Getting things moving..

[threats13]

Just looking to see if anyone else feels the same way I do about the Celtics playing teams with the Magic's style of play.  The Magic are a little bit more uptempo and its definitely hard to run the floor with them defensively all night long.  But from what I can remember the first time we played the Magic they tried to outrun us and we ran with them and won that game outright.  I remember thinking to myself hey if they wanna run we can run too.  I know Doc loves running the halfcourt offense but the problem is the halfcourt offense slows the game down and when the other team is running and gunning you are putting yourself at a disadvantage.  Theyre taking more shots, moving quicker, keeping their energy up.  Then we go down the court slow everything down guys get lethargic and boom a turnover and there go the Magic again.

Another example of when the Celtics look good when theyre running is the Suns game.  Granted the Suns dont play defense like the Magic but we looked real good when we were matching their energy and quickness with our own.  We have some great transition players...Pierce has a deadly transition 3..Ray is Ray and hes deadly from anywhere..KG runs the court well..Powe when healthy runs the floor well.  We got the guys that can run why dont we use that to our advantage.

The optimal thing for us to do in games against the higher paced teams is to attempt to force the other team into playing against our halcourt defense and make them do the running on the defensive end.  I also feel that the Celtics should implement a run and gun style of play in every game in order to change the pace and throw the opponent off guard a little bit.  The Magic have now jumped out to big leads in our last 2 games against them.  We eventually slowed them down but it took 3 and a half quarters and that was just a few minutes too late.  If we werent CONSTANTLY trying to slow the game down maybe the Magic wouldnt have blown right past us and gotten such easy looks.  Howard for one thing had waaaaay too many dunks.

I SAY RUN!! (against teams such as the Magic) 

[RAcker]

In the first half, we had them something like 11 to 2 on fastbreak points. They wanted a half court game last night and the score indicates that this is exactly what they got.  We unfortunately gave them multiple shots a lot of the night off of long rebounds and you cannot run enough unless you get to those loose balls.

We actually did a good job on our own offensive boards, but half of our put backs were missed layups or horrible turnovers trying to find a teammate that was not even open.