I watched both of the games where the Boston Celtics could not beat the Washington Wizards. The Celtics looked to be the Celtics of last year having trouble beating a team which is barely over .500 In the game this evening in Boston, the Celtics had a 77-62 lead and managed to throw that away and gave the game to the Wizards. Eddie House kept getting minutes in this game however he couldn’t buy a bucket, it seemed like he was looking at something other than the hoop when he was shooting.
Both games were not well played by either team, poor shot selection was the main problem by both the Wizards and Celtics. I know that a lot of basketball analsyts would credit the low score to good defense but, I didn’t see anybody playing good defense in this game. I did see Ray Allen throw a horrible pass to Kendrick Perkins down low that even if he did catch it, he would have been behind the basket. I also saw Darius Songalia not paying attention when a pass was thrown to him and ended in a turnover, which then lead to Ray Allen getting a lay up.
I do have to give credit where credit is do, the Wizards came to play and ended up beating the Celtics two games in a row. The Washington Wizards being a team that nobody thought could go anything without Gilbert Arenas and after watching them lose four straight in the playoffs to the Cavaliers, who thought they would be 20-16 at this point in the season. The Wizards however, have beat some quality teams this season such as Portland, Dallas, Cleveland and know Boston two times without Gilbert Arenas. Are the Washington Wizards better without Arenas playing with them? Probably not but they seem to be doing pretty well without. Hopefully when Arenas does come back he can buy into playing a little more defense because even though I didn’t think the defense was great on Washington’s part during their last two games, it has been a far cry from their defense last year.
Washington seems to be the best that they can be however, the Boston Celtics have to deal with a few issues. First Doc Rivers has to trust Rajon Rondo down the stretch of the game, having Eddie House come in is not an option for the Celtics. True, Rajon Rondo wasn’t shooting the ball well but, Eddie House was shooting the ball worse then Rondo and House can’t handle the ball as well as Rondo can. Trust your point guard Doc and you will have better success come playoff time. The second issue on the docket has to be the fact that the Celtics have 3 stars and not enough Spalding for them all. Who is going to be their crunch player when there is 2 minutes left in the four and the game is up for grabs. I think Garnett has proven himself more than any other player on this team that he can make the big shot, however Paul Pierce thinks it is his team and therefore Pierce thinks he should take the big shots. The decision is now on the players to make the decision about who is going to be the leader of this team.
1 response so far ↓
Jamal // January 15, 2008 at 5:00 am |
How can you say the Wizards didn’t play any defense? Both teams played excellent defense from what i saw. The fact that there were shot clock violations and jumpers being taken with 3 seconds or less on the shot clock shows that defense WAS being played by the Wizards. Open looks at the basket was hard to come by all game for both teams. When a team allows 78 and 83 points against a team that has Garnett, Pierce and Allen they are probably doing something right defensively.