how have we fared against the bulls again this year?

Remember he's missing Booby, Z, and Pavlovic. That is essentially 3 starters and 3 of the few remaining guys he has any chemistry with.

Also as one of the streakiest teams I've ever done seen, when the Bulls are hitting their J's they can beat any team in the league.

That didn't stop him from beating the Bulls on Sunday.

All I'm saying is that it's a team thing. Rip "shows up" when he scores about 20 points and gets some assists. We don't need 1 guy taking 36 shots (unless it's Sheed and they are all dunks).

Then who's calling plays out of timeouts for Sheed to shoot 3's. 1.8 seconds left if the 1st quarter and what did they run?

Later, Billups has the ball on the right elbow, Rip tries to post Ray Allen, (Why, only the lord knows?) Rip gets pushed out to the right elbow. He and Billups are now about 6 inches from one another. Mano o mano Rip goes nowhere but backwards from that point and passes to Sheed with approx 2 seconds on the clock. What is he supposed to do, punt?

I also am not turning a blind eye to Sheed (Nor targeting you personally), but to me he was about their only consistent offense all night. To say Billups was aggressive doesn't seem right. At best he and Rondo were a draw, but in actuality Rondo badly outplayed him. That should not be.

First of all, I don't mind when Sheed shoots a 3 as a designed play with 2 seconds on the clock. In that scenario, it is a good opportunity, cause it's easy to get him the ball and it for sure won't be blocked.

But on a normal possession, perhaps the reason why we can't get an open shot is because nobody is commanding a double team. Maybe if he was a threat down low, Rip would end up with an open J. We would have been better off with a 24 second violation than some of the shots Sheed was taking. The baby hook college 3 attempt and the heavily contested 3 where the ball just sort of slipped out of his hands are two examples where the Celtics immediately fast breaked off the terrible misses and scored easily.

Rondo badly outplayed Chauncey? ? ? How so?

CB:
23 points (14-15 free throws)
5 assists
5 rebounds
1 steal
2 blocks
2 turnovers

RR:
16 points (4-6 FT's)
5 assists
2 rebounds
0 steals
0 blocks
5 turnovers

I would say Perkins badly outplayed Dyess. 20 rebounds to 6. And Garnett badly outplayed Sheed. KG with 31 points (career high with Boston).

Boston played vintage 2004 Pistons basketball and we played Pistons 2006 basketball.

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"If I'm sitting there arguing with the officials, I'm giving an alibi for the team." MC

One thing I try to tell a lot of u young cats on the forum is "stop being so infatuated with stats and WATCH the game". Rondo 08 vs Rondo 07 is 150% better! rondo hands are the size of Herrmannn's. he's lanky and unorthodox like Parker and Ginobbli and they drive CB crazy. CB was awful vs Boston and if you ask me , any game that he has under 10 asists is a bad game. Defensively, he cant stop any guard penetration because he is still used to Ben being behind him.
What ticks me off is that Billups listens to the press say that he should dominate Rondo and he just looks full of himself out there. Just play our game and the matchup issues will come to him.

Finally, my biggest worry in games like this is how inept Flip looks on the sideline. How comes he paces the sideline for 48 minutes? That would tell me that you have to look like you're in control. That really coincides with his nervous tick syndrome.

No title, bye bye Flip...period.

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CB was great in the 3rd quarter; I think he was 11-11 from the line and 3-3 from the floor, all in that one period. But he stunk down the stretch in the 4th and wasn't too good in the first half either. In the first half, he was bailing out on almost every play and hoisting up stupid shots without getting any calls. He obviously adjusted in the 3rd quarter and spent most of that period at the line, which was big for the Pistons, but he did pretty much get outplayed in the 4th.

(by the way, correction, CB had 7 assists).

I'm only using stats to back up my opinion that CB was better than Rondo. Every game that CB doesn't have 10 assists is a bad game for him? What about Rondo? How can you only have 5 assists with Pierce, KG, and Allen to pass to? Especially when you are supposedly blowing by the slower Billups.

I'm not saying that Chauncey had his best game. After all, he shot poorly and didn't come through down the stretch. But I felt like he really grinded out a good game when nothing was working for us. He drew about as many fouls as any Pistons player has drawn all year. That part was fantastic because it was all heart.

I just find it hard to criticize Billups when he was doing everything (scoring, driving, drawing fouls, rebounding, passing the ball, and even blocking shots). If Sheed, Rip, and Dyess would have each knocked down one more shot, then we'd be looking at a 10 assist night for CB. How about that play were Rondo looked backwards and Chaunce just blew by him? That was awesome.

Here is the order is which I saw our faults:
1) Dyess- this was a lousy game for him. Maybe he was trying to help on KG or something, but Mr. best rebounder in the last 30 days got outrebounded by 14 to Perkins... and he got outscored because his shot was off. Then go inside and get easy shots or get fouled. He did neither.
2) Bench- 63 minutes and 2 baskets. Maxiell and Amir got 2 shots off in 29 combined minutes. Dixon + Hayes were 1 for 7. KG put on a better basketball clinic with Amir as the prop defender. This was not the zoo crew's shining hour. Other than not being able to stop KG, their D was OK, but you need to get some buckets boys.
3) Sheed- this has already been explained ad naseum.

The positives:
Chauncey played well. Rip shot 50% and kept Ray Allen from Scoring. Tay was easily our leading rebounder with 10 AND he had 5 assists.

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"If I'm sitting there arguing with the officials, I'm giving an alibi for the team." MC

I had to go back and look at the numbers - not because I don't believe you, but because I came out of that game only remembering Rip bricking shot after shot. Guess I wasn't paying enough attention. Or only really remember that awful first couple of minutes.

Eight shots / 50% shooting in the first quarter
Six shots / 50% shooting the rest of the game

Now I'm mistrusting everything I remember about the game. Looks like the team went away from him for some reason. Has Allen playing that well defensively?

I actually came away with the same impression about Rip until I looked at the box score. I think the reason that it seemed like a poor performance live was because he was guarded and needed to force his shots a bit. I remember him hitting some shots that would have been considered back selection if he would have missed them.

Rip was actually 7-14 from the field, but most of those FG "makes'' came in the first half and he was as bad as everyone else was in the 4th qtr.. Plus since he was a horrid 5/19 in the Seattle game including a lot of forced shots, it probably appeared that it carried over to the Celtic game.