Obviously a lot went wrong but I thought I'd take a minute to focus on a few positive aspects of last night. I'm a highly critical person but even I took some good signs.
Number 1, with a bullet - the defense played its best game of the season last night in my opinion. The rotations were as good as I've seen them this year (at least in any big game). You could see how much the break helped their energy, they were just all over the place against a very good offensive team that passes well and creates easy shots. You hate to lose a game when the defense is on like that, and after KG left the defense let up a bit, but aside from being paraded to the free throw line for touch fouls, the Jazz couldn't get a lot going. We would have held an excellent offense and one of the best home teams in the NBA to 80 points in their building barring the foul situation. It just makes me feel like WHEN KG returns (power of positive thinking), this defense is going to be as good as or better than last year, because that rest helped everybody, and the Celtics have fewer second-half games than any other team.
2. Perkins showed how good he can be when he's allowed to get away with a bit more of a physical game. He changed shots, controlled the paint, even put in a highlight bank brick that went in. His work on the offensive glass was great and his interior defense positively phenomenal. Again, you hate wasting that kind of effort from him, but at least it might foretell better things.
3. Perk and Powe grabbed 5 offensive boards apiece. I thought both did a good job crashing the glass and taking advantage of a situation they needed to exploit. Utah had only 28 defensive boards, meaning the Celtics took more than 25% of their own misses. If not for the poor shooting and ridiculous amount of turnovers, we would be giving more credit to the work of those two.
4. When Rondo plays, he can play with any point guard in the NBA. 5 for 7 from the field, 5 for 6 from the line (if only Pierce hadn't been so bad from the line), 7 assists and only 1 turnover. He also played good defense on Williams, who has been scorching for the past few weeks. Rondo and Pruitt held Williams to 6 for 17 from the field with very good on ball defense.
5. I was impressed by Gabe Pruitt, even on a 1-for-5 night, and I have not been a Pruitt fan at all this year. I thought he was the victim of quite a few bad calls but played within himself. It was mostly his defensive effort that impressed me. He was up against one of the two best point guards in the NBA, and he played pretty well. As his confidence grows, I for the first time have some confidence that he might actually be worth giving playoff minutes to. He needs to hit his shots, but he did well in the other aspects of his game and helped the Cs handle the fact that Rondo was taken out of the first half by fouls.
This isn't to brush over the fact that the Celtics were very sloppy last night. But think of it this way. The Celtics were very sloppy with the ball and had way too many turnovers. Both Ray and Paul were off, so was Eddie House. We didn't have KG for the second half and him walking off the court like that obviously has a psychological affect on everybody. They were coming off a long layoff and had some rust problems. They were on the road against one of the best home teams in the league (only Cleveland, Boston, LA and Portland have better home marks and nobody has a bigger home-road split). They lost Rondo for the majority of the first half to foul trouble. They faced an uphill battle from officials and were in the penalty midway through each of the last three quarters while the same plays went uncalled on the other end. Due to reliance on an off Paul Pierce, they had only one field goal in the final 4 minutes of the game. And with all that, the game was still in their hands down to the final 30 seconds. The negative outweighed the positive, but a lot of things have to go right to stay so close in a really terrible situation.
Just try to stay off the bridge by remembering that as long as we can be healthy at playoff time, we're usually gonna get much much more from our starters. With Pierce and Allen playing reasonably, Rondo playing the first half and KG the second, this team is going to be incredibly difficult to score against in the playoffs if this defense holds up, which I think it will. The Celtics get a lot more rest in the second half of the season, and I think it will help a lot, as the energy on defense showed last night. Keep that in mind while we all worry about KG and the turnover situation.