and step in when needed seemed right. While A.C. may very well be that veteran leader in the locker room, he is far from anything positive on the court. I didn’t expect him to be great, or even above average, but I thought he could at least look competent in a few minutes of burn when called upon. To date, Carter is shooting just 35 per cent and runs Toronto’s offence at a rate that makes Darrick Martin look like he deserves a spot in our Ultimate Raptors Rankings. Hopefully tonight was rock-bottom for Carter, as the 36-year-old finished with zero points (on 0-for-5 shooting), one assist, two turnovers and was a minus-15 in 11 minutes of action. He also threw an alley-oop pass that failed to make it past the restricted circle and landed comfortably in a Celtics’ player’s arms. Tank Nation, indeed.

5- As good as Jose Calderon has been this season, the point guard position is still one of many areas the Celtics have a clear advantage over the Raptors. Naturally, you would assume that Calderon would have to at least come close to competing with Rajon Rondo if the Raptors ever have a chance against Boston. On Friday night, Calderon did more than compete with the younger, faster Rondo, he flat out took him to school. While Rondo fumbled and bumbled to just five points (on 2-of-10 shooting), seven assists and five turnovers, Calderon lit him up for 17 points (on 7-of-12 shooting), 14 assists and zero turnovers.

In his last two games, Calderon has 29 assists compared to just one turnover. It’s these kind of stretches that give some Raps fans hope that Calderon can bring back valuable assets in a trade, and others’ hope that he’ll still be in Toronto’s future plans.

6- As most of you are well aware, the Celtics have used the Raptors as punching bags during the “Big Three” era in Boston, and while the Raps had mustered two wins in 19 tries heading into this game, I think we can all agree that this victory had a much different feel. As you may recall, the other two wins came in games that were decided in the final minute and final possessions. This was really the first time in five seasons, and the first time ever against the Celtics’ Big Three (now “Big Four”), that the the Raptors have handedly defeated them.

In many ways, an undermanned Raptors team bullied the bullies. Maybe it was just another sign that the Celtics are getting old, maybe it was nothing more than an anomaly in this helter-skelter 66-game season, but I must say, Tank Nation or no Tank nation, it was pretty sweet to watch unfold.

Raptors Player of the Game: Jose Calderon – 38 Min, 17 Pts, 7-12 FG, 1-3 3PT, 2-3 FT, 4 Reb, 14 Ast, 1 Stl

Celtics Player of the Game: Kevin Garnett – 29 Min, 17 Pts, 6-9 FG, 5-6 FT, 8 Reb, 2 Ast, 1 Stl

3 Comments

Game thread: Celtics vs. Raptors

Posted by Scott Carefoot under Boston Celtics, Game thread on Feb 10, 2012

Start time: 7:00 PM ET
Channel: TSN
Probable starting lineups
Toronto: Jose Calderon, DeMar DeRozan, James Johnson, Amir Johnson, Aaron Gray
Boston: Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Jermaine O’Neal

Injury report

Toronto: Andrea Bargnani and Jerryd Bayless are both out.

Boston: Sasha Pavlovic and Avery Bradley are questionable for tonight, Keyon Dooling and Jeff Green are out.

Will the Celtics be fatigued tonight after their one-point loss to the Lakers in overtime last night? Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo each played over 40 minutes, so the Raptors have to hope they’re a step slow tonight if they’re going to have a shot at beating them for the first time this season. The Celtics have already notched two regular season and two pre-season wins over the Raptors, and the regular season victories were by a combined margin of 59 points.

Prior to last night’s OT setback, the Celtics had won five straight games and eight of their last 10. I think it’s safe to say that we wrote them off too soon, yet again. I think I might call them the Boston Voorhees from now because they just… won’t… die. If you watched the Raptors fail to score over 75 points in each of their previous two games in Boston, you know that the Celtics’ defensive intensity is still on point.

Based on this James Johnson quote from the ESPN preview of this game, we might see a more inspired performance from the Raptors compared to the two previous lackluster efforts: “They’ve been beating us since the preseason so it’s getting old. They’re not just beating us but beating us bad. It’s time for us to buckle down. We definitely need to come out flying and treat this game like it’s Game 7. We can’t go out like we’ve been going out against Boston.”

Random thoughts…

  • One guy who hasn’t gotten caught up in “Linsanity”: Kobe Bryant

1 Comment

Fouling Out: Six Personal Thoughts on the Game – Celtics 100, Raptors 64

Posted by Joseph Casciaro under Aaron Gray, Boston Celtics, Dwane Casey, Ed Davis, Recap on Feb 01, 2012

Game No. 23: Celtics 100, Raptors 64

The Raptors continued their recent trend of both being unable to play a good first quarter and being unable to give the Celtics a good, competitive game.

How bad was it tonight in Boston? Well the Raptors nearly had as many turnovers (five) as field goals (six) in the first quarter, Aaron Gray was one of only two Raptors with more than three points midway through the second quarter and the first half came to an end with a Kevin Garnett three-pointer.

By that time, the second half wasn’t even worth watching.

Now here are some thoughts on the game:

1- I mentioned another poor first quarter above. The Raps have now gone 11 straight games without winning a first quarter, and in nine of those games, they’ve been down by at least eight points after the opening frame. With a team as low on talent as the Raptors, a lot of times their only hope is going to be if they can use their youth to jump on teams early and try to hang on. Digging themselves double-digit holes before they can even blink is like booking themselves a handicap wrestling match.

2- Another game, another starting lineup. Tonight it was Calderon, DeRozan, James Johnson, Davis and Gray. Dwane Casey hasn’t been shy in mixing up his starting unit according to different matchups, and I don’t blame him. With how inconsistent the young Raptors have been and with the injuries to key players they’ve dealt with, I don’t mind seeing different players getting a look in the starting five and off of the bench. If they were a contending team or a fully healthy team with playoff aspirations, I’d like to see some lineup and rotation consistency from game to game, but that isn’t the case. This season, as I’ve stated numerous times, is about finding out what you have with a lot of these guys.

3- One of the differences in tonight’s lineup was the absence of Linas Kleiza, who was held out of action with a sore right knee. According to the Raptors’ Media Relations twitter account, the Raptors are “monitoring minutes and giving rest on a back-to-back.” This seems fair and legitimate considering that Kleiza only recently returned from microfracture surgery on that same knee, but I can’t help but wonder if Kleiza was held out because of a combination of the knee and playing the Celtics for the first time since taking out their best player on a non-basketball play.

4- I have no problem admitting that the team I root for is incredibly low in the talent department and was flat out out-worked by a much better Celtics team on Wednesday night. Having said that, I don’t think it’s my hometown bias, but wow, was the officiating ever slanted in this ball game? On the surface, you could look at the fact that the Celtics only had 12 free throw attempts and call me crazy. But Boston’s lack of trips to the line had more to do with the Raptors’ careless defensive mentality than pro-Raptors officiating. What I’m talking about is how many times a Raptors player (usually DeMar DeRozan or Jerryd Bayless) was practically mugged on the way to the basket without a whistle. Though perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, as the Raps shot an embarrassing eight-of-18 from the charity stripe.

5- It’s incredibly hard to find even the faintest silver lining after a game like this, but I did want to mention Ed Davis. After finally putting up a double-double of 11 points and 11 rebounds Tuesday night against the Hawks, Davis followed up with another double-double of 10 points and 12 rebounds against the Celtics. I realize that Davis’ two best statistical performances of the season have come in blowouts and would obviously like to see him put up these kinds of numbers in tight games, but it’s still a good start. You’ll remember that last season, Davis really got on a roll in the latter half of the year and finished with six double-doubles in his last 10 games. I’m hoping that the last two games serve as a springboard to the same type of streak from here on out.

6- If there is an ugly trend that has sneaked into the last two games, it’s the return of the Raptors’ ugly defence of years past. Perhaps it’s just a two-game blip on the radar, perhaps it’s the result of the Hawks and Celtics being tough matchups for the young Raps, perhaps it was just due after looking like a good defensive team through the first third of the season, but the Raptors have been downright awful on the defensive end this week. The Hawks and Celtics combined to shoot 51.6 per cent (80-of-155) from the field, 45.2 per cent from three (19-of-42) and scored 100 points each after the Raptors allowed just two teams to score 100 points through four quarters in their first 21 games. No one could have expected the Raptors to look as good as they did defensively for the first month of the season and these last two games looked eerily similar to the 2010-2011 Raptors team that was historically bad on the defensive end, so this could be the beginning of the end for a defence that often looked too good to be true.

Needless to say, I’ll be very interested in watching how the team’s defence responds and performs over the next few games.

***

You know it was a tough night at the office when all 12 Raptors players, even Anthony Carter and Solomon Alabi who only played five minutes each, were a minus-six or worse in plus/minus.

Raptors Player of the Game: Aaron Gray – 26 Min, 8 Pts, 4-6 FG,0-3 FT, 9 Reb, 1 Stl, 1 Blk, 1 TO (Davis may have finished with the better numbers, but Gray and Bayless were the only two Raptors who brought a solid effort from the second they touched the floor. When Aaron Gray is your best player against teams like the Celtics, you’re just asking for a beat-down.)

Celtics Player of the Game: Paul Pierce – 26 Min, 17 Pts, 5-11 FG, 4-6 3Pt, 3-4 FT, 6 Reb, 8 Ast, 1 Stl, 1 Blk, 1 TO

9 Comments

Game thread: Raptors vs. Celtics

Posted by Scott Carefoot under Boston Celtics, Game thread on Feb 01, 2012

Start time: 7:30 PM ET
Channel: Sportsnet One
Probable starting lineups
Toronto: Jose Calderon, Jerryd Bayless, DeMar DeRozan, James Johnson, Amir Johnson
Boston: Avery Bradley, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Jermaine O’Neal

Injury report

Toronto: Andrea Bargnani is expected to be out until at least early February.

Boston: Rajon Rondo is questionable for tonight, while Keyon Dooling is out until sometime in February.

Ugh. These guys again? And they come to Toronto to play the Raptors AGAIN on the 10th? I hate this schedule. If I could be a supervillain, I would call myself “The Defenestrator” and I would throw this schedule out a window.

Anyway, I’m guessing this game probably won’t be a bar fight. The Celtics are quietly rounding into form lately, winning five of their last six games and bringing their record to the .500 mark. Because these are the Celtics, they’re doing it with defense — their Defensive Rating is sixth in the league, they’re fifth in opponents’ field goal percentage and they’re second in opponents’ three-point percentage. If Rajon Rondo can’t play and Avery Bradley gets the start, I’ll be interested to see Bradley in extended playing time since I’ve heard he’s a crazy-good defender.

In the Celtics’ 96-73 win over the Raptors on Jan. 18, Rondo led both teams with 21 points. As in that game, Andrea Bargnani will be in a suit so we can expect the Raptors to have a hard time cracking the 80-points mark tonight. Good luck making it all the way through this game without flipping the channel to a less depressing one.

Random thoughts…

  • Ever wonder what it was like to wear those purple-pajama-lookin’, dinosaur-havin’ Raptors uniforms in the early days of the franchise? Not fun, if Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason were on the other team.
  • Are you moving soon and need someone to help you move the heavy stuff? Try the Mother and Son Moving Company!

No Comments

Fouling Out: Six Personal Thoughts on the Game

Posted by Joseph Casciaro under Boston Celtics, DeMar DeRozan, Ed Davis, Gary Forbes, James Johnson, Recap on Jan 18, 2012

Game No. 15: Celtics 96, Raptors 73

Yes, the Celtics are old and slow and are barely a shadow of their former selves (more on them later), but you had to know even in this state, they weren’t going to lose their sixth straight game (and fall to 4-9) with a home loss to the 4-10 Raptors. Not going to happen.

For all intents and purposes, this game was over when the Raptors went on an 0-for-10 stretch during the first quarter and went down 21-7 early. Though the game got somewhat close in the second quarter and beginning of the third quarter, Toronto never got within five again after digging that early hole.

Now here are my thoughts on the game:

1- As frustrated as I’ve been with DeMar DeRozan for the last couple of weeks, I can’t really knock his hustle tonight. DeMar was consistently attacking the basket and trying to draw contact when he wasn’t driving, but between just not getting calls and some careless turnovers, DeRozan couldn’t put it together. There were at least three or four occasions when I thought DeMar deserved a couple of free throws, but in the end, he finished with just three attempts from the line. There were also a couple of times DeMar looked like he was starting a strong move towards the basket before ultimately fumbling the ball and turning it over. It may not sound like much, but between the non-calls and the turnovers, DeRozan probably lost six-to-eight potential points.

2- I liked what I saw from Ed Davis tonight, though his missed “gimmies” from a few feet away continue to frustrate me. Davis seemed much more active than he has been in a while. He was rebounding, working to get good offensive positioning in the post and seemed to have some good chemistry with Amir Johnson, as the pair made a few surprising, beautiful passes to each other. In the end, Ed finished with nine points and nine rebounds in 35 minutes, but I’ll always think about what his numbers might look like this season if he could convert seemingly easy buckets. If he can figure it out offensively (he’s still way too young and inexperienced in the NBA to be declared offensively inept forever), he’s a walking double-double.

3- The other positive for the Raptors was the play of Gary Forbes off of the bench. What Forbes showed us in Boston is basically what I was hoping from him when the Raptors signed him. I don’t expect him to score an outstanding 18 points on just six shots in 19 minutes (as he did tonight) on a consistent basis, but I do think he can be a good scorer and the type of player who can alter momentum in a ball game. His play is obviously starting to win over Dwane Casey as well, as Forbes has logged 49 minutes over the last three games after playing just 45 minutes in the first 12 games combined.

4- That will about end the positives from this game. Now on to the much more visible negatives…Everyone wanted Rasual Butler yanked from the starting lineup, and with Linas Kleiza still rusty and Gary Forbes filling in as a back-up point guard, the next option at the three was James Johnson. Unfortunately, Johnson didn’t exactly take the starting job and run with it in his first start of the season. James started the game with seven minutes of goose-egg basketball, as in he put up zero points (on zero-for-three shooting) to go along with the zeros in every other category (expect personal fouls). He quickly found his place on the bench, and finished with four points, two rebounds, a steal and three turnovers in 25 minutes.

5- Now about those aging Celtics. I picked the Knicks to win the Atlantic Division this season, but I still expected the Celtics to be a top-four or top-five team in the East that could win a playoff series or two if they got the right bounces. After watching them on a few occasions through three weeks of the season, I’ve already soured on them. They’re simply too old and slow to compete with the NBA’s elite, but the scary thing for Celts fans is that they almost look too slow to even compete with mediocre teams. From what I’ve seen, I can’t see Boston finishing anywhere near the top of the Eastern Conference, unless they end up winning the Atlantic with a barely above .500 record. I still think they’ll make the playoffs (not if Rondo is out for an extended period of time after Linas Kleiza’s flagrant foul), but they’re looking at a battle for sixth to eighth in the East instead of fighting for first to fourth.

6- I don’t believe for one second that Dwane Casey is playing to lose or that Bryan Colangelo enjoys the early losing that goes with the process of rebuilding. I think Casey is honestly trying to get every ounce of effort and output he can from this severely over-matched bunch, and for the most part, I think he’s doing a pretty good job. But you can’t tell me that giving Rasual Butler and Aaron Gray a combined 34 minutes is in an attempt to beat the Boston Celtics. Are they necessarily “trying” to lose? No. Would they ever admit that they are creatively trying to tank? Hell no. But come on, trotting out Butler, Jamaal Magloire and Anthony Carter for anything more than a minute each in 2012 is a form of tanking, whether admitted or not.

And for all of those Raptors fans who have fully embraced “Tank-Nation,” you have to be thrilled tonight. With the Wizards stunning the Thunder, the Raps are now just one-and-a-half games ahead of the last place Wiz, with games against the Blazers, Clippers, Suns, Jazz and Nuggets coming up in the next nine days. In all likelihood, this will get ugly in a hurry, but could get oh, so sweet when the ping pong balls drop in May.

Raptors Player of the Game: Gary Forbes – 19 Min, 18 Pts, 5-6 FG, 1-1 3Pt, 7-8 FT, 1 Reb, 1 Ast, 1 Stl, 1 Blk

Celtics Player of the Game: Rajon Rondo – 28 Min, 21 Pts, 7-8 FG, 7-11 FT, 3 Reb, 2 Ast, 1 TO

9 Comments
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »