The Boston Celtics dropped their fifth straight game with a loss at home to the New York Knicks. J.R. Smith scored 32 and Carmelo added 29 as the Celtics got thrashed. The Knicks outscored the Celtics 30-20 in the second quarter and that was pretty much it. Another awful loss for the C’s and this one game at home to a Knicks team without Tyson Chandler (or anything remotely resembling a front-court really). Let’s get through the bullet points so I can rant a bit:

• Jeff Green was the Celtics best player tonight. After struggling early Green recovered in the second half, finishing with a team-high 19 points, 10 rebounds (also team-high), six assists (tied with Pierce and Crawford for the team-high), and only 2 turnovers. Credit to Jeff Green for showing up on a night when the Celtics were a mess overall.
• I also have nice things to say about Brandon Bass, who shouldered the majority of the front-court minutes (especially at center which was absurd) and finished with 11 points on an efficient 5-6 shooting, seven rebounds, and three blocks.
• Terrence “Point-God” Williams was another bright spot for me. He struggled a bit from the field (7 points on 7 shots), but found other ways to contribute, adding five rebounds and an assist with no turnovers. It wasn’t the most impressive night, but Williams is probably the best ball-handler on the Celtics and he’s a guard not named Jason Terry so I continue to think he should get more minutes. (Williams actually played one more minute than Terry tonight but that was because Terry didn’t have to play in garbage time, because he’s a veteran and stuff. Terry was a team-low -18 for those that care about that sort of thing).
• In his first start as a Celtic, Jordan Crawford started off 4-5 from the field (and he was actually carrying the Celtics early on) but cooled off, finishing 5-11 with 14 points, four rebounds, six assists, and six turnovers. Crawford showcased some excellent passing skills, but he and Pierce combined for 12 of the Celtics 19 turnovers which played a huge part in the loss. New York only turned the ball over eight times.
• Avery Bradley continued to struggle (3-11 from the field, no assists), but at least he only turned the ball over once.
• Chris Wilcox played nine minutes and contributed no points, no rebounds, a block, and a foul. Thats probably why he only played nine minutes (He also finished a team-high +1, so much for +/- as a stat). This also highlights a huge problem for the Celtics:

Doc Rivers did not play Shavlik Randolph or D.J. White until garbage time which meant that Brandon Bass and Jeff Green shouldered the majority of minutes at center. That is ridiculous. New York grabbed 15 offensive rebounds and scored 29 second chance points and their only healthy big is Kenyon Martin, imagine the damage a team with a decent front-court could do. With KG sidelined for two weeks (maybe more) playing this small just isn’t viable. In his five minutes of garbage time Randolph grabbed four rebounds. White doesn’t crash the boards, but he has a better chance of altering a shot than 6’6″ Brandon Bass. I know Doc loves veterans (I mean seriously, Jason Terry is 5th on the Celtics in minutes per game despite the lackluster season he’s been having) but if he’s not willing to give White and Randolph some run it is going to be a long two weeks.

The Celtics will face the Cavaliers in Cleveland tomorrow, where hopefully they’ll expand their big-man rotation.

Follow Jordan on Twitter: @HiggsOnHoops

According to Danny Ainge Garnett does not have a sprain, and instead has an inflammation of the ankle that could sideline him for about two weeks:

“I think it happened in New Orleans game, it was just sore — just inflammation. A lot of things can cause inflammation; I think everyone has a little bit of inflammation this time of year. KG, we need to get him fresh anyway.”

As Matt Moore pointed out on Twitter yesterday, the Celtics just need some combination of five wins and 76ers losses to clinch a playoff birth so there’s little danger of them somehow missing the post-season. That said, the Bucks are just 1.5 games behind the Celtics for the 7th seed, and if the Celtics’ slide continues they could end up facing Miami in the first round. Ainge and Doc don’t seem worried about this injury at all, which of course makes me immediately worried about this injury. If Garnett’s ankle lingers or worsens, you can flush Boston’s post-season hopes down the drain.

In related ankle-news, Courtney Lee is considered probable for tomorrow’s game against the Knicks.

Follow Jordan on Twitter: @HiggsOnHoops

What a mess. After a strong first half the Celtics fell apart in the third quarter, getting outscored 22-12 and fumbling away a 10 point halftime lead. The Celtics were able to rally, but Anthony Davis scored off a tip-in with 0.3 seconds remaining and the Celtics weren’t able to get off a shot before the final buzzer sounded. Honestly that game was disgusting so lets try to get through these bullet points and pretend it never happened:

• Kevin Garnett played well in his return, after missing his first two jumpers KG found his groove and ended up scoring 20 points on 9-16 shooting.
• Paul Pierce played well, finishing with 28 points on 17 shots and five assists. Pierce was bizarrely uninvolved on the glass (only two rebounds), but he wasn’t alone in that respect as the Celtics got absolutely crushed 45-28 on the boards.
• Brandon Bass had a really solid game, including 11 points on 5-8 shooting, six rebounds, and two assists including some really nice post-passing with Kevin Garnett. Nothing special, just the kind of game you’d hope to see from Bass on a nightly basis, and a notable performance on a night where many of the Celtics role-players played poorly.
• Jeff Green started off hot but missed all his shots in the second half and finished with 13 points on 4-8 shooting. Green’s second half collapse was unfortunate, but it’s hard to complain with his contribution compared to the rest of the bench.
• Besides Jeff Green the rest of the Celtics bench contributed four points on 2-10 shooting, seven rebounds, five assists, and five turnovers in a combined 48 minutes. Crawford and Terry were both a mess tonight and Wilcox barely got on the floor, playing only 6 minutes. The New Orleans bench scored 37 to Boston’s measly 17.
• Avery Bradley struggled offensively (2-10 from the floor) and Courtney Lee was barely involved (just three shots, and assist and two steals in 37 minutes of floor time), a very bad night for the Celtics guards as a whole.

“We stopped making passes, we started dancing around, stopped defending, laughing. You could see our guys laughing and joking.” Doc Rivers said afterwards. ”Whether we won it or not, we deserved to lose the game.” That pretty much sums it up, the Celtics played lazy uninspired basketball during the second half, and it shows in the rebounding differential (17) and the free throw numbers (just five attempted in the second half).

I don’t really want to talk about this anymore, the numbers speak for themselves. The Celtics will face the Mavericks on Friday.

Follow Jordan on Twitter: @HiggsOnHoops

The Celtics delivered a thriller in the absence of Kevin Garnett, sidelined by the flu and an adductor strain. The C’s ultimately came up short in a game that was both exhilerating and (especially down the stretch) incredibly frustrating. It was a tense, exciting game that came down to the wire and though Boston wasn’t able to execute in the closing moments, Celtic pride was on full display tonight. Let’s get to the beloved bullet-points:

• Jeff Green had an incredibly efficient career high 43 points on 21 shots–tieing Paul Pierce for the highest scoring game of the KG era–as well as seven rebounds, two assists, two steals and four blocks. “Whatever he ate for breakfast this morning or whatever he did today, he better keep doing it,” Pierce said after the game. Green’s monster night was spoiled by LeBron James go-ahead jumper with 10 seconds to go, but that shouldn’t take away from the amazing game Jeff Green had. Green was 5-7 from downtown and completed numerous three point plays off seemingly impossible shots. The crowd chanted his name. He even went left. Tonight’s game spoke volumes about how far Jeff Green has come since the beginning of the season. Green looked even better than in preseason, and he did it against some stiff competition. When asked about his game Jeff Green was slightly less excited than me. “It doesn’t matter. We lost. It sucks.”
• Paul Pierce finished with 17 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists, but his night was marred by a costly seven turnovers.
• Avery Bradley struggled offensively tonight, but had an awesome fingertip block on Norris Cole and hit a huge 3 to put the Celtics up 103-101 late (those two plays were so incredible I didn’t realize how much he struggled until after the game). Unfortunately he also had four turnovers.
• Jason Terry was 4-6 tonight for 9 points, but he disappeared from the offense for long stretches of time, unfortunate on a night when he appeared to be shooting well. He also had four assists and, you guessed it, four turnovers.
• Did I mention turnovers? The Celtics turned the ball over twenty times tonight and struggled under pressure without a true ball-handler. “We just don’t have the ball-handling to play half court anymore,” Doc said. While the C’s limited the Heat to just 6 fast break points, thats a lot of possessions to give up to your opponent and it ultimately cost the Celtics.
• Courtney Lee was the unsung hero of this game, scoring 13 points on 6-10 shooting while playing some great defense and showing excellent decision making skills on the offensive end. He was taken out of the game in the final minute for Brandon Bass, immediately followed by Bass botching a driving layup.

In case you didn’t know, the Miami Heat are really good on this basketball team. Opinions will vary on what this game means, but come playoff time it probably doesn’t mean anything. On one hand, the Celtics were without Garnett tonight (and Rondo and Sullinger) and his presence would have certainly helped on a night where Miami scored 50 points in the paint. On the other, Jeff Green is not going to score 40 points every night and the Heat were playing their fifth game in seven nights. Regular season matchups are a poor barometer for what’s going to happen come playoff time, and the Heat are in a class of their own in the East. That said, the Celtics are still dangerous and the Heat don’t want to play them, and while my playoff aspirations aren’t high Celtics-Heat would be a hell of a series.

Just a few days ago an Eastern Conference scout told Marc Stein that without Rondo, Miami would win a Celtics-Heat series in five. Well Paul Pierce doesn’t care about the scout at all; in an interview with David Aldridge, Pierce said that not only does he want to play Miami, but he feels the Celtics have shown they can beat the NBA’s best:

Me: When you won in ’08 KG famously said ‘anything is possible!‘ Are you carrying that to this year, especially with all the injuries?

PP: We know we’re going to be a tough out, regardless. I think we’re going to be that team that nobody wants to play in the playoffs. Right now we’re so unpredictable. You don’t know what we’re capable (of). You look up and we play teams, sometimes we lose to bad teams, and then we beat the better teams. We don’t know which Boston team is going to show up, and at any given moment we can get hot and beat the best of the best in the NBA. We’ve shown that we can beat Miami; we’ve shown that we can beat Oklahoma City; we’ve shown we can beat New York. You’re talking about some of the best teams in the NBA. We’re just going to continue to fly under the radar and see what happens.

Me: You want Miami again, don’t you?

PP: I always thrive on wanting to play against the best. Right now, Miami’s the best. It would be nice to see them in the playoffs. Winning’s not easy. In order to win, you’ve got to see the best. And I think it would be fun for the NBA.

You can check out the whole interview here ,or poke around the rest of The Morning Tip for all sorts of NBA goodness including some quotes from Avery Bradley and Doc Rivers about the young guard’s defensive mindset and emerging offense. Realistically, a lot (like LeBron-James-getting-abducted-by-aliens a lot) would have to fall the Boston’s way for them to beat Miami in a seven game series, but in a season where it’d be easy to throw in the towel, Pierce and the Celtics are determined to go down swinging.

Follow Jordan on Twitter: @HiggsOnHoops

Let me be honest: This game was billed as a potential playoff preview but Indiana is a team I’d rather avoid. The Pacers are a very good team, probably the only real challenger to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference. A Celtics-Pacers series sounds like a more graceful version of last year’s grindy Celtics-76ers tilt, except this time the odds wouldn’t be in the Celtics favor. I’d rather face (what I see as) a beatable Knicks team or match up with the Miami Heat and give them everything we’ve got. That said, the Celtics showed tonight why no one in the East wants to run into the C’s in the playoffs.

“This team has shown tremendous heart, tremendous resiliency,” Paul Pierce said after the game. “Gutsy win. One of the best wins of year. Hopefully we can continue this momentum into the playoffs.”

Gutsy barely begins to describe it. Running on fumes on the second night of a back-to-back, the Celtics outscored the Pacers 25-13 in the 4th quarter including an 11-0 run to end the game. That run culminated in a Jeff Green layup on a gorgeous final play (Drawn up by Celtic’s assistant coach Armond Hill according to ESPN’s Chris Forsburg) with .5 seconds left and the Celtics were able to sneak away with the win. Let’s get to the bullet points:

• Kevin Garnett was fantastic tonight. The Pacers have the defenders to give the Celtics fits at every position, but with Hibbert hanging down low by the basket KG was open for his signature 22-footer and knocked down jumper after jumper, including his first three of the season. Garnett finished with 18 points on 7-10 shooting, 10 rebounds, and made the pass that resulted in Jeff Green’s game winning layup.
• Paul Pierce was frustrated tonight by 6’10” Paul George’s length (and the officiating) and scored 13 points on a rough 4-15 shooting. Pierce still came through when the Celtics needed him though, hitting a huge three during the Celtics run down the stretch and setting the screen that freed up Jeff Green for the game winning layup. Pierce also continued his strong work on the glass with eight boards, and added four assists as well.
• Jeff Green was also pestered by Paul George (seriously, the guys combination of length and mobility makes him a nightmare) and had 11 points on 5-14 shooting to go with seven rebounds, four assists, and two blocks. Green played well on defense however and had the aforementioned game winning layup (Layup, layup, layup. I can’t stop talking about this layup). Like Pierce, Green found other ways to contribute on a night when he struggled offensively.
• D.J. White played his first minutes as a member of the Celtics and after initially fumbling an outlet pass from Kevin Garnett (in a sequence I found hilarious) White settled down, finishing with two rebounds and two blocks in four minutes. White is known for his offensive game, so seeing him contribute on the other end of the floor was encouraging, even if we only got a fleeting glimpse of what he could offer the Celtics.
• Terrence “Point God” Williams didn’t get in the game, much to my chagrin.
• The Celtics were outscored 44-32 in the paint and 20-11 on the break. The Celtics only turned the ball over 13 times but unlike the 76ers the Pacers made those opportunities count, due in part to some horrific transition defense by the Celtics (there was a lot of standing and staring). Outside of those transition hiccups, the Celtics played smothering defense (holding the Pacers to 36% shooting) and their execution on both ends down the stretch helped them steal the win.

The Celtics have a day off tomorrow before taking on the Hawks at the Garden on Friday as they continue their grind towards a potential 4th seed.

Follow Jordan on Twitter: @HiggsOnHoops