A Taste of Respectability

By Mike

During the marathon NBA season it is dangerous to assign too much meaning to the third week of games. But with the Celtics having won three games in a row for the first time since the 2004-05 season, it probably makes sense to look around and see how the team is taking the first baby steps toward a competitive identity.

Last Saturday night the Celtics built a 25 point third quarter lead in Cleveland, only to see the advantage slip away as the team hit a mammoth fourth quarter scoring drought and made all of the plays that you would expect from a young team eager to kick a game away. The club looked to Paul Pierce to steady the ship down the stretch, but PP could not generate scoring opportunities within (or without) the halfcourt offense and the team was left with desperate drives from the point guards and forced jumpers with the shot clock running down.

When the final buzzer sounded that night the viewer was left with the overwhelming sense that Cleveland could have won that game by 15 if it wanted to clamp down sooner. But amidst the disheartening outcome was an interesting development: both Sebastian Telfair and Rajon Rondo had dictated the offense at different times by getting to the rim in transition and out of the set offense. While anyone could be expected to have offensive success against future talk show host Damon Jones and some of the other subpar defenders the Cavs assigned to the PGs, it was a nice switch from the “walk it up and run the offense” role Telfair and Rondo had settled into previously.

On Monday the team hosted Orlando and lost again as yet another team made the plays it needed to edge past the Celtics down the stretch. The PGs again showed some ability to attack, but Jameer Nelson continued his stellar play against the Cs from last year and seemingly could not miss a shot. Familiar pick and roll and rebounding breakdowns down the stretch had the team’s fans shaking their heads while they wondered if things would ever be different.

At that point the team was 1-6 and there did not seem to be much drama left in the season aside from finding out whether the team would lose by squandering leads or falling behind early and never catching up. Over the next two days Celtics observers began to research lottery odds and draft positioning while debating which of the brain trust should be canned first and which should be kept on the payroll to chart the course to failure.

After the loss to the Magic the venerable Bob Ryan came back to his bread and butter, the NBA, and wrote a column on the Cs’ plight. Surprisingly he pushed his chips into the center of the table Jim Fassel-style and said he believed in the team and its beleaguered coach. His reasoning behind his support for the team had more of a basis than his vote of confidence for Doc Rivers, which seemed to be predicated on the coach’s well-documented “good guy” status. But all in all the column was an interesting counterpoint to the growing feeling of desperation among the fans of the team whose preference was to delay the focus on Greg Oden as long as possible.

The following day Bill Simmons posted his second “Fire Doc” column of 2006, which must have thrilled his legion of non-Boston readers. He took Ryan’s column to task explicitly, while making his own arguments for Doc’s ineptitude that included something about Rivers “not being able to get through to Pierce.” At the end of the column Simmons also identified himself as leaning toward blowing the team up. The column included a number of Simmons’ paternalistic nuggets of wisdom but in something of an upset did not include any suggestion that Dave Roberts and Adam Vinatieri be hired as the new coach/GM combo to help the team retain its fan goodwill during the tanked season.

So after seven games of a once promising season the skies were darkening and people were taking sides. The skies grew even darker when later that day it was learned that Michael Olowokandi had strained an abdominal muscle and would be out for several games, leaving the Celtics without 3 of their top 6 big men due to injury. But instead of this news driving the team further down its spiral a light bulb seemed to click on that night. The team’s defensive rotations became crisper, its offense more fluid, and suddenly the Celtics were on a roll. They beat Indiana going away and blew out Portland on Friday, setting up a matchup in New York with the Isiah Thomas Project. The Cs built a 20 point lead and then watched it all dissolve away like it had one week earlier in Cleveland. But this time instead of imploding the Celtics dug in their heels and clawed the game back from the Knicks.

Detractors will no doubt point out several of the team’s flaws that remain evident through the recent spate of wins. And there is some truth to the notion that victories over an Indiana team with some chemistry issues, a Portland team missing two of its highest paid players, and the Knicks with…ahem…Isiah at the helm should be taken with a few shakers of salt. But winning certainly beats the alternative, and makes this team more interesting to watch as we wait for the return of Al Jefferson.

Four things we learned this week:

1. The PGs are on the rise. No, they aren’t yet a consistent positive for the Celtics, but Telfair and Rondo have been getting to the hoop with an ease not seen in Boston in years. Telfair in particular seems to have begun seeing the floor and his role better, posting solid numbers for each of the three wins. They’re still young and they do some young things, but these two players project the feeling that the question for them is “when”, not “if”.

2. Paul Pierce is, uh, important. I am stating the obvious, but if Pierce doesn’t play efficient basketball, this team has very little chance of winning. When PP turns the ball over or takes bad shots and interrupts the flow of the offense (like he did down the stretch in Cleveland) this team becomes painful to watch. On the other hand when he’s clearing the glass and shooting a high percentage everything seems to click.

3. A rotation is coming into focus. It unfortunately required several injuries to help pare down the roster but it seems like Doc has been forced into a manageable 10 man rotation. He’s actually playing Tony Allen as an 11th man but he’s only using TA as the fourth wing player when the team plays smallball down the stretch. While I would prefer to see an even shorter bench, at least this does seem to provide some needed structure for the players’ roles while keeping a large number of players involved. I definitely don’t want to see Tony Allen take any of Gerald Green’s minutes at this point, for example, but if and when the team makes a trade it will be better for the team if the guy who stays has played more than garbage time minutes for the team.

4. Ryan Gomes is fun to watch. His lack of height may keep him from being a centerpiece power forward for a contending team, but it is a joy to watch all of the things that Gomes does for the Cs when he is on the floor. He was dominant on the glass for large stretches of Saturday’s game, which was even more notable as it came against two second year Knick power forwards (Channing Frye and David Lee) who were drafted ahead of him. As Gomes starts to better understand how to combine the jump shot he honed over the summer with his nose for rebounding his game will only get more productive.