A Tough Win: Boston 90-Detroit 86

[wfcooper@tiac.com (Bill Cooper)]

	This was one of those impressively, unimpressive wins: the
equivalent of a pitcher going out and winning a game, when he can't
get his curveball over the plate.  The Celtics probably only had one
stretch of about 6 minutes where their offense was working reasonably
well (they scored 18 points over the last 6 minutes of the 3rd
quarter).  Luckily for them, they did have great command of their
fastball, i.e. their superb defense.
 =20
	For the 3rd game in a row, the Celtics started out slowly on
offense.  After streaking out to a 7-0 lead, they could only score 4
points over the next 8 minutes as they fell behind 19-11.  The Celts
got a nice pick-up from Greg Minor as they were able to pull to within
4 at the end of the quarter 23-19.

	The Celts press began to take over the game in the second
quarter, as they forced an enormous number of Piston turnovers in the
2nd.  About 3 minutes into the period, Grant Hill, picked up his 3rd
foul of the game, and had to retire for the remainder of the half.
The Celts went on a 7-0 run to take a 28-27 lead.  The Piston came
back to take a 32-28 lead.  Ron Mercer's jump shot found it's way back
to the Fleet Center, and Mercer hit a couple of nice shot to tie the
game at 34.  Jerome Williams hit a lay-up, with about 30 seconds to go
to give the Piston a 1 point lead going into the second half at 37-36.

	Finally the Celtic offense began to heat up (though slowly).
They crawled out to a 48-42 lead, as they held the Pistons to just 4
points over the first 4 minutes of the quarter.  With the score at
48-44, the Celtics went on a 11-5 run to take a 10 point lead at 59-49
(this was the C's high water mark in the game).  The Piston tightened
up their ball handling and began to hit some outside shots as they
pulled to within 5 by the end of the quarter at 66-61.

	The Celtics offense dried up in the early stages of the 4th
quarter as the Celts went scoreless over the first 4 minutes of the
period.   The Pistons scored 9 unanswered points to take a 70-66 lead.
Ron Mercer broke the drought with a jumper, and then the C's tied the
score as Pervis Ellison stole the ball, and Walker scored to knot the
game at 70 with 7:30 left.  Hill hit a jumper to give the Pistons
their last lead of the game at 72-70, as on the next play, Walker
scored on a hookshot and pickup up a foul on Hill, which he converted
to give the C's the lead for good at 73-72.  A couple of moments later
Billups hit a smooth 3 to give the C's a 4 point lead.  The two teams
traded baskets for several minutes, but with about 1:00 to go the
Pistons scored 4 straight form the foul line to pull to within 1 at
83-82.  On the next play Mercer was fouled in the rebounding action
subsequent to a Billups miss, and sunk both to put the Celts up by 3.
On the next play, Hill took the ball strong to the basket and was
rejected by Pervis (AGAIN! actually the ball may have been a tenth of
a inch past it's highest point, but it was very close).  Billups
grabbed the ball and fed Walker down the court for a jam to put the
C's up 5 at 87-82 with 20 seconds to go.  A few seconds later, Ron
Mercer missed 2 crucial free throws to give the Pistons a shot at the
game.  Tyus Edney, after missing a free throw of his own, tipped the
ball away from Malik Sealy as he ran down court to try to tie the
game, to ice the win for the C's.  Dee Brown sank two free throws to
make the final 90-86.

	By the end of the game the Celtics had managed to get the FG%
all the way up to .400 (Pistons .414).  They also had a bad night
shooting the 3 at 4-21, and reversed their recent trend of solid free
throw shooting at 18-27 (Det. 25-31).  The Celts won this game on the
strength of causing 25 Detroit turnovers (from a team that averages
just over 14 a game) while committing only 14 themselves.  Along with
an advantage on the offensive boards, this got the C's 15 more field
goal attempts.=09

Lineups:
Boston: Billups, Mercer, McCarty, Walker, Knight
Detroit: Hunter, Dumars, Hill, J.Williams, B. Williams

Players:
Walker: The team needed scoring tonight, and it was nice to see the
Walker supplying it.  He scored 29 (12-23), had 7 boards, 1 assist and
only 2 turnovers.   The Celts went to him a lot in the low post
against the smaller Detroit defenders (Hill guarded Toine quite a bit
of the night).  Unfortunately for Walker's assist total, while he did
a pretty good job of passing our of the doubles, nobody hit from the
outside.

Mercer: Found his jumper just in time.  Missed his first few shots,
but things began to fall. Ended up with 16 points, 5 boards and 2
assists.

Billups: Pretty productive game.  If I'm not mistaken established a
new career high in minutes played with 34.  Scored 13 (4-10), had 4
boards, 6 assists and 4 turnovers.

McCarty: Did a nice job one-on-one with Hill, but it cost him as he
ended up fouling out of the game in the closing minutes, after having
played 24.  He wasn't hitting himself and scored 6 points (2-8), had 4
boards, 3 assists and 2 steals. =20

Knight: Travis couldn't get much going on offense, as he settled for
shooting the three and it wasn't falling.  Scored 6 points and had 5
boards in 27 minutes.  But it was Pervis who was in the game down the
stretch.

Brown: Was in the game during the 2nd quarter when the C's got their
good defensive run going.  But his shot wasn't there tonight, and he
continues to settle for the outside J.  Scored 9 points and had 2
steals in 21 minutes.

Edney: His weakness in shooting from the outside stuck out like a sore
thumb tonight.  He got several opportunities to shoot mid-range
jumpers off of Walker's inside play and he couldn't get anything to
fall.  Against the fundamentally sound Pistons, his sneaky drive game
wasn't much use.  Scored 1 point and had 1 assists in 10 minutes.

Ellison: Just another in a string of solid games for Pervis, who
actually played for 18 minutes with out fouling out (a high for this
season, I think).  Scored 6 points, had 5 boards and that huge block
off of Hill.  At the end of the game, it was apparent that Pitino was
using Knight in order to keep Pervis in the game, not the other way
around.

Minor: This is getting weird.  Greg played for 21 minutes tonight and
only took 1 shot (which he made).  Greg scored 3 points, had 5 boards,
4 assists and 4 steals.  He seems to settling into the Pitino defense
at the 3 spot.

Barros: Forgotten man with just 3 minutes.

Declercq: Only 6 minutes.  Perhaps he didn't match up well against the
Pistons big guys?

Thomas: The secret weapon went back into the hangar with just 3
minutes tonight.

Coaching: A little bit of a chess match between Pitino and Collins
tonight.  The Pistons came out aggressively attacking the press, and
had a reasonable amount of success early.  In the second quarter,
though, with the Celt's second unit on the floor, the Pistons fell
apart against the press.    In the second half, the Piston largely
gave up on attacking, and just settled for getting the ball across
half court and running an attenuated half court set.  Meanwhile, I
think that the Celts had shot their bolt.  With Walker, Mercer and
Billups all playing over 30 minutes, the ability to run the press was
gone.  You have to wonder what would have happens if the Pistons had
done things the other way around: Adopted a conservative strategy of
just getting the ball over the 10 second line (even if it cost them
some bad shots or 24 second violations) and then going for the jugular
in the second half.
	On the general subject of minutes, with Edney, Barros,
DeClercq and Thomas totaling just 22 minutes, this was the closest the
Celts have come to using a more or less normal 8 man rotation.  I
suspect it was because the C's were so desperate for offense, but it
did result in a tired team by the end of the game (at least by Celtic
standards).  Pitino did stick with the young guys at the end of the
game, including Billups.

The Celts record in now 7-6 (I think they were briefly over the .500
mark early in the 95-96 campaign).  The C's play this Wednesday night,
against the Lakers.

Bill Cooper
wfcooper@tiac.com