Kendrick, Freed?
By Mark
Celtics 90 - Bobcats 89
OK, maybe new faces is a bit of hype, but it’s not like Kendrick Perkins and Orien Green have seen much of the court since the preseason. Well, they both started last night’s game when the surprisingly solid 7 win Charlotte Bobcats rolled into town.
Ricky Davis drew first blood on a nice three pointer off of a screen. When I watch the games to write a review, I take notes and during the fourth quarter I wrote “Ricky tremendous shooting off the screen”. I honestly don’t remember a Celtic in recent years who can execute it as consistently as Ricky. My respect for Ricky as a player is well documented here, but I will just point out that Davis led all scorers with 25, and added 6 assists and 5 rebounds in 44 minutes.While on the Ricky Davis topic, get yourselves over to www.NBA.com and vote for Ricky Davis for the All Star game. You can vote once per day.
Let’s get back to the youth. Perkins picked up 2 fouls in the first 4 minutes (one of which was completely bogus) and Doc Rivers yanked him from the game like the parlor trick where a guy tries to pull a tablecloth out without breaking any plates. In went Al Jefferson who scored on two fantastic passes by Pierce including a fastball that many players wouldn’t be able to handle. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before Jefferson ran into the mythical 2 foul barrier.
Perkins came back into the game and really started to hit his groove. He made a great defensive board against Okafor a flash of the tenacity that many, myself included, will make Perk the best rebounder of any of the young guys on the team. Perkins also forced Sean May out of bounds in a nice bit of defensive work that got the C’s the ball back and slowed down a Charlotte run. This was followed by a fantastic Perkins dish to Pierce in the low post that led to a quick, easy bucket. Perkins also showed a couple of nice low post moves himself, including a nifty hook shot and finished the game with 7 points on 3 of 5 shooting (including a GREAT up and under with an assist from Orien Greene that went in and drew a foul), 6 rebounds, 1 assist and only the 2 fouls in just under 25 minutes of play. The 0 blocked shots was rather un-Perkins like, but all around a nice showing that I am hoping will lead to more minutes for the young big man.
One regular in the Doc Rivers rotation that continues to mystify me is Brian Scalabrine. I liked the pickup during the off season, I think he can play a role on the C’s but he is being asked to do things he is not equipped to do. Defensively, he was schooled by the superior athletes of the Bobcats who exploited the Big Red mismatch several times. Scalabrine looked confused out on the court. As I said, I think he’s a nice role player but is not being put in a position to succeed based on his skill set.
Orien Greene had a nice night, and really showed his stuff on a few plays defensively. His weakness coming into the season, his jump shot, is still there and limits what he can do in terms of assists, particularly against a team like Charlotte that loves to get into the passing lanes and steal the ball.
A great night for Raef LaFrentz, who continues to be quietly productive. I hated that trade when it went down, and still think that Raef takes up a larger salary cap figure than he should but the guy shows up to play ever night, and still has that killer outside shot. His 10 rebounds led all Celtics, and put him 1 behind Okafor for the game high.
The Celtics Achilles heel continues to be the scoring off the bench. The bench is so young and so green that they are extremely erratic in their offensive output. As much as I love Ricky Davis, I think the Celtics will have to think long and hard about putting him back on the second unit when Tony Allen is back from his injury just to add some much needed firepower.
The C’s got themselves into the tightest of situations, but fortunately a nice play by all parties led to a solid Pierce shot with to put the C’s up with roughly a second on the clock. A tough win by a young group of guys who maybe, just maybe, are showing signs of maturing into an actual team.
